Sweetest Taboo (3 page)

I stole another quick glance in his direction and found his eyes on me, his face unreadable. I blushed and looked down quickly, but not before Natalie elbowed me in the side again.

Learn to control your reactions
, I reminded myself quietly.
Don’t give yourself away so easily
.

***

The bus had arrived at the unfamiliar high school, nearly thirty minutes away from our campus, before I could work up enough courage to look at Mr. Stevens again. I looked out the window and noted how beautiful the campus was; clean walkways, bright green lawns, and a range of tall, mature trees. The buildings were larger than those at my school, and constructed of colorful red brick. It gave the entire school an established, classic feel, and I smiled to myself. I’d been to several other high schools over the years, and they were always far nicer than ours. The buildings were larger, the trees were more beautiful, and the grass was always greener. There were a number of reasons for the difference – our school was in a low-income part of town, and the students were almost all immigrants or minorities. There wasn’t a lot of funding for renovations or even adequate maintenance. It always made me wonder, though. What did the other students think when they came to our school? Did they think we were less than them? Did they wonder if we were some kind of ghetto school? Did it ever occur to them that we might be just as talented as they were – even better – but without all the fancy trappings?

I squared my shoulders, putting these thoughts away, and focused on the coming meet. We may not have a big, fancy swimming pool like this school did, but I had faith in our team. We had weapons they had never seen and talented, motivated coaches.

I stole a last glance at Coach Stevens, who hadn’t looked up again, then stood and walked off the bus with my friends. Our job started now – find the locker rooms, change into our suits, and enter the water to warm up for the competition. Natalie and Vicky had been here before, and walked confidently toward the pool area. As we came around the corner behind them, I heard one of the other girls gasp in surprise. A rich school indeed – they had an Olympic-sized swimming pool in their own back yard. It sat in the midst of a neatly landscaped garden, complete with rolling lawns and a small park-like area for relaxing in “nature.” This was the first time I had ever seen such a large swimming pool. I resolutely closed my mouth on my surprise, though, and vowed to show the students of this other school that we were good enough for their pool too.

“Come on, girls,” I muttered to my teammates, nudging them toward the nearby locker rooms. We filed into the bright, clean rooms and slipped into our competition suits for the warm-up. These suits were new, and still much tighter than our practice suits. “Tighter suits make for less drag,” Natalie had told me at the start of the season. “Always order the smallest suit you can, then suck your gut in to get it on.” I breathed deeply, feeling the stretch of the spandex around my ribs, and grinned at the girl next to me. The suits were tight, which meant that they fit us like a second skin.

It also gave everyone else a better look at what we had to offer.

Mr. Stevens hadn’t seen me in my new suit before, and I paused before the mirror in the bathroom. Although it was new, the swim suit was already showing wear, but it reflected enough of my body for me to realize that Natalie had been right – this suit was tighter than anything I’d ever worn, and verged on indecent.

“Isabel, where are you? We’re warming up!” Vicky shouted through the door. The girl was 5-foot-nothing, but had the loudest voice on the swim team. I could never figure out where she stored all that sound when she wasn’t using it.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I called. I took one more glance in the mirror. “Time to perform,” I said firmly. Lifting my chin a notch, I squared my shoulders, turned, and strolled out into the sun.

***

Coach Stevens and Vicky were waiting for me outside of the girl’s locker room. As soon as Vicky saw me, she gave me a nod and ran ahead toward the swimming pool, leaving Mr. Stevens and me to walk alone. This should not have been an awkward moment for either one of us; he was my coach and I was a swimmer on his team. Time spent alone before a meet should have consisted of some last words of wisdom or encouragement. Perhaps we would have discussed the races I was to swim, and my chances against the other team. We may also have talked about the classes he taught, and whether I would be using them to pad my transcript in the next two years.

Instead, though, we said nothing, and the thirty seconds it took us to walk to the poolside were slow and tense. I searched for words that would break the silence, but came up with nothing. This was the chance I had been waiting for – Mr. Stevens was walking next to me, with no one else around. I could have said anything I wanted. But my mind stubbornly refused to tick, and my lips remained glued together.

