Things I’ll Never Say (5 page)

Zachary's appearance causes a VW Beetle to crash into a Smart car, an elderly woman to check out his ass, a baby to start crying, a baby to start giggling, and a giant burn mark to mar the cement wall.

“You're right,” Zachary admits. “I am a total hypocrite. Sorry I yelled at you.”

I accept his apology, but I'm the worst earthbound angel ever. He's bailed me out twice. It's time to rededicate myself to the mission. I'm an angel of the order guardian. I know better what my teenage assignment needs than she knows herself. My mission is to protect her, and that means total focus. From this moment on, I am the job.

Jamal will end up somebody else's boyfriend.

It's another Friday night at Sanguini's. The news story on what was described as “vandalism” here amounted to little more than a footnote in the local media.

A slender hand lands on my shoulder. Quincie says, “I'll babysit your tables while you go dance.”

“What're you talking about? Table nine ordered the
linguini l'autumno
, and I forgot to tell Chef Nora there's a gluten issue —”

“I'll tell Nora.” Flexing her preternatural strength, Quincie turns my body so I can see Jamal waiting on the dance floor, his hands clasped in front of him, holding a single long-stemmed red rose. He's wearing my faux black wings from Valentine's Day weekend. On cue, Sinatra begins singing “Cheek to Cheek” over the speakers. It's sweet, romantic, and pointless.

“Look, I tried, remember? Jamal can never know the real me, and besides, my duty is —”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Quincie interrupts. “Depression doesn't work for you, Joshua. You're the most upbeat, excitable being I've ever met. You'll get the hang of this whole secret-identity thing.”

“But —”

“You can't spend eternity beating yourself up because one demon sneaked by,” she insists. “Sneakiness is a demon thing, I grant you. But we can outsmart them. For starters, whether you're in angel mode or waiter-gossip mode, all visible horns and tails must be faux only. Unless we're talking about a wereram or something. If necessary, we'll check. There's one problem solved.”

“But —”

“Besides, it's not like the archangel Michael never bailed out Zachary back in his GA days.”

“But —”

“I'm right here, the dance floor is right there, and, so help me, Joshua, the real you shines through in everything you do. Just because you haven't admitted it in so many words and don't glow right now doesn't mean that Jamal can't, on some level, sense you're an angel. He clearly wants you. Or at least he wants to find out if he wants you.”

I step forward, hesitate. “He doesn't believe in heaven. He faults faith for —”

“An angel may encourage, may inspire, may nudge, but each soul ultimately chooses its own fate. Choose.” Quincie grins up at me. “It's a
dance
, Joshua. Not a mission from on high. Get out there.”

Who knows how things will turn out with Jamal, but at least I've got a new best friend in Quincie. I've witnessed the blessings of romantic love, but I know it's friendships that sustain us when all else fails. I give her forehead a quick kiss. “Sometimes I wonder who's watching over who.”

“Whom,” she replies, swatting my booty.

At least her English grade is secure. “You bucking for wings of your own?”

“Call me Cupid,” she replies.

Mr. P. was new that year. He was short, almost chubby, with a young, pretty face. He walked back and forth across the front of the classroom with his hands in the pockets of his khakis when he talked to us about the Civil War, and he had this adorable way of brushing his hair out of his eyes. We senior girls thought he was cute. We giggled when he walked by in our private-school hallways, and he looked at us and said, “What?” with a huge smile. We could tell he loved it. He was too short and heavy to have competed with the other guys in college, probably got laid here and there, but not with the hot girls. So this was exciting for him, being the new, young, cute teacher about whom all the girls whispered.

Some weeknights, my friends and I dressed up in short skirts and heels and went into the city to bars. This was before the city cracked down on underage drinking, when the bouncers smirked at our fake IDs but then waved us in. We went with the sole purpose of picking up boys. Usually we wound up sitting by ourselves, our drinks sweating on the table. We smoked cigarette after cigarette, just waiting to be chosen by the boys who came through the bar. Sometimes we got lucky. Only sometimes. There was no rhyme or reason to when. But I learned that year in my psychology senior elective that this sort of partial reinforcement was the kind that kept girls like me roped in. It kept me coming back again and again for more, like someone who keeps pulling the lever of a slot machine, dropping hundreds of dollars in coins, because twenty-three pulls ago she won ten bucks in quarters.

Every once in a while, it happened, though. Every now and then, a boy locked eyes with me and my heart sped. I sat taller in my chair; I cocked my head and smiled. Everything else went away, my mind — my whole body — a sharpened arrow pointing toward that thing I wanted. It was just that boy and me, and the promise that he would prove I was everything I wanted to be: beautiful, desirable, worthwhile,
real.
Those nights we got lucky, we didn't make it back into New Jersey until two or three, sometimes even four, in the morning. We'd be late for school, and I'd fall asleep in Mr. Reardon's calculus class, waking with my cheek stuck to my textbook from drool. It was as though we had two lives — the one in the city, where there were lights and glamour and possibility, and the one during the day, where we squeaked by with Bs and B minuses, where we were average. Anyway, Mr. Reardon never seemed to care. But I also fell asleep sometimes in Mrs. Jefferson's English class, and she wasn't so forgiving. My punishment was to stay after school to help her photocopy poetry handouts for our class. And this is how things happened with Mr. P.

See, the faculty didn't really have offices. They had one big room where they each had a desk, and there was a workroom right off this big room where the copy machine and fax and extra paper and such were. The shared faculty office room was lined in dark wood and it echoed. It felt ancient and meaningful the way old things sometimes do. It felt like things had happened over the years in this room.

