Teach Me (15 page)

“I
already said yes, Harper, how many times do I need to repeat myself?”

“Until
I believe you maybe?”
I counter, jutting my chin out. “What’s
going on, Jack? Everything seemed fine until you got that phone call.
You’ve been freaking
out ever since.”

“How
observant,” he
mutters.

“Well
I wouldn’t have to
observe if you’d
just act like a normal person and say, hey Harper, here’s
why I’m suddenly
being a jackass.”

“I
am
a jackass, Harper. By some miracle you haven’t
noticed yet, but the sooner you figure that out the better. Here.”

I
look up to find us parked around the corner from my dorm already.
Then I glance back to him, back at the building. This just doesn’t
fit
,
not with the guy who took me to his favorite childhood vacation spot,
made me a picnic, and tried to help me find inspiration to write
again.

I
don’t know who this
new Jack is, but I don’t
like him. “Fine.
Have it your way,” I
mutter as I swing my legs out of the car and slam the door behind me.
Part of me expects him to chase after me, to apologize. Instead, he
drives off without a pause.

Safely
ensconced back in my dorm, I keep running over and over the
conversation leading up to his turn. I’m
sure that he was fine until that phone call came in. What could it
have been? Was it something with us? Did someone find out about us?

Could
they make me leave if we’re
caught?

What
would my parents say?

I
groan and squeeze my temples with one hand. Too much to worry about.
I don’t even know if
this is going anywhere beyond a few quick fucks.

Except
that, after today, I thought I did. Walking around that village with
our hands clasped, shopping in the market, making sandwiches in the
grass like we were just another normal couple out on a casual
Saturday date—that’s
what I want our days to be like. I want us to have a chance at
normal, whatever that may be.

By
some miracle you haven’t
noticed yet
, he said.
Is that it? Am I just
this
freaking bad
at
choosing guys to date?

I
don’t think so.
There’s more than
he’s telling me.

Whatever
it is, clearly he’s
not talking anytime soon. So fine. I can be normal, distract myself
with other things.

As
if on cue, my phone buzzes. There’s
another string of texts from MK that I’ve
been ignoring, and a new one has just appeared right on top.
Tomorrow, 1PM, meet me
at the castle. DON’T
be a party pooper this time!!!

A
smile drifts onto my face. Guess I’ll
have a fun distraction after all.

#

I
stayed up until almost three in the morning writing. Not an essay,
not coursework, not a creative writing assignment. Just my own
poetry, a poem inspired by the quiet Cotswold village we wandered
through, and the contrast between its modern conveniences, like the
new cars and the mobile phone stores selling brand new touchphones,
and the medieval buildings, the cobblestone alleys, and storefronts
dating back centuries.

Call
me a stereotypical American, but having been raised in a country
without a super long history of its own, I love seeing ancient
artifacts made so everyday like that.

Of
course, staying up until three has its consequences, so I nearly
sleep through my alarm the next morning. My ever-absent roommate
Stacey is actually here for once when I stumble back from brushing my
teeth at noon, already running late if I want to meet MK in an hour.

“Hope
I didn’t wake you,”
Stacey says with a sheepish smile as she hops into jeans that look at
least a size too small.

But
hey, I should not judge, as my own jeans are feeling a little tight
around the edges after almost a month of British food. “Nah,
I had to be up anyway. Meeting Mary Kate for a castle tour.”
A sudden bout of friendliness sweeps over me, possibly brought on by
sleepiness or the leftover buzz of happiness that comes from anytime
I’m actually able to
write something I halfway like. “Want
to come with?”

She
pauses halfway into pulling on a new T-shirt, which looks exactly
like the T-shirt she just took off, except with a different band name
emblazoned across the front. “Sure,”
she says, after a moment of blinking, when she realizes I’m
serious. “I haven’t
been yet.”

Her
accent, I notice now that I’ve
stopped being such an asocial jerk and talked to her for more than a
second, is Australian. On our walk down to grab snacks from the
kitchen, we talk about her hometown of Sydney, and why she decided to
study abroad here (“Their
medieval studies department is grouse,”
she says, which devolves into a long explanation of ways to say “the
best” in
Australian).