I noticed instead the confident momentum of his walk, and the proximity of his body to mine. He was close to me – almost close enough to graze my hand with his own. Certainly closer than he should have been. He seemed to tower over me, although he was only about 6 inches taller than I was. That height comforted me; I felt protected in his presence.

He must have felt the awkwardness of the silence, too, because he stopped walking and turned toward me. I stopped in turn and looked up at him.

“Isabel, are you nervous?” he asked quietly.

I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts and fantasies that I replied without thinking. “No, you don’t make me nervous.”

He drew back, confused, and I felt my cheeks flush crimson. I had misread the situation, and grasped for a way to save the conversation.

“Um, what I mean is, are you trying to make me nervous about my event?” I asked quickly, smiling. “If you are, it’s not working,” I forced another bright smile and ducked my head, looking up at him through my lashes.

He laughed and placed his hand on the back of my neck, pressing his fingers softly to my skin. I stopped breathing, reveling in the feel of his fingertips caressing me. He leaned forward to speak closer to my ear.

“You’ve got nothing to be nervous about, young lady. And you certainly don’t need to be nervous about me.”

I blushed again, and he released me. He had understood my statement, then, and seen through my attempt to cover the mistake. I looked up at him and smiled, then turned and walked toward the pool. As I put my cap on, though, I turned to look at him again, and caught the smile that lingered at the corner of his mouth. My heart hammered at my ribcage and my knees grew weak, but I forced myself to turn away and focus on the upcoming meet.

Chapter Three

Is it a Crime?

W
ithin a couple of months, I had settled into my role on the swim team and started making more friends outside of my normal circle. Liz, a girl in my English and History classes, became one of my closest confidantes, and I started to think of her as the sister I’d never had. She was not on the swim team; in fact, Liz was not involved in any sports at all. She was a tall, boisterous, and slightly chubby Mexican-American, and shied away from any sporting activities. She still stopped by swim practice every day, though, to boost our spirits and crack one or two jokes with us before she headed home. On slow days, she sat on the concrete benches and waited for practice to end. Her house was warmer and friendlier than mine, since she had no siblings that could bother us, and I enjoyed going there after school to do homework or watch TV and eat with her family. I only got to do so on the days when she waited for me. It always warmed my heart to see her sitting on the benches, reading a book and waiting for me to finish with practice.

Mr. Stevens enjoyed her presence as well, and would sometimes sit with her during practice. She was a happy, funny girl, and he enjoyed her sarcastic jokes and unbelievable stories. By the end of the first month of swim season, they’d become friends, and she was making the most of it. She included me in their conversations whenever she could, though that would quickly lead to her being cut out of the conversation. I was always anxious for a reason to talk to Mr. Stevens, and he seemed equally happy to sit with Liz or me. Liz was the only friend who didn’t judge me or criticize my crush on Mr. Stevens, a much older man who had a gold wedding band on his finger. She would get Mr. Stevens and I talking, then give me a knowing look and walk quietly away, to wait for me near the entrance of the girls’ locker room.

My crush on Mr. Stevens began to rule my teenage world, and keeping track of all our seemingly trivial interactions became an obsession. To be fair, Mr. Stevens hadn’t done anything inappropriate at that point, and treated me with the same respect he exhibited to all other swimmers. I believed that he stood closer to me and looked at me with a different look in his eyes, but that might have been my imagination. In my more rational moments, I was forced to admit that my relationship with Mr. Stevens only existed in my head. Nothing had actually happened. That didn’t stop me from feeling a rush of nervous energy every time he came near. And that nervous energy was enough to fuel my crush.

Eventually I became braver. My jokes took a more inquisitive and probing slant, and he began to linger with his touch when he handed me something or returned my towel. He started holding my jewelry for me during practice. After practice was over, he would take my necklace from his pocket, place it around my neck, and fasten it for me. It was difficult to gauge whether these were all elements of a kind man doing what he would do for anyone, or whether he was paying special attention, playing the same game I was. Whatever the case, these moments were the highlights of my days.

