The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (10 page)

The air empties out of my room. Everything deflates at the unmistakable sight of Ben with some girl.

“Of course he has a girlfriend,” I sigh, drawing the shade. He was out with her tonight, and he brought her back to his place on that Ducati. “Of course.”

And just like that, everything I thought I saw in the mirror disappears like the candlelight I extinguish between my fingertips. As I get into bed, my new confidence, like a stream of smoke, floats away, rising to twist around the beams of the attic ceiling and, in the darkness, disappear. Just in time for my door to squeak open. Just in time for Teddy to tiptoe up the stairs, stand over me, and scribble something on his notepad.

five

THE SCREAM

THE ART OF THE STRIPTEASE. REMOVING LAYER UPON
layer of clothing to expose the flesh in small, seductive increments. Tantalizing. Like Salome’s dance of the seven veils, Mata Hari’s gradual shedding of nearly every garment save one, the burlesque dancer’s beginning to end. Enticing…

…and clearly not something our nude model has even
considered,
given how rapidly he drops his robe. Blink and you’d have missed it.

Somehow I’ve made it through a night of tossing and turning, nightmares of finding my mom on the kitchen floor plaguing my mind. Somehow I’ve endured a broken coffee maker at Gigi’s. And a cold sprint to school, during which Ben zipped by me on his Ducati—without even pausing. And an hour spent craning my neck as I watched the sky during Ornithology Club.

Somehow I’ve survived the night to make it to my morning art workshop led by Garnet. This week’s lesson will be on the human form. Which is why a grown man now stands completely naked just beyond my reach—not that I’m about to
reach.

Somehow I’ve made it here. To where a penis dangles in front of me.

As the swoosh of his robe leaving his body still reverberates, as we sit at our workstations with pencil in hand, twenty eyebrows go up and ten chins go down. Only yours truly and Garnet seem unfazed by this man’s very exposed, very chiseled self. (And I’m sure Garnet’s lack of surprise isn’t due to the fact that she’s helped her dad dress hundreds of naked cadavers.) To my surprise, even Harper is blushing. To no one’s surprise, Lotus looks like she might cry.

“Feast your eyes,” our model Trey exclaims, drawing his hand down his body. He’s a member of the faculty, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He’s nowhere near as hard on the eyes as most of the teachers here. “I am man. Hear me roar.”

Pilot, who sits across from me, snickers at the same time I do. But no one else makes a sound. Probably because they’re all shocked, some with jealousy, some with fear—others, dare I read into Plum’s pout, with lust.

Garnet simply sweeps the robe from the floor and tries to keep a straight face. “Thank you, Mr. Sedmoney,” she says. “We appreciate you taking the time out of your teaching schedule to help us this week.”

“I don’t have any classes first period, so no worries.” He swings his gaze around the room and settles on Harper, who is practically gyrating in her chair in an effort to get his attention.

“Well, then,” Garnet says, “if you could sit still like a…like a
tableau vivant
.”

“Tableau vivant?” he repeats. “Mmm, French. Sexy.” He rests his chin on his fist like
The Thinker
and gazes around the room from the corner of his eye.

Seeing Trey in his pose, Garnet seems at a loss for words, so she turns her attention on us, on the sea of crimson faces and wide eyes. “This is a refresher in gesture and proportion,” she explains. “Learn to break the body into manageable pieces as opposed to…to…to trying to swallow the form whole.” Immediately, she shakes her head; she seems relieved that none of us have the
cojones
to laugh at what she just said.

We have a little under an hour to try
not
to stare at this man who seems intent on getting a reaction from us. He crosses his legs. Uncrosses them. Opens them wide. Stretches them long. Does everything but hold an arrow-shaped sign to his crotch and shout, “Look at this!” I painstakingly work to replicate his form on eleven-by-seventeen sheets of grid paper as Garnet strolls between our workstations, looking over our shoulders and offering advice before, returning to her desk, losing herself in her own sketches.