Every time Mrs. Jefferson sent me to the workroom, I had to walk right past Mr. P., who was there prepping for the next day's class. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and I could feel his eyes on me as I went into that room.

At some point he waved me over, and I sidled up to his desk.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I'm a teacher now,” I said. “You didn't hear?”

He smirked. His cheeks were kind of puffy up close, and so smooth I doubted he needed to shave much. He had light freckles across the bridge of his nose. “You got in trouble, didn't you?” He did that thing where he brushed his hair out of his face.

“Maybe,” I said. I didn't like him thinking of me in that way, as some little girl who got time-outs. He just watched me. I wished I knew what he was thinking. I shifted around a bit and twirled a piece of hair around my finger.

“Actually,” I told him, “I'm having some problems staying awake in Mrs. Jefferson's class.”

“That boring, huh?” he joked, then he looked around, worried perhaps that someone had heard him.

“It's not that,” I said. “It's because I stay out too late.”

“Really.”

That had caught his attention. “Really,” I said. I smiled. He smiled back. And that's when Mrs. Jefferson told me to get to work.

I was there again the next afternoon, since my punishment was for the full week. I had dressed in my best-fitting jeans, and, yes, I admit that through Western Civ I kept shifting and opening and closing my legs in those jeans, and I was sure I saw Mr. P. looking.

This time, after school, I stopped at his desk and said, “In case you're curious, I go to Dorrian's in the city.” I had been planning to tell him all day.

“You're eighteen,” he said.

“So?” I said. I was seventeen, but I wasn't about to let him know that.

“So eighteen-year-olds shouldn't be going to bars.”

I shrugged. “There are lots of things I probably shouldn't be doing.”

I sat down in the chair across from him and pressed my lips tight. I sounded like a child, and I hated myself for it. I tried something else. “You know about Dorrian's?” I wondered if he went to bars and brought girls home to his place.

“I know Dorrian's,” he said. “So you're a Dorrian's girl.”

I raised my eyebrows and kept my gaze even with his. I didn't say what I was thinking — that if I didn't go to this school and we met each other at that bar, I could totally be one of the girls he brought home. Maybe that's what he meant by a Dorrian's girl. Most of the girls who went there were beautiful. Way more beautiful than I would ever be. They were skinny from living off cocaine and vodka and cigarettes. They got the attention of the best-looking guys, the ones who strolled into the bar like they owned it. The ones whose eyes always passed over me and dropped hard on one of those Dorrian's girls. Maybe, too, he mistook me for beautiful.

“Kerry!” Mrs. Jefferson called, and that was that for the day.

But now Mr. P. was on my mind. When I dressed in the morning, I was thinking of him. When I walked through the halls, I kept my eyes peeled for him. When I drove in town, I peered into cars to see if it was him I passed. I sat in that same chair after school, even now that my punishment was over. Mr. P. didn't seem to mind.

“What exactly do you do at Dorrian's?”

“I drink.”

“You're just a kid!”

“Stop saying that,” I said. I was wearing a tight-fitting shirt that accentuated my breasts. I pressed them out a little and added, “And I meet guys.”

“Really,” he said.

“Really.”

He lowered his voice and leaned forward a little. He had an ankle on the opposite knee. Maybe he was hiding an erection. “And what is it that you do with these guys?”

“What do you think I do with them?” I said, matching his voice.

He laughed. He leaned toward me, and his feathered hair fell over his eye. There was a beat. Then another. Then he said, “Do you give them blow jobs?”

I kept my expression steady, but beneath my skin the electricity zoomed around. “Yes.”

Neither one of us moved. After a bit, he said, “You any good?”

There was some activity at another desk, another student sitting down to talk with a teacher. Nobody knew what we were talking about. As far as they were concerned, we were talking about the fall of Rome or the Revolutionary War. “Yes,” I said again.

He laughed and brushed his hair back. “I've had my fair share of blow jobs,” he said. He waited a beat while I processed that. I could see the slightest yearning in his eyes. And just like that, the power shifted a bit. “What makes you think you can give a good one?” he asked.

“Oh,” I said, “I have ways of knowing.”

He smiled, but then the Spanish teacher walked by, her slacks swishing. He looked up at her, changing his smile into one a teacher gives a colleague. “Maybe we better talk about Western Civ class,” he said.

I frowned. “Why?”

“Because,” he said. “Because you know why.”

I shrugged. “No one will know.”

“I kind of like my job,” he said. “And this is inappropriate.”

I laughed. “Inappropriate,” I repeated, because my friends and I would laugh at someone using that word sincerely. He didn't laugh with me. His expression stayed even. I watched him, trying to ascertain whether he really didn't want to talk like this. Trying to determine how to keep the power.

“Let's talk about Western Civ, then,” I said, but when I did, I leaned back and crossed my legs slowly, letting him watch. I'd seen girls at Dorrian's do that. I'd seen them hold guys in their grip. I couldn't do that there, but maybe I could do this with Mr. P.

He smiled, seeing what I was doing.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Teach me something.”

He shook his head. He wasn't smiling.

“
You
are a dangerous girl.”

A month later, I went into the city with my friends. Dorrian's was its usual mass of beautiful girls and boys in ties and sports jackets with their prep schools' crests. The bouncer knew us, never questioned our fake IDs. He didn't even ask for them anymore. This was when parents like mine ran off to Paris or Nantucket and left hundred-dollar bills on their marble kitchen counters for the teenagers to do with what they would. This was when the other kids at Dorrian's did cocaine in the bathroom stalls, using their parents' American Express cards to chop up the powder and rolling up those hundred-dollar bills to snort it into their noses. This was when parents like mine were long gone, when they didn't care, when they didn't see that their children — like
me
— were in need of their love.