English 10

by

Cole Parker

colepark@gmail.com

My tenth-grade English teacher is always telling us we have to write more. She wants us writing every day. She gives us daily assignments, short ones she says, only 300 words! Only! Yeah, right. And then weekly ones on top of those that have to be a lot longer and say more, too. I hate writing! I don’t mind talking, that works well for me, but writing is hard! Everything has to be just so, not a bit like speaking where I can say anything I want, not worrying about word order or matching verbs and nouns or any of the other rules she’s always having us pay attention to. Like not ending sentences with propositions! As if I ever did that! She makes us think about those things, though, and marks us down if we screw them up. See why I hate writing?

So, anyway, she’s always having us write something. And my griping about it just makes her get this funny looking smile on her face. She looks me in the eye and says, “Mark, complaining about it won’t get it done any quicker.” And she just keeps looking at me till I have to turn away. I don’t like her at all, and she doesn’t like me a whole lot either!

Now most of the time, she tells us what to write about, especially in the weekly papers, which is at least a little better than what she did last week. Then, she told us to write about whatever we wanted to! That sucked! I had to think up something all on my own, and didn’t have a clue. Not the foggiest! Thinking up what to write about was harder than the actual writing. I mean, if she’d just said to write about anything we wanted to, it would have been easy. I could have picked something like helping my dad paint the house last summer. Choosing the paint, covering the bushes with drop cloths, scraping the old paint off, getting brushes and rollers and ladders and such all ready for the job, starting to paint—hey, I could have made that last four or five pages easy and it would have been a piece of cake doing it, but no. We could write about whatever we wanted, she said, and then she threw in the kicker, like she does. We could choose the topic, yes, but it had to be interesting writing and say something about us.

 Interesting! Not just the topic had to be interesting, the writing did as well! Writing about painting a house would have been about as boring as the painting had been, and my dad wouldn’t even pay me for it, and it took two weeks! So that wouldn’t have worked at all. ‘I dipped the brush in the paint, then dragged it to the right along the board, then back to the left, then to the right again. Then came the exciting part: I got to dip the brush in the paint again!’ Yeah, exciting. Interesting? I don’t think so. And then there was that ‘say something about yourself’ part. 

Heck, there isn’t much to say about me. I’m just an ordinary 15 year old guy living in an average house on an average street in an average and boring Southern California city with a couple of friends when I’m not mad at them or they’re not mad at me, a dumb sister who’s a pain in the ass most of the time, and parents who bug me about things like keeping my room clean, getting my homework done, keeping my grades up, not drinking out of the orange juice or milk carton, and to ‘turn the damn music down!’ (That’s my dad.) Are you bored yet? I’m bored just writing this! But that’s me, Mr. Average, Mr. Normal, so what can I write about that’s interesting and still says something about me? You can see why I had to think about it.

I couldn’t for the life of me come up with anything. I guess I should add ‘stupid’ or at least ‘unimaginative’ to the list describing me. Because I couldn’t think of anything, and since it was getting so the paper had to be turned in pretty soon, I went back to Mrs. Martinez again.

I caught her at her desk as all the other kids were leaving class. She looked up at me, and I’d swear I saw a pained expression on her face. Yeah, well, I love you too, teach!

“Mrs. Martinez,” I said, “I can’t think what to write about. Maybe I can just sit this one out? When I get a sprained wrist or a cramp in my calf muscle, my water polo coach lets me sit out practice. Why don’t we just say I have a brain sprain this week, and I’ll sit on the bench?”

Teachers love it when we go all humorous on them. It makes them like us, makes them think we like them, that we’re in this together, so I took my best shot. But Mrs. Martinez wouldn’t know funny if it slapped her on the ass. When I finished, she didn’t try to hide her opinion of what I was saying. I could read it on her face.

“Mark,” she said, and sighed. She looked at me a moment, and then I sort of saw something flash in her eyes. I’m not real good at interpreting things, especially not coming from adults. Adults are different, you know? Not like regular people. But, I saw something. And then she said, “All right. You want me to tell you what to write, something that will satisfy the requirements of the assignment?”

Well, no, that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a ‘get out of jail free’ card; I wanted her to say I didn’t have to do the assignment. However, I hadn’t really expected her to go that far. She was one of the tough ones, the ones we all hate. But she was offering something, and so I answered her with, “Yeah.” When I said it, I didn’t have any problem controlling my enthusiasm; I didn’t have any to control.

“All right then, I’ll tell you what to write about. But you have to agree to do it. OK? You’ll do it and no quibbling. Whatever I come up with, you’ll do it. With none of your famous whines. Your Hall of Fame eyeball rolling. You’ll write what I tell you this time, and make it good, your best work. Which I almost never see, but which you’re as capable of as anyone in this class. That’s what I need to get for letting you off the hook here.” She stopped and raised her eyebrows. Letting me off the hook. Sure she was. Not!

Damn, I didn’t need a lecture, I simply wanted her to save me from having to write anything in the first place, or at least from trying to figure out what to write about. OK, OK, I can read your mind from here. You’re thinking I should add something else to that list about me up above. You’re thinking I forgot to add ‘lazy’. Just because I didn’t want to think up something to write about? Well, screw you, too. So I don’t bother to spend much time thinking about school assignments! Big frigging deal! I’m a kid with a lot more important things going on in my life than schoolwork. Jeez!