As the minutes tick by, Harper and Plum fall into one of those our-conversation-is-so-awesome-you-should-all-hear-it chats that I do my best not to listen to. It’s about the dance this Saturday, which Harper’s Social Committee is organizing and which I don’t even want to think about. Unfortunately, those girls make it hard to ignore them—so hard that a few people, unable to endure another twang, squeal, or yip, demand they shut up.

“
Ferme la bouche!
” Augusto cries. “We do not care about your idiotic clothing for that idiotic dance.”

“Idiotic
stripper
clothing!” Emo Boy tacks on.

Lotus frowns. “Please, everyone. Let’s not argue.”

“We didn’t ask y’all to eavesdrop,” Harper snorts. “Can’t help if we’re so interesting you’ve gotta pay attention to us.”

Plum glares at Emo Boy, clutches her boobs, pushes them up, and adds, “Don’t even play like you don’t want this. You’d kill for this.”

“If you mean kill myself to avoid going near it.”

With a high-pitched huff, Plum leaps to her feet. She opens her mouth wide like she’s about to shout something terrible, but she stops herself unexpectedly. And, to my surprise, sneers my way. “Oh, whatever!”

Shoving his hair out of his eyes, Emo Boy stands, marches up to Plum, and shoves her in the chest. Hard.

“No one wants
that,
you fugly has-been. And that’s exactly why your PT’s gonna totally
crash
.”

“Crash?” She shoves him back with enough force that he loses his footing.

With that, Augusto’s on his feet, too. I can’t believe it. They’re actually going to fight.

“Crash? Just like you did—” Plum lashes at him “—on that stupid dance floor—” another strike, but she just misses him “—with that
cage dancer
?”

Seriously. A fistfight.

It’s insanely stupid to fight in the middle of class—especially with two teachers looking on, teachers who are grading us at every turn. But Augusto, Emo Boy, and Plum don’t seem to care. They make one of those circles you see boxers make, sidestepping and holding each other’s glowers as they lift their fists.

Finally, Lotus scurries to her feet and pulls Plum back. Reluctantly, Emo Boy and Augusto lower their fists. Garnet and Trey just watch—and I quickly realize that they’re making notes. Are they grading the
quality
of the fight? Or could it be that at least one of those three has declared a PT to battle their way to success?

Stunned, I find myself locking eyes with Pilot. His expression is blank, as if he’s given up on this school and the ubercompetitive people in it. Confused and wondering what’s going on in his mind, I focus again on my sketch.

The room is tensely silent for the next twenty minutes. I run through sheet after sheet of paper, feeling like I’m getting closer to capturing something interesting beyond the lines of Trey’s body, feeling myself fall into the groove. As I work up a frenzy, a cold sweat rushes over me.

“Five minutes, everyone,” Garnet calls.

Shivers run through my arms. I glance up to see if someone opened a window, but as soon as I do, my head spins. Shaking it off, I see that, in fact, the windows are all closed—and almost everyone else has stripped off their cardigans and blazers. Perhaps I’m coming down with something because it feels like the cold is coming from my body itself, from my wrists; I pull my cardigan all the way up and over my fingertips, hoping to lock in some heat, but the shivering won’t stop.

My breath is coming short and fast. Tiny, quick breaths that make my head woozy.

“You don’t have time for the flu,” I whisper to myself between chattering teeth and, trying to keep my pencil from shaking, look purposefully at Trey, demanding my body stop shivering.

But when I look Trey’s way, there are three of him.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I look down at my paper. Bad idea. The lines are blurring together, duplicating themselves. Overlapping. Straight lines are wavy; everything is spinning. What I hear next, what I remember, is the thud of my body hitting the ground after some sort of freefall from my stool. I see a burst of light; I hear gasps all around. In the flashes behind my eyes, I see my dad leaning over me, petting my hair the way he used to when I would wake from feverish dreams. The cold sensation on my wrists, it’s even stronger, like someone’s rubbing ice cubes on my skin. My dad—he seems so real, almost touchable, and if he were to lean down and kiss my head now, I might even feel it. I wrestle to lift my three-hundred-ton head to his face.

“Anne?” A man’s voice. A loud clap.

