Laura turned her car into the church parking lot and sighed.  She hated coming to church alone.  When her husband Paul was by her side she could always have someone to talk to during the dreaded “turn-around-and-have-a-very-smiley-conversation-with-someone-you-don’t-know!” part of the service.  Just standing during the singing and holding his hand made her feel more grounded to earth, to the community around her, and to the alienated God she had come to try to worship.  But Paul had to work today.  And she knew she couldn’t be trusted to spend the morning home alone.

Already, she had failed.  Laura reeled with self-loathing at the memory.  She had intended to wait until the last possible moment to have breakfast.  While she was in the shower she carefully planned the meal: small bowl of oatmeal made with ¼ cup dry oats and ½ cup skim milk, a swig of juice only big enough to swallow her vitamin.  Nothing more.  She repeated her instructions over and over to herself: ¼ cup dry oats, ½ cup skim milk, one drink juice; ¼ cup dry oats, ½ cup skim milk, one drink juice; ¼ cup dry oats, ½ cup skim milk, one drink juice.  She recited this mantra as she stepped out of the shower.  As she dried her body with her towel she rubbed with agitated disgust, wishing she could scrub off the fat.  According to her doctor, she was slightly underweight, but she knew he was lying.  She didn’t even look down at her body as she wrapped her pink robe around her and walked to the kitchen.

This isn’t the right order, Laura’s brain screamed at her as she entered the kitchen.  She was supposed to get dressed, put on makeup, fix her hair, and then have breakfast, right before she had to leave.  If she could just wait until it was almost time to walk out the door, she might not mess up.  But I’m hungry, she thought—lying even to herself—and she walked numbly to the cabinets.  Preparing her breakfast started well.  She dutifully measured the oats and the milk into a bowl.  Seventy-five calories for the oats, forty-three calories in the milk, she calculated.  Then she placed the bowl in the microwave and set the timer for one minute and thirty seconds.

One minute and thirty seconds.  That’s all it took.  Laura thought about it now and disgusted tears stung her eyes.  In one minute and thirty seconds she had emptied the cookie jar of chocolate-chip cookies, stuffed fistfuls of mustard-flavored pretzels in her mouth, and finished off the vanilla ice cream.  In one minute and thirty seconds the microwave beeped, but she was already heading down the hall.  She wanted to cry.  She felt the angry, shameful, anguished tears well up inside of her.  But she couldn’t cry.  She had forgotten how.  Instead, she tied her hair back, bent over her porcelain god, and cried the only way she knew—in racking, violent purging that left her spent, weak, and shaking.  As she was doubled over in the bathroom the telephone rang.  Paul was calling to check on her, she knew.  She couldn’t answer.  She couldn’t face him, even over the phone.  She would tell him later that was she was in the shower when he called.  He would know that she was lying.

Now, it was time for church.  Before walking into the building Laura checked her reflection in the rearview mirror.  Her cheeks were puffy and swollen, but there were no broken blood vessels in her eyes today, so that was good.  No one would notice her puffy cheeks, except to think that she was getting fat, and the only outward signs of her inner torment were the angry, red, blistered scars on the knuckles of her left hand, which she usually brushed off to people as a burn or a scrape.  She cringed as she imagined the humiliation she would feel if they knew the cause of her scars, if they knew the damage that sharp teeth could cause to the knuckles of fingers jammed down the throat.  Again, she shuddered with shame and self-loathing.

But Laura walked into church.  She smiled.  She sang the hymns.  She pretended to take notes on the sermon, when she was actually making a detailed list of allowed foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next week.  She felt like a hypocrite.  When she was anorexic, her wasted body reflected her wasted soul.  Now, she was no longer painfully skinny, and she longed to crawl out of this body that had betrayed her, this body that now had no control, this body that could devour and then purge thousands of calories.  She wondered what these people sitting around her would think if they followed her around for a day.  She stood for the last hymn, plastered on one last smile, and walked out the door.

As she drove out of the city and back to her little college town, she mentally chanted the foods she would allow herself when she walked in the door: 1 piece light wheat bread, 2 slices fat-free turkey, 1 Tbsp. mustard, ½ cup grapes; 1 piece light wheat bread, 2 slices fat-free turkey, 1 Tbsp. mustard, ½ cup grapes; 1 piece light wheat bread, 2 slices fat-free turkey, 1 Tbsp. mustard, ½ cup grapes.

She chanted these words even as her car turned off into the grocery store parking lot, even as she parked, walked into the store and came out with chips, ice cream, and frosted flakes.  She repeated these words even as she walked up the stairs to her apartment.  Even as she placed the boxes and bags on the counter.  Even as she started to open them.  Paul wouldn’t be home for another hour.  She would be sitting on their couch studying when he got home like nothing had happened.  Both of their aching hearts would know otherwise.

She was headed for the cookie jar. Olivia was a plump little lady of nine. Each dimpled finger a testament to her privileged life inside the gigantic house overlooking the sea. Although she was a tad overweight she bore it well, all of it proportional and flattering. Her tan, rounded thighs slimming down to robust calves with delicate white scars that criss-crossed her shins. Her hair was blonde like buttermilk, not specifically white or yellow. It cascaded into loose beachy waves over her shoulders and fell into fine little points across her back. Her toes were always bare and unpolished.

It was these unpolished toes that padded down the tiled hallway towards the kitchen. She had dressed and readied herself well before Kimberly could get downstairs and tend to her. This was just as she planned it. She grabbed a paper towel from the holder, its soft separating the only noise Olivia was making. In the giant kitchen she could see out the floor length windows towards the water. It whispered to her, “come, come.” Her small blue eyes twinkled as she imagined the sand squishing between her toes, Kimberly dawdling behind telling her, “Olivia, slow down for heaven’s sake, it’s not a bloody race!”

