The lock clicks behind her and she grits her teeth. Within the classroom, rows of empty desks stand like battlements; strict columns of sturdy metal and plastic, though the backs are chipping and graffiti mars the tabletops. Even now, the distant sounds of the departing students
marching home has her back aching from the tension. She rolls her shoulders before sitting straight backed at her rusted, flaking desk at the head of the room. It’s the color of a depressed flan-tan and pale-and should probably be disposed of for the sake of national security. The thing
has been here since she was a student, and so it squeaks if you lean on it and wobbles when you breathe, the old metal joints fracturing under the pressure.
She sanitizes her hands before laying them upon the desk. The dirt in the lines of her palms has her pressing her lips tight.
It is better, though. A year ago and it would be up to her shoulders, dust and minerals and pieces of people caked into her skin, scalp hurting with the grease encrusting her hair. It would have been built up under her nails, the pressure building until they cracked and bled and bled. A
year ago she wouldn’t have touched the table.
Two years ago was when she last saw her father. It was late into the evening. Her apartment at the time was two towns from the school, a small house that she rented the first floor of. The siding was fighting with the moss for territory and the stairs seemed to have already lost to the rot, though the windows were remarkably intact. Anyone could see right into the room, if they tried. They’d see the dirt that coated the place— how it was never clean, because she was the one tracking it in. They’d also see a living room with full furnishings, a plush couch with floral patterns and a lacquered side table that smelled of pine and alcohol. Her bedroom held
heaping bookshelves, a small single bed wedged between them.
That night, he had knocked on the door while she read. When she answered it, a robe tight around her shoulders and thick brown hair pulled into a bun, he took one look at her before averting his eyes. His mouth curled into a frown. He said a name, not her name, and she fought
her own scowl at it.
“Dad,” she said. She didn’t know what else to say. He shook his head, scoffing.
“Not like this, I’m not.” He turned and thumped back down the front steps, and as he left she heard him mutter: “Not to you.”
Soon after she found herself sitting in the shower, water running down her cheeks and knees tucked into her chest.
The robe had to be thrown out from the mold that grew on it a week later.
She drops her shoulders purposefully and grabs a stack of papers to grade. She lays them out across the desk and takes out a blue pen. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her pen touches the paper and she tucks the hair again. She checks something off and twitches her head absentmindedly. She crosses something off and her eyes flutter. She writes ‘Great Job!’ at the top of a page and hurls the papers across the room.
They hit the corkboard nailed to the wall and scatter across the battlefield, landmines of literature essays that flutter in the breeze of the open window. Streaks of blue pen are spread across the carnage, and a glittery, smiling sticker stares her dead in the eyes. Her own eyes are wide and tense, lashes dry but her palms moist with sweat built in her clenched fists. The stench of sweat and alcohol sanitizer burns her nostrils, and she remembers when she wasn’t dirty.
She remembers being five and sounding out the words of a book with her mom, then being ten and reading with her finger tracing the lines alone in her closet with a small lamp. She remembers being twelve and running with the other boys, she remembers being called ‘young man’ and feeling unease curdle in her gut. She remembers growing up and having her stomach settle only to feel like she had fallen into a ditch, where she dirtied and never scrubbed enough to be clean.
Her long hair lays heavy on her shoulders, and she blinks rapidly to combat the memory of nausea growing anew. She swallows. She wipes her hands on her pants and marches toward the demented smiley face, wondering whether the students find it as creepy as she’s now seeing
it. Her heeled boots click across the tile, and she almost doesn’t notice when the door clicks open just as she’s standing before the corkboard.
“Um…” The voice is soft, gravely yet pitchy in the way teenage boys’ voices often are. She turns, and she smiles evenly when she sees the boy.
There’s something so familiar about him. He’s new to her class this year, yet when they met she felt as though she knew him already. It’d been rather cloudy that day, and there was something about the way he hid in its shadow and kept his hands tucked into his pockets that she understood.
He’s short for his age but growing messy stubble under his chin and a popular yet very ugly hairstyle. He clutches at his backpack, hunched forward in his baggy t-shirt and twisting the doorknob where a hand still lays. He’s chewing his lip, and she tries to soften her expression.
“Austin,” she says. He smiles fleetingly, and his eyes dart around the room. They land on the papers still strewn about. “Don’t worry about that,” she waves her hand and steps away from them, “What’s the matter?”
“I, uh…” He fully enters the room and shuts the door behind him. It clicks. “Can I tell you something?” She raises her eyebrows. He continues. “It’s just…” He takes a deep breath. “I want to thank you.” She opens her mouth to respond, brow creased, but is quickly cut off. “You’re a really great teacher and all, and class is totally fine, but I really want to thank you for, well, being you.” He cringes and speaks faster. “Not-not just being you, I guess, but like, being… y-you. Yeah, um…”
She shakes her head slowly. “I’m afraid I don’t—”
“You’re like me.”
There’s a pause.
She stares.
“And…that’s cool. I haven’t… yeah. So, thank you. For being so open about it all.” He’s mumbling by the end, red in the face, but his arm is extended and his mouth is set firmly, eyes determined. Sun shines through the windows and warms her skin. She hesitates for only a moment before shaking his hand.
His hands are very clean.
He leaves, nodding once more and giving a quick “bye, Miss!” before rushing out the door without closing it behind him. She thinks maybe she should have said something. It was all very fast. Her jaw hurts and her shoulders are tense and she can’t stop staring at the blue pen marking the papers and the dirt staining her life and the war she thought she already fought.
Maybe she never left the war.
She thinks about Austin with his clean hands.
She thinks about being ten and twenty and the last time she saw her mom.
May picks up the papers and packs them into her bag, and she doesn’t wipe down the desk before leaving the room. She lets the door click shut.
Atticus Garrow 