She sort of had me up against a wall here. If I refused, I could just guess what kind of a grade I’d get on what I turned in, writing about something I’d figured out on my own after turning down her suggestion, whatever it was going to be. And, even worse, I was kind of being forced to tell her I’d really work on this one. I hated that! Usually I just did the papers at the last minute and didn’t really think about them. If I agreed to take her suggestion, I’d have to actually work on this one. Damn! This wasn’t going like I wanted it to at all. I was getting pissed at her, big time. Why’d she have to be a bitch about this?

She was looking at me, waiting. I could tell, it didn’t matter much to her which way I went. 

So I said to myself, the hell with it, and to her, “OK. Tell me what to write.” At least this way, she was being put out a little too, and I didn’t have to think of everything myself.

“And you’ll go along with the rest of what I said?”

Man, she really was being a bitch! “Yeah, OK. I’ll really work on it this time. I’ll do my best.”

She looked at me for a while, looked seriously at me, letting me know she was taking that promise seriously and that I should too, and then smiled. Didn’t make her any prettier or anything, but she did smile. I guess she was happy about me having to work hard. Man!

“All right, Mark. This is what I want you to write about. Think about your life, and think about when you’ve been really embarrassed about something. Then write about it. What happened to embarrass you, how you felt about it. Be really expressive. Let me feel your embarrassment vicariously. Make me feel what you felt.”

She was looking hard at me, and her eyes seemed to be penetrating into my head. I looked back as long as I could. Then I opened my mouth to complain that that was too hard, that writing about being embarrassed would be embarrassing, that I didn’t have enough time, that this wasn’t fair, all sorts of things, but I remembered, I wasn’t supposed to do that this time. I’d agreed in advance.

I don’t like giving up, so I tried one last thing.

“I get to make it just about the embarrassment, huh? Just write that, and I don’t have to use the full thirty-five hundred words? You know, sort of like a compromise?”

She laughed. “At least thirty-five hundred. Just like every weekly paper. You know the rules.”

I started to get angry. She’d tricked me with the assignment, and now she wasn’t cutting me any slack at all! But I couldn’t let her know I was getting pissed. All I could do was what I did. I just turned and walked out, not saying another word. That’d show her how I felt at least. But I don’t think I made the dramatic impression I was trying to; I’d swear I heard a chuckle as I left the room. 

Aaarrrggg!

《《《《《 》》》》》

So, what to write about? There was something I’d been embarrassed about, really embarrassed about, that had happened recently, but I couldn’t write about that. It still was too painful to think about, and I tried to avoid doing so. Whenever it popped into my head, I forced myself to think about something else. No, I couldn’t write about that.

I spent some time thinking how angry I was with Mrs. Martinez for getting me into this, and wondering what I could do to get back at her. I really wanted to do that, but it’s difficult getting back at a teacher if you don’t want to get into more trouble than it’s worth. But still . . .

I thought some more. The incident I’d just gone through kept coming back to me, and it bothered me, and thinking about Mrs. Martinez’ chuckling did too, and I thought about that, and then, then, I had the wickedest thought. Just the worst idea I’d ever had. I couldn’t do it, of course, I wasn’t brave enough to do it. Or was I? No, I couldn’t. But, well, maybe? Could I? Really?

She deserved it. But I couldn’t do it. Not really. And even if I thought I could I’d have to think about it way hard because what I’d have to do would be subtle, and I’m not really a subtle sort of guy. I’m not. I’m just me. Very straightforward, very what-you-see-is-what-you-get. She’s told me more than once that I’m smart and there’s more to me than I ever let anyone see, and I should just try, but that’s only talk; I mostly don’t even listen when she’s going on like that. But, this, this . . . Yeah, there’d be more to me if I could do this. This would take some thinking, and I really didn’t like to think much. Not as hard as I’d have to if I was going to do this. It made me sort of shaky, just imagining my doing it, though. Kinda good shaky. 

There are some things you write for a school paper and some you don’t. You just don’t tell teachers much about how life really is for a teenager. They probably knew once, but for most of them it was so long ago they’ve probably forgotten, and their lives were different back then anyway. Didn’t they listen to the Beatles, and watch Little House on the Prairie, and have black and white TV’s? I mean, those old days were strange. Do they remember having crushes on other kids, and what those feel like? What it’s like to try to hide them when you don’t want anyone to know? Did they know what sometimes goes on when your parents are out and another kid comes over? Do they know what kids think about during the day? I don’t think so!

Everything that was a kid in me shouted I couldn’t do this. But what if I did? And if I did it right, wouldn’t it be a perfect revenge?

I did a lot of thinking, but the feeling of anger I had, mostly toward Mrs. Martinez, was always in the background, and I think that was what motivated me even when common sense and a sense of self-preservation should have stopped me. Neither did, though. I got more and more excited, just thinking about it. The challenge of it. What she’d think. How I’d feel. And then, I did it.

Damn, it took a lot of work! I had to do it just right. For this to work, I had to come across really sure of myself. I had to sound that way. If I didn’t, it would look stupid and silly and, well, I needed to sound very confident and a little naive. Even if I wasn’t either.

This is what I wrote.

OK, I’ve done it. I’ve written it. Now I have to have the courage to hand it in. That’s tricky. Before I do it, I have to talk to Mrs. Martinez. So, on the day the paper is due, I wait till the class is over. All the other kids file out, dropping their papers on the desk as we always do.

I just sit in my seat. When everyone is out, Mrs. Martinez looks at me.

