to believe that the right person would see that. When I presented my list of potential colleges to my guidance counselor, she said, “Ambitious.” It didn’t matter that we both knew what she meant was impossible; my desire was strong enough to circumvent reality.
For my college admissions essay, I wrote about my pubescent boarding school dreams. I spoke of my longing for the best resources, the best faculty, the best education. And when my rejection letter from Columbia arrived, I cried—I didn’t realize, until that moment, that I’d truly believed that I would be accepted.
Buffalo State covered three-quarters of my tuition, and so that is where I went. I wondered if they knew—as Columbia had more than likely known—that my dream of attending boarding school was never about the education.
_ _ _
As Kip and I walked through the dark, I thought of a dozen questions I could ask him—Where are you from? How do you like it here? Even, lamely, Aren’t you afraid of getting in trouble staying out so late?
Any banal question I could ask Kip would be a joke, a comically deliberate attempt to skirt around the issue at hand. It would be to compliment another woman’s dress at a funeral. Kip was a student, and I was a teacher. How was I supposed to address him—like a kid in my charge, or like a guy who was only really a few years younger than me? I knew I didn’t want to make polite conversation; I wanted to impress him. Right now, it didn’t matter where either of us was from.
I was glad it was dark. I always felt more comfortable in the dark.
Kip spoke first. “So. The Hovel, huh?”
I glanced at him to gauge his expression. I decided it was one of amusement. “What’s wrong with the Hovel?”
He shrugged. “It’s nice, I guess. If you don’t mind the smell of horse.”
He wasn’t my student, I decided. It would feel foolish to talk to him like he was. “Hey, it doesn’t smell like shit!”
“I didn’t say horse shit. I just said horse.”
I paused, considering. “How would you know, anyway?”
“Oh, believe me. I know.”
“You’re lying.”
“Wanna bet?”
We were passing Silver Lake now. Kip stopped, so I stopped, too. I was torn between the desire to keep moving towards the Hovel and the need to look as cool and unperturbed as Kip seemed. He cleared his throat and bent his face down towards mine, eyes wide and serious. I pressed my lips together and tried to remember the last time I brushed my teeth.
“Two years ago, I was a second year . . .”
So he’s a fourth year, I thought.
“. . . and there was this teaching apprentice—I forget her name—who loved to party. All the other apprentices were apparently really boring, so she started having these little social gatherings for a select few guys, including yours truly.”
“Naturally.” His candor was infectious, but I still felt uneasy. No allowing the students into your personal residence.
“Naturally. So we would go over on Friday nights to the Hovel after the other apprentice girls had gone to sleep, and we’d drink a little, smoke a little . . .”
“Oh, c’mon.” I imagined a younger Kip stretched out on the bed of an ethereal blonde creature, all lips and lashes and long skinny limbs. The sort of girl who would leave lipstick stains on the joint she passed from her puffy lips to Kip’s, a girl who would wear colorful lacy bras instead of practical beige ones like mine.
He spread his arms out in protest. “What, you don’t believe me?”
It must have been quiet hours by then; the campus around us was eerily still, and Kip’s voice echoed across the lake. Without thinking, I shushed him.
“Did you just shush me?”
“Sorry.”
“You say sorry a lot.” Kip looped his arm through mine and tugged me along. My looped arm tensed from my shoulder through my fingertips, but if he could feel my tension, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Point of the story being, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the Hovel, and it smells like horse.”
“It does not.” The more I tried to relax, the more rigid my body became. He squeezed my arm tighter in his; it was becoming apparent to me that he sensed my discomfort, and that he enjoyed causing it.
“It does, too.”
I could see the Hovel up ahead. I cast a sidelong glance at Kip again. His lips curled faintly, his chin in the air. Something needed to be said.
“Hey, Adam—”
He furrowed his brow. “Kip. Just Kip.”
“Kip—”
We reached the back door. He released my arm and gave a theatrical bow. “Your sleeping quarters, my ladyship.”
I didn’t want to like him; I wanted to resent his affected gallantry, his swaggering sureness. He was a caricature of a prep school boy, a cocktail of charm and condescension. The walk back to the Hovel had felt divorced from time and suspended in space; I’d felt drunk, though under the influence of nothing but the strangeness of the night’s events. But standing on my doorstep, exposed in the light from the kitchen, I was sober, liable. I was relieved when he immediately turned to go.
“’Night, Teacher.” He waved his arm over his head as though heading out on a yearlong voyage at sea and started to walk back into the dark.
I hesitated, then called out to his retreating form. “I shouldn’t have let you walk me home.”
Kip turned, studied me. “Why’s that?”
“Students aren’t allowed here.”
He looked up at the sky, seeming to contemplate his answer, but then he just shrugged. “If you say so,” he said.
I stood by the back door, watching him walk away, until he disappeared.
_ _ _
Raj, ReeAnn, Babs, and the Woods twins were playing Friends Scene It when I returned. They turned to look at me.
“Imogene!” ReeAnn beckoned me into the room. “We’re just getting started.”
“Give me a minute,” I said, and I climbed up the stairs two at a time with no intention of coming back down.
I checked my email first. I had a message from Dale. Awesome lesson today, he said. You’re really doing great work. He signed his name with a smiley emoticon.
Then I pulled up the Vandenberg School roster.
I wanted to look up his profile page, but that felt like an invasion. He wasn’t Raj, a coworker, an equal; he was a student. Those pictures and messages posted on his page were not for me to see. So I stuck to the roster. I studied his wrinkled jacket, his open laughing mouth. I wished the roster gave more information than just his name.
“Imogene? You okay up there?” I heard ReeAnn call.
This was wrong. I shouldn’t be thinking about anyone his age this way—a high school student. At the school where I taught. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted him to be. A friend? A—I was embarrassed to even say this word in my own head—lover? I felt sick at the thought. I wasn’t in high school anymore; I was too old to imagine anything would happen just because I wanted it to. I was too old for him.
I opened up my email again, reread the message from Dale. Then, I composed a message to Ms. McNally-Barnes.
There are some issues that have come up recently. Are you available anytime tomorrow to speak with me?
I sent the message and closed my laptop. Then I joined the other