Rebecca Coleman - The Kingdom of Childhood

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, you know, I worked all term on that playhouse for the auction. Did any body mention how great that turned out? The school got over five hundred dollars for it. So the stuff I care about, I am working hard at. And the stuff I don’t care about can just take a number.”

She nodded again, more slowly this time. After a pause she said, “I’ll be a little more direct. Is there a particular person who’s distracting your attention at school?”

He met her gaze with a look of pure, undiluted fear. “No.”

“Because I think that’s the root of the problem. If you’ll open up to me about it, I can rearrange things for you so it’s less of a concern. But there’s nothing I can do if you won’t talk to me.”

He shook his head, but it seemed to take a monumental effort to do so. His stomach started to ache with the acid burn that had sidelined him at the Christmas bazaar. He tightened his folded arms and girded himself to get through this meeting without either confessing or vomiting.

She watched him for a long moment. Finally she sat taller and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you so uncomfortable.”

“Can I go?”

“Just bear in mind what I’ve said, please, Zach. You can confide in me, and I’ll help you.”

He nodded and, without word or smile, hurried out the door.

Judy smiled when she opened the door to find him there, pushing the storm door latch to invite him inside. “What a nice surprise,” she said, as if he were there to drop off a plate of holiday cookies. “I just got home half an hour ago.”

“Is Russ here?”

“No. Neither is Scott. Aren’t you supposed to be at Madrigals?”

“Yeah.” He knew Temple would note his absence, and in his paranoia—because everything looped back to his paranoia now—guessed what he would suspect. But Zach felt virtuous for his real intentions. Temple could take his eagle-eyed observations and shove it.

“Listen,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“Sure.” She smiled. She began walking up the stairs and, out of habit, he followed her. She had changed from her work clothes and, for once, was dressed like a normal person instead of a Waldorf teacher, in jeans and a pink button-down shirt. Once her bedroom door was locked, she rubbed his arms and said, “You look cold. Why didn’t you stop by my classroom? I would have given you a ride home.”

“Yeah, I know. So does everybody else.” She creased her forehead quizzically, and he continued, “Temple confronted me about you.”

“Confronted you?” Her voice nearly mocked him.

“He told me he knows I’m sleeping with you. That it’s obvious, and we’d better get it back under wraps before Scott figures it out.”

She folded her arms, her face set in a look of only mild concern. “And on what does he base this crazy story of his?”

He rattled off a list of Temple’s observations. “He says it’s obvious. That we look at each other wrong. I don’t know what the hell to say to that one. ‘No, we don’t’? How do I know how I look at anyone?”

She nodded and seemed to consider her reply. “So how did you respond?”

“I told him he was smoking crack. What was I supposed to say? That he’s right? Because I’m telling you, Judy, he had it down . It’s like he’s been watching us for months. He had no doubt at all . And then Ms. Valera called me in today, telling me she knows someone’s distracting me at school and she can help me avoid that person if I’ll just come clean about it. I almost puked on her desk when she said that. She let me go without saying anything, but between her and Temple, it’s like dry fucking timber for the next person who notices something’s up.”

She eased her arms out of their crossed position and tucked her hands into her back pockets. For a moment she regarded him with weary concern. Then she said, “Stand still.”

He did as she asked. She circled behind him and helped him out of his down vest, then lifted his T-shirt and thermal off his body in a single piece. Once the clothes lay in a pile on the floor she embraced him from behind and, her fingers splayed against his pectorals, kissed him between his shoulder blades. Then she sat on the bed and smiled.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Please continue.”

“What was that for?”

“I thought you might be wearing a wire.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “You thought I was trying to turn you in? ”

“It’s happened to women in my position before. I just wanted to be sure. Your line of conversation was sort of painting me into a corner there.”

“God damn, Judy. How can you not fucking trust me now? After all this.”

The corner of her mouth twisted. “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s all the adults around you. If they wanted to hang me, they wouldn’t give you a choice. They’d slap a wire on you and send you in here saying, ‘Go do your thing.’”

She had a point. He leaned back against the dresser and closed his eyes in exhaustion.

“First of all,” she began, “Temple doesn’t know anything. Not unless you said something to him. He’s jumping to conclusions and that’s his own problem. If you deny it and I deny it, there’s no issue. As long as we don’t get caught in flagrante delicto. ”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s Latin for ‘fucking in the car.’”

In spite of himself, he laughed. He rubbed a hand down his face and said, “We’re not doing cars anymore, remember?”

“I remember. And as for Ms. Valera, I think you’re just reading too much into whatever she said to you. She thinks you’re bent out of shape because Fairen is toying with you. I told her myself.”

He felt the ghost of a smile rise to his face. “Seriously?”

“Yes. A while back she asked me if I knew why you’re having those issues in class. She figured since you and I spend so much time together, I might know. So I told her. You want Fairen, but she’s a tease. It eats you alive.”

This time the grin broke through, small but genuine. “Good call. That explains it, yeah.”

“Thank you. I specialize in fairy tales, remember.”

He looked off toward the window. The lacy curtains let in just enough light to show the dark-blue twilight sky of winter. Soon he would need to be home for dinner. In his panicked state he had expected he and Judy would agree to an urgent lockdown of their relationship, an easy out, brought on not by rejection but by necessity. The thought had been soothing, in its way. The affair, however guilty or forgivable, however abhorrent or deliciously forbidden, had burned through its fuel and needed to fall, empty, to earth. Yet in this room with her he had not expected to be reminded of all the things he genuinely liked about her: her quick wit, her ability to listen and be calm, the sensuality that thrummed just beneath the surface of her small uptight form. He liked her better, wanted her more, when she kept her grace—a shell of no enclosing a liquid center of yes .

“You need to relax, ” she said. “Stop sweating the small stuff. Could I offer you a foot rub? Because it seems like something’s blocking your chi .”

He rubbed his palms against the edge of the dresser and acknowledged the comment with the wicked grin it deserved. She waited for his response, and finally he said, “I came here to say I think we ought to take a break for a while, until people stop sniffing around.”

“I thought we already were taking a break,” she parried. “I haven’t seen hide or hair of you for a week.”

He considered that. “Has it been that long?”