“Although,”
she adds with a faux-thoughtful expression, “my
mates tell me it’s
also the best way to meet blokes—gotta
import them from the motherland if you want a decent one!”

I
smirk through the coffee thermos I brought with from the kitchen.
“You’re
crushing a thousand American girls dreams—Aussie
guys aren’t total
bombshells you mean?”

“Oh,
they’re hot, sure,
but they bloody well know it, don’t
they?”

We
cross the campus and the streets thereafter still debating the
merits—and
demerits—of
American, Australian, and British blokes alike. She finds surfer boys
hot, though I have to explain to her just how creeptastic the frat
boys we get back home truly are. We settle for agreeing that Brits
have it best, until we catch up with Mary Kate at the ticket office,
who starts in on a whole new set of complaints about British guys
(“The smoking is
disgusting, and they’re
total gits about footie”).

We
buy our tickets, complete with an audio tour because MK insists it’s
the best part, but we skip half the tour stops because our
conversation has moved on to comparing food across our respective
country lines, and that gets us into a whole new level of friendly
arguments.

“Okay,
but the Indian food here. You cannot win there,”
Mary Kate says, gesturing with her tour headset for emphasis. “You’ve
eaten with me on Brick Lane.”

“Fair
enough,” I admit.
“But you guys have
no idea how to do Mexican. Like at all.”

“How
hard can tacos be?”
Stacey butts in.

“See
what I mean?” I
flail my arms. “Tacos
aren’t even real
Mexican food!”

We
carry on like this enough to piss off another tour group, who exit
stage right glaring at us, and then, chuckling, we pause long enough
to listen to the audio tour explain torture implements employed in
the castle dungeons. Most of them are pretty gross, though I have to
admit, the stocks give me some naughty thoughts that I really wish I
could text Jack about.

Except
that he never even gave me his phone number, or an email, or any
other sane method of communication. I have his official school email,
from the class-wide note he sent out, but I’d
have to be very careful about what I said in it. Certainly not
Hey
have you seen the stocks they used to put people into in the dungeon
that hold your head and your hands while making you bend over at just
the right height for . . . 

Stacey
taps my shoulder, making me jump. I clear my throat and glance over
at her and MK, both waiting by the door with bemused expressions.
“What did I miss?”
I mumble.

“Probably
could’ve missed a
nuclear apocalypse, you were so deep in la-la land,”
MK replies. “Come
on, girl, out with it. Who are you mooning over. Still confessional
booth guy?”

“Ooh,
confessional booth guy?”
Stacey bats her eyelashes. “Do
tell.”

“You
are both the worst,”
I tell them as I march out of the dungeon. But the weight of all this
secrecy—having so
much between me and Jack, and no one to tell about any of it, no one
to ask what they think about his behavior at the end of the day
yesterday, no one to commiserate with about how bad it’s
sucked to have to pretend like nothing’s
happening between us—it’s
all too much.

So
finally, as we near the end of the tour, standing up high on the
castle walls and peeking through arrow-slots at the town around us,
the other students, professors, townspeople, and tourists alike
bustling through their lives on the busy, foot-worn streets, I
confess.

Kind
of.

“That’s
where I’ve been for
the past couple weeks.”
I side-eye Mary Kate with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry
for ignoring your texts.”

“Mate,
if you were getting laid, all ignorance forgiven.”
She smirks. “God
knows you need a decent screw to take your mind off shite at home.”

“Yeah,
well, the screwing has been more than decent. Fucking mind-blowing,
actually.” They both
snicker, which makes me bolder. “The
only thing is . . . I
can’t tell anyone
much about him. Not even you guys. And we’ll
never be able to go out in public or anything.”

“Ooh,
forbidden romance. Even hotter.”
Stacey winks.

“Yeah,
at first. Only now it’s
kind of . . . ”
I trail off, picking at my
thumbnail as my brain searches for the right word.

“Suffocating?”
Mary Kate asks, with the air of someone who knows exactly what I’m
feeling.

