Ms. Hayes isn't actually my teacher, but she's probably the teacher at my school doing the most to actually help me out. She's one of the newer teachers at the high school, which means that she's not burned out just yet. She's one of the few things making my senior year fairly tolerable.
Earlier in the school year, she tried to start a literary magazine at our school, but it didn't get off the ground. Only two of us actually showed up: me, and my friend Meredith. But Ms. Hayes took it upon herself to continue to mentor us, so both Meredith and I have been giving her some writing to look at.
We meet after school occasionally, but we're more likely to talk in instant messages on our computers or in email. We've talked on the phone a few times, but not that many times. It's always just been about writing.
So when, one day, she asked me if I'd like to come over to her house that evening, I figured that was just what we'd talk about.
It didn't quite work out that way.
2.
I headed over to her house soon after class, but not too soon, I hoped. She'd asked me if I'd want to come over the night before in an e-mail, and had sent me directions to her house after I said I would. She told me she'd make something for dinner, so I didn't really eat. My mom wasn't home, anyway; she was going to spend the weekend with her new boyfriend, so I basically had the house to myself all weekend. That meant that I wouldn't have to explain where I was going, which was fine with me.
I don't think that it was that I was expecting anything to happen; it was just that I knew how this could look to someone who didn't know better. There was something about this that might seem a tiny bit improper to someone who was inclined to look at things in a certain way. A student going to a teacher's house after school could lead to some talk. But I didn't think that it really meant anything.
I was a bit nervous about the story I was bringing her. It was a story about a teenage guy falling in love with this mysterious girl. What made me nervous about it was that there was some sex in the story, and I'd never given her a story like that before. It wasn't as though the sex was graphic, but I'd never really broached any sort of topic of sex with her before. We'd sort of touched on our personal lives, but not in any specific terms. I knew she'd never been married, I knew she wasn't really seeing anyone. She knew I didn't really have a girlfriend. That's about it. I still even thought of her as 'Ms. Hayes', not Rebecca. It was like I couldn't make that last leap to call her by her first name, not her "teacher" name.
Maybe I did have some ideas when I went over there, but I expected to just eat dinner, show her the story, and that would be that. I'd be home later in the evening. Or something like that.
3.
She met me at the door. "Hi, Jacob," she said. She was in a tshirt and jeans, far less formally dressed than she usually was. She was barefoot. Somehow, seeing she didn't have any shoes on shocked me more than anything.
"Hi, Ms. Hayes," I said.
"Oh, come on, call me Rebecca," she said. "Come in."
I walked into her house. It was pretty much like I'd have figured it would be; smallish, piles of books everywhere, little pieces of art, and a couple of cats running around. "Dinner's about ready," she said.
"Cool," I said, putting my backpack in a chair.
"I'm just making spaghetti. I hope it's OK,"
"It's fine," I say, watching her walk back into the kitchen.
"I can't wait to read this story you've been telling me about," Rebecca calls from the kitchen.
"I hope it's good," I say. I sit down at the table, not knowing quite what to do. Rebecca brings out a bowl of spaghetti and some bread. Then she gets a couple of glasses, and brings a bottle of wine in. "Wine?" I ask.
"It's OK. You don't have to have a glass if you don't want one."
"I want one, I'm just surprised that you'd offer it to me."
"Nothing wrong with it," says Rebecca, and she pours me a glass.
We eat dinner, and we start talking more like friends than a student and a teacher. She tells me things about the other teachers that I hadn't heard before. "The problem with teachers is that they get burned out, and they start thinking it's just another job. They lose the passion to do it."
"You seem to have a lot of passion for it," I say.
"I haven't been doing it that long," says Rebecca.
"Most other teachers wouldn't go out of their way to do anything for a student that wasn't actually in their classes," I say.
"I hope I'm not like most other teachers," she says, "and you're not like most students, anyway." We smile at each other. I wonder what happens next.
Later, we are sitting on her couch. I'm watching a movie, but more nervously watching her read my story. I'm sitting on one end of the couch, she's sitting on the other. She seems to enjoy the story. "It's really good," she says. "It captures that feeling of being in love for the first time well."
"Thank you," I say, trying to guess how close she is to the sex scene. When I hear her say "Oh, my," I guess she's there.
"What?" I ask.
"This scene is very erotic," she says.
"The scene where..."
"Where Thomas and Samantha lose their virginity to each other. It's really nice."
"Oh, did I get it right?"
"Yeah. It captures that sort of awkwardness of first-time sex perfectly. That way that suddenly you realize you do know what you're doing. It reminds me of my first time."