Now most teachers, they’d have asked what the hell I thought I was doing, just sitting there. One way or another, they’d have asked. She doesn’t; she sits down and looks at me, and then raises her eyebrows.

Damn! Nothing comes easy with this woman. I seem to be able to, I don’t know, I guess the word is ‘charm’. I seem to be able to charm some of the teachers, especially some of the female ones, and can get a break now and then from them. I’ll smile at them or joke with them and act just a bit like a little boy and they usually give me what I want. Not with this one. I can’t get anywhere with her!

Here I am trying to get the upper hand for what comes next, and she isn’t letting me. Damn her anyway!

So I get up and lose the advantage I was planning to get by making her ask me what I was doing, just sitting there. That would have given me a little control of how things went, would have allowed me to set the tone. I walk to her desk. I have the paper in my hand. All 3,500 words of it, which of course includes everything. I make it a habit to meet her word count requirements exactly. I count every word, which includes the heading she asks for and even the ‘The End’ when I’m done. Hey, I wrote those words, didn’t I? They should count. No point in writing anything extra when I hate writing as much as I do. I keep waiting for her to announce to the class that only the words in the essay itself count, but she won’t do that. I think she knows I’d take it as a personal triumph, and so she never says a word, robbing me of that satisfaction. Have I told you she’s a bitch? There’s no love lost between the two of us, that’s for sure.

So I get to her desk, and I say, “I got the paper here.”

She looks at me, and at the paper in my hand, and she says, “So?”

How can she put me on the defensive so easily, that’s what I want to know? No one else does that.

I just ignore that because what else can I do, and I forge ahead. I go, “Well, I have to say something here. I did what you wanted. I wrote something about being embarrassed, and I made it interesting, and I wrote it so you could feel the same thing I felt, and something that tells you something about me. So, here it is.” I show her the paper, but keep it in my hand. “And it’s good. I worked hard on it. You’ll see that. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever written. But, here’s the deal. You have to promise me you’ll just grade it and then forget about it. You can’t show it to anyone else, you can’t talk about it, you can’t ask me about it. You read it and grade it and forget it. If you won’t promise me that, then I won’t hand it in and I’ll take the zero.”

I say that, and then stare at her, promising myself that this time, for once, she’ll be the one who looks away first. It’ll be like, Mrs. Martinez: 2,468; Mark: 1. But that 1 will mean something!

She looks at me, and she sees the challenge in my eyes. She smiles. The bitch! This isn’t some dumb ass game! I’m serious here! But she smiles. I decide that means she isn’t playing this time. She’s changing the rules we have between us, tacit rules but ones I’m sure she knows as well as I do. I keep staring and she looks away, but I have no sense of having won. The smile diffused all that.

She looks back at me and in a softer tone of voice than she usually uses, she goes, “Mark, I have to say something here. My job has certain responsibilities. I take them seriously. My job is important to me, so I have to do what I have to do. So let me tell you about my responsibilities.”

She stops and stares at me some more and I start feeling self-conscious. Why did I ever think I’d have the upper hand with her even once?

“It’s a little tricky with a written paper, because in person, when someone tells me something, I have strict rules to follow, and they’re pretty specific, pretty cut and dried rules. With a paper, I have to decide if what I’m reading is the truth, or if someone is writing fiction. It makes a difference. If I decide they’re not making it up, and they write about wanting to kill themselves, or child abuse, or a few other things, I have to report it. If I decide what I’m reading is simply creative fiction, then I don’t have to report it.

“Mark, I’m telling you this because I can’t make you the promise you’re asking me to make unless you tell me this is make-believe stuff you’ve written. If it is, then I can make that promise. But if it’s real, then I can’t. So we’ve got a problem here because this assignment was for you to write about something that embarrassed you. You weren’t supposed to make something up. You knew that. So what you wrote is probably real. If you followed the assignment, then it is real. So, I can’t make that promise because I don’t know what you wrote in the paper.”

She stops and looks at me, and I look at her. And I feel something I hadn’t expected to feel. I feel a huge loss. A huge disappointment. Because I suddenly realize, more than anything, I want her to read that paper.

I’d written it to get revenge. She had forced me to write something I didn’t want to write, and hadn’t let me off the hook when I’d asked.

And then, she had tricked me into writing about a personal embarrassment I’d suffered through. What I wanted to do, because of all that, was to embarrass her. As revenge. And what I’d done had been perfect because she’d specifically asked me to make her feel what I’d felt. I’d figured out how to use her own assignment against her!

The really cool part was, I knew what she wanted, because she’d told me when we’d talked. She’d said she wanted me to make her feel, vicariously, what embarrassment I’d felt. She wanted me to write about that embarrassment and bring it to life for her. When she was teaching us about writing like this, she used the words ‘visceral’ and ‘electric’ and said we had to involve her in what we were writing about so her emotions were as excited as those of the character we were writing about, and in the same way. That’s what she’d meant when she said she wanted to feel what I’d felt. 

But I’d taken it a step farther. Yeah, maybe she’d feel my embarrassment when I wrote about what happened in the woods. But she wouldn’t only feel that. I hadn’t only let her feel my embarrassment; what I’d tried to do was also embarrass her. How could she read all that stuff that came earlier, stuff that mostly concentrated on a 15-year-old boy’s personal equipment, and not be embarrassed?

I also thought I’d gotten away with murder, writing a paper like that for a teacher, but how could she complain? She’d asked for it. Anything she said, I could say I’d just been following her instructions. What I wouldn’t say is I knew I’d written something entirely inappropriate to hand in to a teacher, and gotten away with it. Revenge!

