Sway (4 page)

I shook my head with a grimace. “No, not Chinese. It's the only thing my dad ever brings home.”

“That's because your dad has a lot of class. With my mom, it's always pizza.”

“How about Indian?” I asked. “You fly, I'll buy.”

“Why not?” she said as she stood and grabbed my keys from the coffee table.

“You be careful with my car,” I said. “I like it more than I like you.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Hey, Joey?” She was almost out the door when I called her back.

“Yeah?” She backed up a few steps and waited, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“I really hate your hair like that.”

“Awesome,” she said as she wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue at me. “Then I'm going to keep it like this forever. Hey, by the way, Gray Dabson assaulted me in the hallway today. Said he wants to talk to you.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” I shifted my head to a more comfortable angle against the chair and closed my eyes. “I'll avoid him like the plague.”

“Good luck. He seemed pretty determined. He wants your help with something.”

“Can he afford it?” I asked.

“I wouldn't be mentioning it to you if he couldn't,” Joey said impatiently. “I'm not an idiot. He's had an after-school job since middle school, a bunch of money saved up for college.”

I sighed and sank down lower in my seat.

“I know, I know,” she said. “It's hard to be the king.”

“Jealousy is an ugly emotion, Joey.”

She snorted and left without another word.

 

FIVE

Ms. Fuller, the head guidance counselor at Wakefield, sent a pass to pull me out of class the following day. The school kept a special eye on me—wanted to make sure I wasn't one of those ticking time bombs who showed up during lunch one day in a black trench coat with an assault weapon to take out a few of the popular kids.

It was only a minor inconvenience. I would spend about twenty minutes talking with her and she, in turn, did her best to convince my teachers that I needed positive reinforcement to preserve my mental health. The net result was better grades than what I really deserved. After all, no one wanted to be responsible if I traveled the same road as my mother.

At first I resented the required visits with Ms. Fuller in the counseling office, but I had learned to use them to my advantage. Ms. Fuller had a lot of influence with the teachers, especially the male ones. She was the motherly type, no doubt, but the way she carried herself reminded you exactly what a mother did to become a mother in the first place.

She was also a fixer, one of those people who liked to surround herself with damaged people, wanted to feel like she was really helping broken souls. I was like her wet dream of troubled students—no mother, emotionally absent father, and willing to put myself out there and bare my soul in her private office, surrounded by her motivational posters featuring fluffy kittens and rainbows and baby chimpanzees.

Her influence was critical when it came time for progress reports or report cards. I did enough work to keep afloat in my classes, stay off the radar of any of my teachers, but most of the time I was phoning it in. For any major assignments, I had a freshman at the local university named Kwang on the payroll. He wrote most of my papers—easy money for him and he wasn't spending his weekends at keggers so was more reliable than the average nineteen-year-old. No one was going to give me any points for class participation or extra effort. It was the time I spent with Ms. Fuller that could make or break my sway with the teachers.

“How are you, Jesse?” Ms. Fuller asked as she came around her desk to give me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Pretty good,” I said, taking up my regular post in one of the hard-backed wooden chairs, the kind of chair that was so uncomfortable, its only purpose could be to seat students in a school office.

She rested her bottom on the front of her desk and crossed her arms over her chest. The result was an impressive bulge of cleavage that I spared a brief glance. As she removed her glasses and twisted to place them on the desk, her skirt hiked up and I caught a glimpse of the dark place.

Every Marvin Gaye song ever written about getting it on was about a woman exactly like Ms. Fuller. I wondered if her husband knew it and appreciated the fact that he had access to her lady bits. The shadow of her cleavage, the shift of her hips when she walked, the long graceful neck, all added up to a definite MILF.

“How are things at home?” she asked.

The soundtrack in my head abruptly cut off strains of “Let's Get It On,” and I reminded myself to focus on the task at hand. I shrugged—a shrug that expressed courage through feigned indifference. “The same. My dad's not home much.”

“I'm sorry you don't have a better support system,” she said, sounding genuinely sorry about it. “It's sometimes hard for parents to understand that even though their child is older, can look after himself, he still needs a positive adult influence to guide him.”

“Well, I do all right on my own,” I said.

“Of course you do,” she said. “And I don't want to judge your father too harshly. I couldn't imagine being in his position.”

“Go ahead and judge him,” I said. “I do. He's a loser.”

Now she could barely conceal a triumphant smile, her eyes lighting up with victory because this is exactly the kind of comment that guidance counselors love. By criticizing my father in front of her, I was acknowledging her as a member of my team, distinguishing her from the L7s, the parents who just didn't understand their kids.

“Maybe a loser,” she said, “but I'm sure he loves you. You know, it
is
okay to be angry, especially to be angry with him. It's perfectly natural.”

“I don't really feel anything,” I said, the last honest statement I would make during our face-to-face.

“How are your classes going?”

A complete fucking waste of time.
“Okay, I guess.”

“Just okay?”

“I'm keeping up,” I said, staring at some invisible point in the distance, nodding my head. “It's hard. I get distracted, frustrated with it all sometimes. It all seems so meaningless.” This was tricky. I couldn't give her the impression that I was so distraught that some special intervention was required, but at the same time, she needed to be moved to drop helpful suggestions to my teachers in the teachers' lounge.

“What about girls?” she asked. “You dating anyone?”

“You know you're the only girl for me, Ms. Fuller.” I said this with a small smile as I dropped my gaze to my lap.

She gave a nervous chuckle and plucked at the hem of her skirt, stretching the fabric to cover her exposed knees. As if her knee was the part of her anatomy that could drive me wild with desire.

“Sorry,” I said, by all appearances with utmost sincerity. “I guess making jokes is easier than talking about—well, you know.”