“I don’t think that did it.” A woman’s voice.

Searing pain. Shooting in my skull. I try to lift my hand to my forehead and open my eyes, but I feel pinned down. Slowly, the ceiling of the classroom comes into view. And I find a naked man bending over me.

“Trey?”

He smiles and puts on the robe Garnet hands to him. “Dreaming of me, sweetheart?”

I just blink, trying to register where I am, who
he
is, what’s going on. “What happened?”

“You fainted, Anne.” Garnet’s voice. I jerk my head toward her, but it hurts.

“We have you lying on the floor,” Trey adds.

I wince as I realize all of my classmates’ shadows are falling over me.

“Do you think you can stand?”

I nod.

“Lean on me,” Trey says. As I lift my head, he wraps his arm around me. “One, two, three, up.”

The room sways. I focus on a face in front of me: Pilot. Behind him, Augusto and his sad little moustache. Next to him, Lotus. I look slowly from person to person. The expressions on their faces are not what I’d expect.

“That’s embarrassing,” I say with a shy smile. But everyone just stares at me, wide-mouthed, as if I’ve turned my skin inside out. “It’s fine. I’m okay.” I pat my face, the back of my head, wondering if they’re all staring at blood on me. I’m not bleeding. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, nothing, Anne,” Pilot whispers, shaking his head like he’s trying to shush me.

“What’s everyone looking at?”

I turn to Harper, who drops her gaze. That’s when I know something is up. I’ve only known Harper a day, but I’m positive she’d happily take any stab she could at me—so why’s she holding back now? I glance at my hands, expecting to see something foreign, something alien, like scales or gigantic bruises. But they’re just my normal hands.

“Let’s get you seated,” Garnet says, ushering me back to my workstation. Behind us, everyone shuffles away. “How’s your head?”

“Why’s everyone acting so weird?”

“You were muttering something when you passed out. It sounded like you said
Dad.”

The memory of my dad standing over me returns, but it’s not nearly as strong or worrying as the sensation I have now—the sensation that something’s up. “That’s why everyone’s acting weird?”

“No, it’s—never mind. They’re not.”

“Yes, they are.”

“They’re
not
,”
Garnet states, her tone sharp before she turns to the class. “All right, let’s start packing up, everyone. Trey will be here for the rest of the week, following which I will assess your work. Remember, based on these sketches, one of you will be selected to headline the Art Walk for Parents’ Day this semester.”

I leave class shaken. Pilot is just seconds behind me.

“Are you okay? I can’t believe you passed out,” he says as we step into the dark, syrupy fog. As if the fog isn’t bad enough, a light rain has started to fall. Suffocating gray dreariness, when all I want is to
breathe.
“I’ve never seen that. Just
splat.
You fell right off.”

“Yeah, I remember.” A breeze blows under my skirt, soughing like whispered secrets through the fabric. “I’ve never done that before.”

“You’ve never passed out?”

I shake my head and, through the rain, glance around the quad as we walk, trying to make sense of what just happened. I’m not a fainter. Even on the tea cups at Disneyland, while all the other kids were staggering off and dumping their guts into a garbage can, I walked off straight as an arrow and lined up for round two. But now this.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta go,” I say to him. It feels like the wet air is collapsing on me. Like Pilot, for all his welcome friendliness, is crushing me just by being near. I need space. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I lie. “I’ll see you later.”

“Lunch,” he calls as I race away. “Cafeteria. You and me.”

Fine. Whatever. With nowhere to go, I head past Goethe Hall and to the nearly empty parking lot behind it, where I stop short, brace my knees, and thank God there’s no one else here. The lot backs onto a steep hill that leads to the highest point on Wormwood Island, a flat clearing above a craggy, terrifyingly steep cliff. At the far end of the lot, I spy the Harley Dr. Zin was driving yesterday and the yellow Ducati I saw at Ben’s house last night. I imagine Ben arriving at school today and confidently edging his powerful bike into that parking spot. The idea of him makes me feel better and worse at the same time, makes my stomach flutter and knot.