I’d felt really funny, writing all that stuff in the beginning, knowing she’d be reading it. But it had felt really good, too, because I was finally putting something over on her, and she’d asked me to do it! But there was more, too. This was the subtle part. She’d want to know what happened. What decision did I make, standing in those trees? What did I do? And how did it work out? She’d have to want to know. So I ended the paper without telling her, leaving her hanging. And then, as part of it, I was going to have her promise not to talk to me about it, not to ask me anything, and to promise that before reading the paper. So, afterwards, she’d be dying to know what had happened and she’d have no way to find out. Revenge!

There was more, too, but that part was just for me. I hadn’t realized it when I’d started writing the paper. Then, I’d only been trying to make her as unhappy reading it as I was at having to write it, and maybe there was just a little feeling of trying to show her how smart I could be, because she would figure out what I had done, how I’d followed her instructions but at the same time hadn’t, too. She was really good at looking inside the words we wrote in our papers to figure out what we had in our heads. She’d know. And I’d enjoy that. So that was what I’d set out to do when I began writing the paper. It was when I was part way through I discovered there was something else, something I hadn’t even been aware of.

See, what had happened that day had been bothering me ever since, and I’d been dying to tell someone about it. I’d had this bad feeling about myself ever since it happened, and it felt like if I could let someone else know about it, it might help. I needed to get rid of that feeling, and hoped this was a way to do that. I wanted to tell someone about it, but only that. I didn’t think I wanted to discuss it. I wasn’t sure why, but I simply wanted to share the burden of what had happened, thinking I’d feel it less that way. 

If I could get Mrs. Martinez to promise not to say anything to anyone after reading about it, it would be perfect. I could let her know what had happened, I could even tell who had done what, something I really, really, really wanted to do, and this way there would be no repercussions for doing it. So, while I started out simply looking for vengeance, I ended up also looking to get something else out of the paper, something that didn’t involve her, but was just for me.

I’d lost something in that little woods. I’d gone into them feeling a little cocky, a little bit like I was getting pretty close to being all grown up. When those guys were holding my arms and looking at me, I started feeling things I didn’t want to feel, and some of that hadn’t gone away afterwards. I’d felt impotent, weak, helpless, scared. Embarrassment was part of that, but it quickly became humiliation when they were saying things and I knew there was nothing I could do. They were in control of me, and I hated that feeling. I felt like I was five years old again and helpless. All the self-confidence that had been growing in me the past few years seemed to have evaporated in that one little moment in the woods.

I’d thought, if I could tell someone, I’d be doing something, not just accepting what had happened. I’d been warned not to tell. If I did tell, I’d be standing up for myself, and I desperately needed to do that to win back some of what I’d lost. But that warning kept coming back, and the look in Willy’s eyes when he’d said it. It wasn’t an idle threat. If I told, I was sure I’d end up getting hurt, just like he’d promised.

So I really want Mrs. Martinez to read that paper. But I need her to promise that what is in it won’t go any further than just her reading it. 

I have to find a way to get her to read it. I think for a moment, then ask, “Can you make the promise if I tell you there’s nothing in it about suicide, or about my parents abusing me at all?”

I don’t like my voice. It sounds like I’m pleading.

She stops and thinks. I decide about then that she really is smart, and since she isn’t blowing it off, maybe she doesn’t hate me as much as I thought. She looks at me, then away, then at me. This is difficult for her. I like that, at least.

She looks at me, doesn’t look away, and goes, “You want me to read this, don’t you?”

I told you she was a bitch! And smart, too. Neither one of those things have changed.

What can I do? “Yes,” I say.

She looks some more. Then she goes, “Let me have it.”

And I go, “You promise?

And she goes, “I won’t say anything to anyone without talking to you first. That’s the best I can do.”

I don’t like that. But she won’t budge, I know that. So I have a choice to make. I can let her read it—I hadn’t realized just how badly I wanted her to do that till there was the chance she wouldn’t—or I can just throw the thing away. And I want to do that as badly as I want to poke a pencil in my eye.

I don’t know what to do. I drop my eyes, and a moment later she puts her hand on my arm. She’s never touched me before. She holds it there, and all at once I feel tears in my eyes. I can’t let her see them. I drop the paper on her desk and walk out.

THE END

Um, well, OK.

See, I wanted this to be a story about me and Mrs. Martinez. That was the point of it, to show what a bitch she was, how she treated me rotten and all, and how I got the better of her. But I sort of have discovered since then that she isn’t. Not so much. I found out she cares about me, and my feeling that we were having a contest of wills or something like that turned out to be just me misinterpreting things, maybe because I was a little too wrapped up in myself. And so I can’t just leave the story ending like this. It gives the wrong impression about her. So I have to go on with this a little.

Which I don’t want to do because I hate writing and it isn’t why I started in the first place. Except something else I’ve learned is I don’t hate writing quite as much as I used to. But, even if I did, what choice do I have? Even if I did still hate writing as much as before, letting everyone think Mrs. Martinez is a bitch wouldn’t be fair. So, here goes again. Jeez!

《《《《《 》》》》》

Mrs. Martinez had me stay after class the next day, and when the other kids were gone, asked if I could skip water polo practice that night and come talk to her.