Moved by sympathy, she leaned over to reach for my hand and squeezed it in hers. Her hands were dry and cool, the skin soft with some scented lotion. I suddenly felt myself responding to her physically and let the sensation take over for a minute. She was in her middle forties and her figure was more rounded than slim, but she was one of those women who knew how to dress to highlight every advantage. I wondered if she knew how many Wakefield boys employed fantasies of her for self-induced orgasms.

“The truth is, I'm glad my dad is never home,” I said as I leaned forward and rubbed at the creases in my forehead. “When he is there, he's drunk, and I know I should feel sorry for him, try to understand what he's been through, but really I just don't give a shit.”

“But you understand that none of this is your fault? Right?” Her eyes were moist, almost dripping with pity and concern.

“Yeah, sure, I know that,” I said.

“Hey,” she said as she gave my hand a slight shake. “You hear me? None of this is your fault.”

“I know,” I said, fixing my gaze on hers so she couldn't look away without creating an abrupt break in our connection. In that moment, I knew she was mine.

She swallowed audibly and her eyes glistened with tears. “I'm here for you, Jesse, and I'm glad you feel like you can talk to me. I want you to know that I would do anything I could to help you.”

“I do know that,” I said. “I know that I wouldn't have made it through without you. You, uh—” I cleared my throat and dropped my eyes as I had seen people do when they were afraid their feelings were too conspicuous. I had accomplished my mission, was done with the interview, but I needed her to be the one to end it. “—you mean a lot to me,” I said, knowing it would move us into awkward territory.

My comment hit its mark and reawakened her sense of what was proper for a teacher–student relationship. As she moved to put some distance between us, I fought to keep my expression neutral. My dick was dismayed by the sudden denial of her attention. Sometimes my dick and I had a difficult time agreeing on things. She was pulling away from me but she was smiling again, her heart touched by the innocent affections of a boy.

“Jesse, I don't want you to worry about anything,” she said as I stood to go. I could see she had made up her mind to do whatever it would take to help me. In fact, I was feeling so good about our relationship at that moment, I wouldn't consider honor roll out of the question for my fall semester.

 

SIX

It's easy to put off for later the chores that you dread, but I had agreed to set up Ken with the girl of his dreams. I started by getting Bridget Smalley's class schedule from my contact in the main office and looking her up in last year's yearbook in the school library. In the yearbook picture her chin was down, her eyes looking up to meet the gaze of the camera. She looked demure and just slightly uncomfortable with having her picture taken, her smile almost apologetic—as if she didn't really want to put too much out there. Definitely pretty, but then, it's not as if I was expecting her to be ugly.

Bridget's last class of the day was chemistry and I just happened to be passing the door when she emerged from the classroom. I had seen her picture, so I knew what to look for, but was unprepared for how much prettier she was in person, one of those people whose beauty refused to be captured in digital, her expressions and the empathic knowing behind her eyes making up half her appeal. The picture had also failed to capture her coloring, which was like an oil painting under the hand of a Baroque master.

She had hair the color of honey—anyone not paying attention would call her blond. It was a unique shade that denied to be classified as a color, but you could try. I imagined a man could spend days thinking about nothing else. Her eyes were a liquid, chocolate brown, her skin sun-kissed, tanned unevenly in a way that told you she came by it naturally, the highlight of her cheekbones tinged with red.

As I looked at her, I was surprised Ken had even noticed her understated natural beauty—he was a Philistine when it came to women. But his affairs were none of mine. This was purely a reconnaissance mission.

On Tuesday, I followed Bridget after school, no easy feat since she caught a public bus that wound through the narrow streets of downtown. The bus deposited her in the quaint historic district and she walked to the Sunrise Assisted Living building. Old folks' homes seemed to always be named that way—“sunrise,” as if to imply the inmates were starting a new chapter instead of just being warehoused to wait for death.

By the time I found a parking space and made my way to the entrance, she had disappeared somewhere inside the building. There was a receptionist dressed in pink hospital scrubs, the kind covered with kittens and balls of yarn, or teddy bears and little hearts, so the outfit looked more like pajamas than a professional uniform. She was young, early twenties maybe, and as I approached, she only smiled. Though I had been formulating an excuse for being there in my mind, I quickly realized she wasn't going to challenge me so I just gave her a nod and kept walking. Most of the time, a confident stride and a purposeful look can get you in just about anyplace without a hassle.

A short hallway led to a large, cheery room with a television at one end and a collection of card tables scattered throughout, where old people sat playing cards and checkers and dominoes. My eyes scanned the room and found Bridget talking to an old woman who sat in a wheelchair.

The area beyond the recreation room was a long corridor lined with walkers and wheelchairs. Private rooms, I assumed as I walked along, taking quick glances into the rooms with open doors. A few were occupied with people watching television or sleeping. I got to the rec room in time to see Bridget pushing the woman's wheelchair through a glass automatic door that led to a courtyard garden.

An old man sat in a wheelchair near the window, head bowed as if asleep. He was alone and sat away from the others. I approached him, wondering if I might get lucky and he was so far gone, he wouldn't notice the difference if I just took him for a spin around the grounds.

“Hey,” I said. “You in there?”

“What the—?” He jerked his head up, awake and, apparently, somewhat with it. “Who the hell are you?” he asked as he sat up suddenly in his seat, his hands flat on the arms of his wheelchair as if he were going to spring up and get me in a choke hold.

“Relax. Sorry, I thought you were asleep.”

“I was!” he said, sounding pissed.

“Look, I said I was sorry. I was just looking to borrow an old person for a little bit.”

“Borrow? An old person?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking around to see if there was a better prospect.

“What are you planning to do with the old person? You some kind of pervert?” he asked.

“Gross,” I said. “No, I just need an excuse to be here.”