Lily King - The English Teacher

“How’s it going, Kristina?”

“I’m drunk.”

“Yeah.” Already, this was the most they had spoken all year.

“She wouldn’t let me spend the night at Sarah’s.”

“So she’s coming to pick you up?”

“My father,” she whimpered.

“When?”

“Eleven-thirty.”

He looked at the alarm clock. Sixty-three minutes. He saw there was an adjoining bathroom. Water. He filled the two heavy crystal glasses by the sink and she drank obediently. “I’m going to get in so much trouble.”

He went to the bathroom for more. When he returned, she was sleeping.

“No!” He clapped his hands. “Wake up!”

No response.

He got on his knees beside her. “Kris.” He’d never called her that before. It was reserved for Sarah, her best friend, and Brian. “Kris,” he said again, and touched her arm. He meant to shake it, but once his fingers met the plushness of her flesh — how different a girl’s arm was; was there any muscle at all? — he couldn’t bear to disturb any part of her. Without letting go, he pulled his legs up under him and sat close to her.

Of course he knew she was pretty, but he had long since stopped being able to see it. He had loved her so much and for so long that when he saw her at school her whole body seemed encased in an iridescent haze, a sort of body halo so bright he couldn’t see inside. But now with her eyes shut and her body so still, her light was diffuse and he saw everything. Her hair was blacker than he ever imagined, weakening only to dark blue where the lamplight fell on it. Between his fingers the strands were thick, horselike. He brushed her bangs sideways and found that, like her throat, her forehead was pale and unfreckled. She had a cluster of blackheads along the curve of her left nostril. The redness was gone from around her mouth and her heavy lips, pooled to one side, advanced and receded with the tide of her breath. He thought of that sonnet they’d spent so much time on last year, about the girlfriend’s breath not being like perfume, and her cheeks not like roses and her lips not as red as something else. And then the last two lines — he wished he could remember them — that confessed the speaker’s rare, unending love. At the time, he’d thought it was stupid like all the other poems and crap they had to read, but now it stepped out from the rest like a friend who had known all along about this night with Kristina, understood how beautiful she was here before him, more beautiful than she had ever been within her shining halo.

What was stopping him from lifting her shirt, taking a look — most likely his only chance ever — at what lay beneath? He knew it was neither respect for her body nor fear of shame if she woke up. It was something more like pride. He wasn’t sure he’d ever used this word outside of English class before. But he knew it was the right one. He wanted the invitation. He would wait for that.

The numbers on the digital clock changed all at once. Eleven o’clock. How had he wasted thirty-three minutes? Gazing, touching, remembering poetry of all things. Her father was going to come banging on the door and Peter would never be allowed near her again.

“Wake up!” he shouted, shaking her with both arms.

Her eyes flashed open. Her lips tightened. “Jesus Christ.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry but thank God you’re awake. Your father is coming in a half hour.” He thought this news would alarm her into action, or at least panicky tears, but she just shut her eyes again.

“Kristina!”

He pulled her by both arms up to sitting, then pushed her to the edge of the bed. Her eyes were back to those inscrutable slits. He spun her legs around so that they were dangling with his off the side. “C’mon. Up you go.” He slung her arm over his shoulder and fastened it with his hand like they did in movies. He put his other arm around her waist. “Let’s walk.”

The room was large enough that they could make a loop of about twenty paces. After his neck got used to the pain, he let himself enjoy the fact that he had her — he had her! — in his arms. She was unbelievably soft, as if there were cushions beneath her skin. He had no idea girls felt like this. No one had told him! He and his mother had hugged so rarely, but his memory of it was all bones, his fingers falling between the ribs in her back, his ear bent by her collarbone. A general thrill at the squishiness of girls momentarily engulfed the specific thrill of Kristina finally beside him. He caught himself in a mirror. He had never seen his face with such a smile.

He began counting their revolutions around the room. For the first twelve, she took very little responsibility for her own weight. Then, just when he began to give up hope, his load lightened.

“Poter, what’re we doing?” Her head lifted from his shoulder; her legs, which had been dangling like a doll’s, buoyed her up. The cessation of pain from his right ear all the way through to his elbow was instant, though the relief was not worth the loss of her hair against his cheek.

“We’re getting you sober.”

“Oh.”

He waited for her to pull away from him, but she didn’t.

They kept walking. In the mirror their eyes met and she burst out laughing.

“What?” he said.

“Did you ever read Pride and Prejudice? ”

“No.” He figured it was some story about a beautiful woman and a pathetic man who had no chance with her.

“Those people were always taking ‘turns’ around drawing rooms. They walked very straight and proper and they held each other like this. Look.” Her words were clear, but she had a hard time slipping her arm through his like she wanted.

“What did they talk about?”

Her drunkenness seemed to come in waves now. She made a strange noise, as if several words had piled on top of each other. She hung on tight to him and tried again. “Lotsastuff. Secrets. Gossip. Whas rich, poor, pregnant.”

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to push her down on the bed. Even though she was carrying her own weight now, her whole body knocked against his as they walked. He had an erection but she wasn’t going to notice and he was too overwhelmed by his good fortune to care.

“So what are your secrets?”

He was not above taking verbal advantage of her.

“Oh God. I have too many.” She let go of him then and fell onto a corner of the bed.

“You’ve got to keep moving, Kristina.” He slipped his arm back through hers and tried to lift her up.

“Cut it out!” She jerked her arm away, then brought the elbow back and sunk it into his ribs.

He cried out. He hated this kind of unexpected pain. He knew it was what kept him from being a better athlete and he hated that, too. But the thought of her leaving the room checked his anger.

“How about some more water?”

He brought her a glass from the bedside table. The clock read 11:16. She drank, then had trouble setting it on the floor. It spilled, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Tell me one of your secrets,” he said.

“Okay. But you’re hovering.”

Peter sat down near her feet.

“Okay,” she said again, “I’m going to give you a good one.”

He nodded. He didn’t care now how much he was smiling. He was happy; he was with her.

“Miss Whitmore tried to kiss me last year.”

“Oh c’mon. It’s got to be real.”

“That is one hundred percent true. I swear.”

“After a game or something?”

“No, in her office. She was taping up my stick after practice and showing me this little crack at the tip and when I leaned down she leaned up and I had to jerk away. It was incredibly awkward.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not lying.”