“Uh, I’d have to ask my coach. He doesn’t like us to miss. I’m sort of hoping I’ll start our next game. I’m usually just a sub, but I scored a goal in our last game. If I miss practice, I don’t think he’ll start me.” I was feeling nervous. I guessed she wanted to talk about the paper. Maybe she was pissed that I’d put all that sexy stuff in there. She didn’t look pissed, but I could never tell with her.

“I already spoke to Mr. Montgomery. He said it would be fine, and if I was done with you in under a half hour, I should send you to the pool for the rest of practice, but otherwise not to bother.”

“But I wanted to start . . .” Well, I did. And I was pretty sure I didn’t want to talk to her about the paper. I figured I was going to get reamed for it. But I was curious at the same time. 

You ever do something you think is kind of good, maybe even special, and then want to know what someone else thinks of it? That’s sort of how I was. I didn’t want her to know I was feeling that way, however.

“He didn’t say anything about that. But since he gave permission for you to miss the practice, I’d guess he won’t hold it against you. He’s a teacher. He knows your education comes first.” She was using her adult, teacher-knows-all voice I hate so much.

“OK. OK. I’ll come see you. Is it about the paper?”

She smiled, but it quickly faded and she was wearing her usual face, which wasn’t really a scowl but almost. It was her don’t-mess-with-me face. “Yes it is. I’ll see you after school then.” And she looked at me a moment longer, then turned back to what was on her desk. She wasn’t giving me a clue of what she was going to say when we met after school. She was going to let me sweat it out all day. See what I meant about her? I wasn’t just making that up!

I walked into her classroom at 3:30. She was sitting at her desk, and we were alone. She looked up at me with very little expression on her face and only inquisitiveness in her eyes. She pointed at a desk in the first row, and I slumped into it, not knowing what to expect but ready for anything.

She got up and walked over to me, then dragged another student desk up so when she sat down, we were facing each other. When she was seated, she raised her eyes to mine and seemed to study me for a moment. I don’t know why, but I started feeling like one of those mice a cobra will hypnotize with terror before eating.

I was expecting anger when she spoke, expecting a bombardment, a broadside of indignation for handing her such a paper. But that wasn’t what I got.

“Mark,” she finally said, “are you really that angry with me?”

She had me pinned with her eyes. I tried to say something, but couldn’t without looking down first. How could she make me feel so small with only a few words?

Should I try to lie? Something inside of me rebelled at the idea. I hadn’t stood up to Willy and Bob and Al, and had been upset ever since. Now I had sort of the same thing happening again. I could lie about what I did, or I could stand up for myself. Facing her was just as hard as facing them. I wasn’t about to blow my second chance. 

“I guess I was,” I said, speaking to the desk. I was going to stand up for myself, but meeting her eyes wasn’t necessarily part of the deal.

She was quiet, digesting that, then asked, “Was, or still are?”

“I don’t know.” OK, that was chickening out a little, but I didn’t feel angry with her right then, so it was also the truth.

“Can you tell me why?” she asked in a very soft voice.

I thought for a moment. “Maybe not. Maybe I’m just angry.” I was starting to understand I didn’t really know why I’d written that paper, or why I’d been so mad at her. 

I glanced up at her, and her eyes were wider open. “Ah,” she said, as though something had just happened that had caught her by surprise. “And I was safe, was I? As a target for your anger, I think?”

I didn’t respond, because I was starting to feel embarrassed.

There were a few moments of silence, and then she said, “Mark, the paper. It was wonderful. Rarely does a student write from his heart with no filters between them and me. You did that, and I loved that. There were problems, too. It was inappropriate, it had too many incomplete sentences, you could have chosen better words in places, sometimes you repeated yourself unnecessarily, but that’s all trivial. The paper sang. It told me what your thoughts were, I could feel your anger, your inner angst, and the overall effect was startling and delightful. You wrote in a teenager’s voice, with all sorts of non sequitur asides that were comical and insightful, and you weren’t trying to sound like an adult, but like who you are. Your enthusiasms, your dislikes, your world, they were there on display. And the writing was cogent, paced well, and told a story. It was one of the best papers I’ve ever received from a student.”

She was looking at me with admiration in her eyes, the last thing I ever expected to see from her.

“But I could tell how angry you were, and wondered if it was because of something I’d done. Now I think maybe not. Now I see, you’ve been angry about what you described in the paper. You haven’t known how to get rid of that anger, and you’ve been wanting to tell someone about it, but been reluctant to do so.”

She stood up and got the paper off her desk, then sat down again in front of me where she’d been before. 

“You probably would like to talk about it, too. If you were brave enough to write that paper, then hand it to me to read, you’re surely brave enough to talk to me about it.”

She was looking hard at me again, but it wasn’t the hardness I’d seen before. It was a compelling look. She wanted me to listen and hear what she was saying, and to think about it.

“You wanted me to read that paper, and the reason for that probably was so someone would know what happened to you. Well, now I know. I think you want to talk about it, too, even though you said you didn’t. I think you said that because you didn’t know how I’d react, and didn’t want to be told something you didn’t want to hear and feel even worse than you already do.”

She paused, and I didn’t say anything, not knowing what to say. Wanting to get things off my chest, and then doing it with someone I didn’t know very well, were two different things entirely.

When I didn’t speak, she went on. “If you want, I can talk first. I have some things to say about what you wrote if you want to listen, and I’m here to listen to what you might want to say, too.”

I still didn’t say anything, mainly because I still didn’t know what to say. I squirmed in my seat, and she saw it.

“Why don’t I begin?” she said. “With what I saw and felt.”

I still didn’t speak, but I nodded, and she went ahead.