***

One afternoon, Liz and I went to my house after school, to study and gossip. We went straight to my bedroom, which was warm with the early March heat wave, and I cracked the window open. A slight breeze blew through the window to stir the air in the room.

I glanced across the room to make sure that the door was closed, and noticed that the breeze was rustling the Bill Clinton poster I kept above my desk. I ran to the desk to secure the poster. “Close the window, Liz!” I shouted. “Billy’s falling down!”

Liz jumped up and slid the window shut. She looked at me as I pressed on the tape at the corners of the poster, and then laughed. “You and your Billy, Izzy,” she said. “You’re too funny. Isn’t it enough that you have that damn black and white portrait of him on your school binder? Do you need to have him everywhere? You don’t have anything else on your wall!”

I chuckled as I sat on the swivel chair.

“You know I love Billy,” I told her. “You can take anything away from me, but not my Billy.” All my friends laughed at my obsession with our nation’s president, but they had their Luke Perry and Jason Priestley, and I had my Billy. I loved politics, I loved the fact that President Bush had not been re-elected, and I loved that this relatively young Democrat – a witty and smart silver-haired fox from Arkansas – had won the presidency. My black and white poster of Billy was all I wanted to decorate my bedroom; it was all the inspiration I needed.

Liz and I sat down to talk and before long our conversation turned to her new – and significantly older – boyfriend. I was dying of jealousy, and wanted to know every detail about their relationship. Liz was open enough with me that she didn’t mind sharing, and we were in the middle of a very telling story when the door to my bedroom flew open. We both jumped guiltily, and turned to find my dad standing in the doorway, wearing one of his signature low-browed looks. Anyone unfamiliar with my father would have thought that he was angry, and on the verge of a lecture, but Liz was accustomed to my dad’s brutish nature. She’d seen his various moods before, and understood as well as I that he wasn’t actually distressed or upset. She looked up at him, giving him her most innocent smile.

“Hi, Dad,” I said quietly. “What is it?”

Someone was here to see me, he informed me in Spanish, already disappearing down the hallway. He was gone before I could ask who it was. I exchanged perplexed looks with Liz, and we hopped to our feet.

Mr. Stevens was standing at the front door when I got there.

“Hi,” he said.

I stared at him, unable to hide my surprise.

“Uh, hi,” was all I managed. What was he doing here? How did he know where I lived? I felt a familiar throbbing in my chest; my heart was pounding as I moved forward.

“Can I come in?” Mr. Stevens asked, looking straight at me. I suddenly felt under-dressed, wearing my sweats and an old navy-blue tank top. My hair was dry, but I had allowed it to air-dry after practice and it didn’t have any style of its own. I put my hand to my head self-consciously, thinking that it must look a mess.

“Uh, sure, of course,” I replied, taking a step back to let him in.

Mr. Stevens stepped into the living room, taking in the big screen TV, the set of olive green Italian leather couches, the issues of
Architectural Digest
stacked neatly on the oak coffee table. From the expression on his face, I could tell that he was surprised to see such expensive furniture and fittings inside a house in my immigrant neighborhood.

Our terrier had darted from her cushion on the floor to greet the stranger, and he bent down to pat her. She pulled one of her favorite tricks and turned on her back to show him her belly.

“What an adorable little thing you are,” he said, rubbing her smooth belly affectionately.

“She’s a terrier mix,” I said, just to fill the void. “She was my fifteenth birthday present.”

Mr. Stevens straightened and looked at me again, while Brownie continued to sniff his Birkenstocks. He nodded, but didn’t answer.

I paused then plunged forward. “Uh, can I help you with something, Mr. Stevens?” I asked nervously. I had gone through the entire day in my head, but couldn’t find any reason for this surprise visit.

He nodded suddenly, as if he’d just remembered. “Of course, how rude of me. You forgot your necklace and your watch at practice.” He reached into his pocket to pull them out. “I brought them for you. I didn’t want you to be worried.”