Our
eyes meet, and in that moment, I know there’s
something she hasn’t
been telling me. Something more behind her and Nick’s
hookups, maybe? I can’t
tell, and I certainly don’t
want to ask her in front of Stacey. If she hasn’t
told it to me, the pen pal she’s
always been able to unburden herself to, then it must be as big as
what I’m keeping
secret with Jack. She’s
not prying for details with me, so I give her the same respect, even
while I nod in agreement.

“Exactly.
Suffocating.” I run
a hand through my hair, pulling my gaze away to study the city around
us once more. “And
on top of that, like it’s
not bad enough having to hide everything, he keeps blowing me off.
Like yesterday night, we had plans, and he just blew me off and
wouldn’t explain
why. He was pretty douchey about it too.”
I scowl. “I just
can’t get a good
read on him, y’know?
I can never tell what he’s
thinking.” I sigh,
and my breath raises a puff of dust from the ancient castle wall that
I’m leaning against.

“Well,
who ever can with guys,”
Stacey replies with a shrug. “I
mean, he’s not
married, right?”

My
first instinct is to laugh. “Hell
no. I mean, unless he’s
really good at hiding something that huge.”
But then, thinking about the phone call he got earlier, and the way
he threw me out, my stomach churns, and my head threatens to strangle
my brain at the very thought. “Oh
god, I hope he’s
not.”

Mary
Kate waves away the very thought. “I’m
sure he isn’t. Guys
pull shit like this all the time. ‘Let’s
get serious! Oh wait, I forgot my car keys, uhhh bye.’
It’s just cold feet
or whatever. He’ll
come around.”

I
nod, even though that explanation doesn’t
really cover it in this case. It’s
the best advice I’ll
get without being able to give them any more details, though, and
it’s good enough for
me.

Whatever
is bothering Jack, whatever keeps making him push me away, he’ll
figure it out. This chemistry between us is too perfect, too
bone-deep, for him to ignore.

I
hope.

“Until
then,” Stacey adds
as we descend from the parapet, my hand pressed to the cool stone to
keep my balance on the narrow, winding stairs, “don’t
let the arsehole get away with treating you this way. Give the git a
taste of his own medicine.”

Now
that
is advice I can do something with.

“Thanks
for coming,” Kat
mumbles into my shoulder outside his room. “I
couldn’t handle this
without you.”

I
only came for you
, is
what I don’t tell
her. Because really, this is the last place on the planet I want to
be. I haven’t even
seen my father yet and they’re
already on my case.

“Be
a doll and get us some coffee, love,”
Mum’s sister, Aunt
Betty, interrupts. She’s
talking to me, of course. She’d
never send Kat on errands.

Just
make it through the day,
I
order myself as I head down the narrow hospital staircase, the back
stairs that stink of disinfectants and something else, something
fouler. I don’t want
to think too hard about it.

At
the shitty hole in the wall that passes for a cafeteria, I fill up a
tray with coffees, because I know everyone else will demand one as
soon as they see Betty’s.
Betty, her husband Ralph (married since college), my mother (ditto),
Kat and Raul (“finally
settling down,” at
the ripe old age of 28, as Mum put it), Dad’s
two older sisters (married for 35 and 40 years respectively before
their husbands passed away, though they still wear the rings), the
whole bloody clan. At least my cousin Tina didn’t
tag along with her deadbeat drug-addled husband to wave the enormous
rock (which he probably bought with money he made selling X to
teenagers) in our faces. Never mind that he’s
a worthless sack of shite—Tina
married him, so in Mum’s
eyes, they’re both
doing great.

I
lug the coffees back upstairs and pass them out to the crowded
waiting room. When I reach Mum, she wipes tears from her eyes. “Thank
you, Jack.”

I
soften, taking a seat beside her. I’m
being an arse. She’s
clearly worried, and rightly so. The doctors said it’s
worse this time. The mass that was in his liver two years ago, which
we thought had gone into remission, is back. Along with more tumors
in his stomach and his esophagus.

It
doesn’t look good.

“How
are you holding up?”
I ask her under my breath.