“Mark, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve thought something was bothering you. You’re never very noisy, but you’ve been even quieter than usual, and I see you frowning all the time. So I thought there was something on your mind. I would have asked, but I’ve been doing this a long time, working with kids. I knew if it got to where you had to talk to someone, you’d initiate it. If you chose to talk to me, then I’d know what was wrong. If you didn’t, it probably wasn’t any of my business anyway.”

She stopped, and then looked away from me and what she said next sort of sounded like she was talking to herself more than me. She said, “We always wonder. It’s hard for us when students seem troubled and withdraw into themselves. We want to help, and we often feel we should speak up because of what they might do, but we don’t want to be intrusive, either. We don’t always know what to do, and have to operate on experience, and even intuition. But we always worry about whether we’re making the right decision, to speak, or to hold off.”

She stopped for a moment, then looked at me, and it seemed she was back with me, just me, again.

“OK, Mark, now I have an idea what was troubling you. We can talk about that in a minute. Right now, I want to talk more about why you were angry with me. Because even if you were mostly angry about what was in the paper, you had to have transferred some of that anger to me. To justify it to yourself. So tell me what you were mad at me about. I won’t bite your head off. You were brave enough to let me read that paper. Be brave and talk to me about this.”

So, I did.

“Mrs. Martinez, I was sure you didn’t like me.” I stopped and cleared my throat. “Maybe I was reading things wrong. But little things just made me think you didn’t like me, and so I started not liking you, too.”

She smiled at me, showing there were no hard feelings, I guess. “Can you give me an example? Don’t worry, I have a thick skin. You have to, to teach high school.” She laughed. I would have too, but didn’t feel like it. I had started sweating, and was suddenly feeling very nervous.

“Well, OK, this might sound silly, but it’s the sort of thing I mean. I kept expecting you to call me on the fact I do your writing assignments to the exact word count you demand, the exact minimum, and I include everything in the count, stuff I know I shouldn’t include. When you never said anything, I thought it was because you were showing me up, that you weren’t even going to bother saying anything about it. I guess, well, I felt that I wasn’t important enough for you to get on me about it.”

I looked down. I couldn’t meet her eyes. Thinking it, I could be mad about it. Saying it, it just sounded stupid.

When she didn’t respond to that, I had to look up. I saw compassion in her eyes. I hate it when someone does that. It always makes my stomach feel funny and I have to wipe my eyes.

“Mark, I didn’t know. I never count the words. I look at how many pages are written and can tell if it’s in the ballpark, and that’s all I want. It’s the ideas you write and how you express yourself that are important. The number of words simply gives you a target and gives you an idea of how you’ll need to set up the paper, how many thoughts you’re going to have to give me, and how well you’re going to have to develop them.”

She stopped, then said softly, “I know what you’re saying. You wanted me to notice you. You did something you thought I’d notice, and I didn’t. But Mark, I do notice you! I notice you every time you’re in my class. You’re smart. And you don’t push yourself. The work you turn in is less than you’re capable of. The paper you just wrote tells me you’re even more capable than I ever imagined. I knew you were special, just not how special. I did know you think about things and feel them. All along I’ve wanted to know what you thought, what you felt. I’ve been trying to help you to get that on paper. Now you’ve done that. Now both of us know you can.”

Wow. I didn’t know how to take that. But I know how it felt. It felt good. I hadn’t known I wanted her to pay more attention to me, but now she’d said it, I realized it was true. It fit. I wanted her praise, which she was giving me now. I was soaking it up.

“Thank you for telling me that, Mark. Now I know you better. Now, let’s talk about the paper.”

I’d begun to sweat before, and now did so in earnest. I even felt a little lightheaded. I wasn’t sure I could do this.

I didn’t need to because she was going on.

“I could tell you were trying to embarrass me, and I wondered why. I remembered what I’d asked you to write, and how to write it, and decided you were getting back at me, using my own words against me. It was one reason I knew you were angry with me. But let me surprise you a little. It didn’t embarrass me at all. It was cute, and fun, and told me something about being a boy at 15, what a boy thinks about. I really enjoyed it, and it made me sad that I don’t get more papers like that, papers that are real, that are full of real life. I don’t get to meet the kids I teach on the level you let me get to know you. It was a good paper, Mark. A very good paper.”

“But weren’t you, uh, offended or angry or something about all the, about, well, you know the stuff about boys’ suits and, and....”

I was blushing. I could feel it. I couldn’t look at her.

She laughed, and I could tell it wasn’t fake. She really laughed. “Mark, I’m an adult. I know about boys. I’ve been teaching them for 30 years. You’d be amazed at some of the things I’ve seen in that time. Even in my own classroom. You were a bit graphic, I admit, but I could feel both your embarrassment writing it and the challenge of it, too. 

“It was inappropriate, but it was fun and exciting and I’ve never seen anything like it, but you took care not to cross the line too far. You were careful, and I could see it. But I felt the anger underneath it all, and then understood part of why you felt that way when I got to what happened in the woods. 

“That’s what I think you need to talk about. To get rid of some of the anger, and maybe some confusion you might be feeling. You don’t need to talk to me about it, if you don’t want to, but you should to talk to someone. I think you want to. I think that’s why you wrote the paper, so I’d ask you to talk about it, and you could.”

She looked into my eyes again, and I managed to look back. This was hard, but it felt right, too.

“How’d you get so smart?” I asked.

She laughed, then said, “You’re pretty smart, too. I know that, and you know it, too. Now, tell me what you want to say.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Just start talking, Mark. Start talking about what you were feeling, what you’ve been so upset about since then. What you need to say will just come out, if you let it. I’m sure of it.”

So I did. I just started talking. “OK. Ever since that happened in those trees, it’s bothered me. I’m not sure why. Sure, those guys saw me naked, but I see a few guys naked in the showers both before and after practice, and it’s no big deal. No one had seen me naked before, and so it was embarrassing when they did that, but that was all it was. Just embarrassing. I don’t know why I was so upset afterwards.”

I stopped because I could start feeling some of that anger coming back, and now that I was sitting talking about it, I felt something else, too. I felt like I wanted to cry.

I couldn’t, of course. I was talking to a teacher. I simply wouldn’t let myself cry in front of a teacher.

But I felt like it, and had to stop for a moment.

Mrs. Martinez chose that moment to get up and walk to the classroom door and close it. I was glad she happened to do that right then. It gave me time to regain my composure.

When she was sitting in front of me again, I said, “Ever since, though, I’ve been upset. Little things get me mad. Things that don’t have anything to do with what happened. I’ve never been like that before. But when I get angry, I seem to think about what happened with those guys, so I kinda think there might be some connection. You know?”

She nodded. “Actually, I think I do know. The way you wrote it in your paper, you made having your suit stripped off and being looked at the focus of your story. But what you’re saying now is being naked in front of those guys didn’t really bother you. And I think you’re being honest. I don’t think that’s what upset you. I think it was something else.” She paused, as if thinking how to say what she wanted to say, then said, “Mark, look at me.”

I did. I raised my eyes to hers. “Mark, think about what you were feeling then, when that was happening. Picture it. Put yourself back in those woods.”

She stopped, but didn’t drop her eyes. I had to drop mine. But I started remembering. It didn’t make me feel good, but I remembered what had happened, and the emotions I’d had. I started squirming a little. I was uncomfortable as hell.

“OK,” she said, breaking into my memory, “now tell me what is most upsetting about what you’re remembering. Figure it out, and tell me.”

And I knew. I knew right away what it was. I didn’t even hesitate telling her. “It wasn’t that they yanked my suit off, or that I was naked. It wasn’t even that they made remarks about it. It wasn’t anything they did. It was me! I was upset with me! I didn’t do anything to stop them!”

I was on a roll now. “I should have. I should have fought, or tried to run, or done something. I didn’t. I just let them do what they did.”

She smiled at me. Not a happy smile. It was a warm, compassionate smile, a very supportive one, and I could see in her eyes how much she cared. “I think that’s right, Mark. I think that’s exactly right. You haven’t been angry ever since because of what they did, you’ve been angry that you lost some self-respect. You haven’t known what to do about it, and so you’ve been acting out. You did it with me, and I think you were calling for help.”

Man, did that ever sound right. That’s just what it was. I’d had a healthy dose of cockiness before. Now, I was pretty down on myself. Ever since, I felt like I’d lost something. Now I knew what it was. She’d hit the nail on the head.

“So what do I do about it?” I asked.

“I can think of a couple of things.” She reached over and put her hand on mine where it was lying on the desk. “It would be better, though, if you figured it out for yourself. Can you try?”

I did that. I sat and just thought, and it took almost no time at all before I knew what I had to do.

“I need to earn my self-respect back,” I told her, “and the way I have to do that is to face up to what happened.”

She nodded. “And how are you going to do that?”

I knew. I knew how! “I could go tell the vice-principal what happened, and that would work, but that isn’t the best way. I know what to do, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to go talk to Willy Throneman!”

Her eyebrows wrinkled and she sat up a little straighter. “Is that safe? I don’t want you getting hurt. Talking to Mr. Rollins would be better, wouldn’t it?”

“It would be safer, and it would get Willy in trouble, but it would be letting someone else fight my battles. My problem is I let those guys get away with messing with me without doing anything. I have to face Willy. Then I’ll feel OK about myself again. I’m going to do it.”

She shook her head, and was going to say something else, but I stood up before she could speak. “Thanks, Mrs. Martinez. I’ll let you know how it went. Or, you can visit me in the hospital.” 

She looked startled, then started to say something, and I laughed and interrupted her. “It won’t come to that, I’m sure. I’ve figured out how to do it. But it has to be me, and my way. Thanks. I wouldn’t have figured this out without your help.”

《《《《《 》》》》》

The next day, I saw Willy in the hall. He was slouching against the lockers, laughing with one of his cronies. I thought how much I didn’t want to do this, especially when he wasn’t alone, and then thought how much trouble giving in to my fears had caused. I walked up to him.

He hadn’t seen me, so I interrupted him. “Willy,” I said.

He turned to look at me, then got a grin on his face. “Hey, Water Polo Boy. What’s hanging?” Then he laughed. The guy he was talking to just looked at the two of us with a puzzled expression on his face.

I made sure my voice sounded right when I spoke. “I just wanted to tell you. I told someone. You told me not to, and I did. I wanted you to hear that from me.”

He stood up, pushing himself off the lockers. He wasn’t smiling now. “Shouldn’t have done that, kid.” There was menace in his voice.

I just stared at him, not moving away like my body seemed to think it should be doing. I was able to keep my voice steady, too. “So you say. But I did it. So, if anything happens to me, you’ll be who they come looking for. Right now, nothing’s going to happen. If you want it to, that’s your choice. Just like I had a choice. Up to you. Just wanted you to know.” I paused, but then had to be sure he understood. “That I’m not afraid of you.”

I still stood there, about two feet away from him, and didn’t move. He looked at me, looked at me hard, and then, I saw him begin to smile. It wasn’t much of a smile, but his lips did a little wrinkle. It was there in his eyes, too.

“OK, kid. You told me.” And he turned to walk off. He walked a couple steps, then turned back. I hadn’t moved an inch. “You got some balls, kid,” he said. “Some balls.” And then he was walking again.

《《《《《 》》》》》

It was a couple of days later when I figured out how to thank Mrs. Martinez. I’d wanted to, but just saying thanks wasn’t enough. But I needed to, because I was me again. I wasn’t angry a bit. I was happy. She’d been the reason for the change, and I needed to let her know that some way other than just telling her that. It was a big deal, to me. Important, you know?

What I decided was, I was going to write another paper for her. I knew now that what made her happy was seeing me write like I could. I also knew it made me happy as well. It had felt different to me, writing that first paper. I won’t say I’d loved doing it, but there had been a lot of satisfaction involved in doing it. I’d worked hard on it, had taken the time to go over it a few times, correcting errors, making it say just what I wanted it to say where it hadn’t been clear what I meant, and after it was written, I was proud of it. 

It wasn‘t just that I’d been proud with the first paper that I’d tried to embarrass her and found a way to pull that off. There had been that, of course, but there’d been more, too. I’d liked writing the thing for its own sake, because for once I’d been honest and written from my heart. So, if I wrote like that again, writing another one would please us both. I would like the . . . the what? The balance I guess. I would like the balance that resulted from that. It would be something like a beginning and then an end. There’s probably a word for that, there seems to be a word for everything—hell, they even have unnecessary words like copse—but I don’t know what it is.

I had to think about how to write it, because now she would expect anything I wrote to be good. I couldn’t do a half-assed job like I usually did with her any more, and especially not if I was writing it as a thank you sort of thingie. And if I wanted to make her proud of me, a second rate effort wouldn’t work.

I wasn’t sure where that had come from, but it was true. I did want her to be proud of me.

So I took my time, and this is what I wrote.

《《《《《 》》》》》

OK, I like her now. I wrote that last bit to be funny; I have my sense of humor back, too, and now know she also has one. I realize I kind of enjoyed having a war with her, and I think maybe I’ll try this on for size, see if she’d like to play. If she doesn’t, maybe we’ll at least talk about it. I know she won’t get mad. She likes me. She won’t mind my challenging her. Maybe she’ll get a kick out of it. As I said, maybe we’ll talk about it.

I like talking to her. I know something else, too. We both respect each other, which is different from liking each other. It makes a lot of difference. It makes me feel I can say what I want to say to her.

I’ve talked to her several times since I stood up to Willy and wrote the second paper. One of those times was special.

We talked about a lot of things, but that time, she’d brought up the paper again. She said there was a lot in it that made her think, and she’d read some parts a couple of times, and seen things she hadn’t seen the first time. She said good writers do that, make you read the work more than once. That made me feel good.

Then she said something that I wasn’t expecting. She said reading the paper one last time made her want to ask me something.

“You know, Mark, a lot of kids your age are a little confused about themselves. I got a glimpse of that in your paper. The things you said, and the way you said them. You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, but, if you do, you can. I just wonder if you’re gay, or are confused at all about that and would like to, well, just talk about that. Maybe have someone you can talk to about that.”

Man, talk about being hit by a two by four out of the blue! But I knew by then she liked me, and cared about me, and that she was safe. I was comfortable talking to her about things I couldn’t with anyone else, so I didn’t hold back. I answered her as frankly as I could.

“Mrs. Martinez,” I said, “if you’d asked me that last year, I’d have probably said, well, I probably wouldn’t have answered, but the real thing is, last year, I thought I probably was, because I was much more interested in guys than girls. But lately, I don’t know. I still feel something like before, but there’s something else, too, something new. It’s just that girls are starting to seem more interesting.”

I paused, then blushed, and said, “Can I tell you something?” And before she could say anything, I went on. “See, just last week, at a water polo match, this girl came up to me just after we’d won. Hey, I’m starting now, and I scored two goals!” I stopped and she smiled at me. I could see she was pleased for me. Then I said, “But this girl came up and we started to talk, and she was looking at me, and her eyes were mostly on mine but not all the time, like what happens when someone talks to a water polo player still in his bathing suit, and I was noticing how really cute she was and thinking about that and where her eyes were, and I suddenly wondered if maybe she liked me, maybe had a crush on me, and then, real quick, I sort of had to fall back into the pool again, like it was an accident. Before she saw. I couldn’t get out for a while, either.”

Mrs. Martinez laughed, really laughed, and I just blushed harder. But she didn’t ask about my being gay again. I think I’d explained it really well. She probably doesn’t even realize I’m still wondering myself, a little.

So that’s about it. Except for one more thing. Since I talk to Mrs. Martinez a lot now, and since I talked to Willy, I feel so much better about myself. Coach really did make me a starter, and that’s helped me feel good about myself too. I’m happy again. So I’m going to end this by saying something, and you can believe it because it’s true. I think the reason I do this, what I’m going to tell you, is because I have my self-respect back. But, what I want to say is this. Now, when I get out of the pool, I don’t yank on my suit any more. Screw it. I just don’t. If people want to look, let ‘em.

THE END (for real this time)