Olivia stood tippy toe and used her chubby little fingers to grasp the top of the cookie jar. With the other hand she pulled forth four snicker doodle cookies, round and soft, placing them like cinnamon jewels onto her napkin. She sat at the table in front of the windows and placed one entire cookie in her mouth, crumbs diving from her lips to the floor. She chewed hastily and swallowed, quickly doing the same to the next three. As the mush of cookies going down her gut settled and filled an empty space she imagined the coconut smell of sunscreen, the bright yellow bikini she would wear and the children she would see when they got down there, her father sitting in his beach chair adoring her.

She wiped up her crumbs, threw it all in the trash, not the kitchen trash but the one in the laundry room down the hall and then she went to the fridge reached for a small yogurt, picked a banana from the bunch on the counter and sat it ready at the table. She clicked the TV remote and turned on the news.

Her father walked in just then and nodded his approval. Olivia was nothing if not clever. He bid her good morning in his husky waking voice that would deepen and smooth itself with his coffee. Olivia went up to him once he sat down and pecked him cheerily on the cheek just as the telephone rang.

“Hullo.” He gruffed into the receiver. “Hmm. Yes, yes, true. See you then.”

“What was that daddy?” Olivia inquired her milky blonde hair twisted into her hand.

“Nothing sweets, just a reminder that I have to go to the city today.”

“But we were going to the beach, you promised!” she said with a practiced pout.

“Yes, I did. I don’t want to make a hypocrite of myself, I suppose.” He said eyebrows furrowed.

“A hypocrite?” she asked with her cornflower blue eyes directly on her father.

“Yes, someone who says one thing then does another.”

“Like mum?”

“In what way dear?” he asked looking at his knuckles most intently.

“Well, she won’t let me eat sweets but she eats them all the time. She says I should lose weight but she never loses any. Is that a hypocrite Daddy?” she asked, her voice lit with the enthusiasm of discovery.

“I suppose in a way yes, dear it is, but please do not say that I said so.”

“I’d never do that Father. Shall we go to the beach?” she asked with a sly grin that folded into a giggle.

He grabbed her cheeks and kissed her head.

“It seems we must my dear, we must.” He rapped his knuckles on the table and made a quick phone call.

Kimberly came down in time to pack a lunch and ready Olivia. Her father would come for a while and meet with his friends later in the day. Olivia skipped lunch to play and kissed her valiant, loving, doting father good-bye.

He would argue with the wife that was leaving him, disheveling his fortune and his time, at dinner. Don’t be so hard on her. It is just the way she has been made. She is a lovely girl, nothing to worry over. She would glare, hiss and accuse him of all sorts of ignorance. She knew her little girl and most of all did not want her turning out like her mother. He would leave wanting his little girl to be happy, wishing he were happy. She would leave wanting her little girl to be happy, wishing she were happy, but no one could come to a consensus.

Ok people, this one is wide open. Use the following words in a story: hypocrite, telephone, city, cookie jar

It’s six thirty at night. Valentine’s night, and there is something I want you to see. Quiet. We are listening, seeing with our ears.

Do you hear the traffic? It’s right outside the frosted door. Listen. The tires slosh in the melted snow, the rubber wheels make a sucking and splashing sound. Over and over they come by, the large delivery vehicles shift their gears, and you can hear their moans as they come to a stop at the traffic light. The rhythmic sound of come and go, stop and start, interrupted only by the occasional horn honking. Like a goose trying to sing in the symphony. Dismissed. Ignored. Ridiculous. Leave please.

Do you hear the sunset? No, not can you see it, but do you hear it? There is a sleepy lull in the sky, the frisky morning wind more of a daunting, overbearing alarm clock. Whoosh. Whoosh. Shwee. Whoosh. Woosh. Shwee. Go, home, cook, feed, bathe, sleep, it demands.

Do you hear the steam rising from the ground. Pssss it whispers, “Watch me dance!.”

Can you hear the cacophony of coffee machines inside the frosted glass door? Phfsssssst. Grrrrrsss. Frrrsssss. And the barista’s loud commands, let’s not neglect those.

“Gimme a Venti decaf caramel latte no whip,”

“I need more soy!”

“Who’s the chocolate Mocha for? Denise, you didn’t mark it on the cup! You want decaf or espresso?”

“That’ll be eleven eighty six, please drive up. Do you need some Splenda?”

Do you hear the chatter? Inside there is loud chatter. In the right corner she is telling him how awful her day was and he is saying, “Yes and uh-huh.” If you listen a little harder you can hear his foot tapping soft and rapid, irregular against the concrete floor. Pat. Pat. Thump.

Over in the other corner you can hear the belch of a leather sofa being settled into loudly and abruptly. Heavy thuds as backpacks drop to the ground. I doubt you can hear her eyelashes batting but you can hear her target’s crackly teenage voice make grand sweeping gestures to impress her. You can hear his laughter as a friend tumbles to the ground, sliding from the leather. Fwump. Shrill teenage laughter, alto and soprano hormones bouncing all over the cement walls.

There is the muffled sound of hats and coats shrugging off of shoulders, dropping to the ground or onto the chairs. Oh, and the chairs. Screech. Scrruuk. It never stops.

What? What do you hear? Oh that, well that is what we came here for.

Bamm. Bamm. Bamm.

Bamm. Bamm. Bamm.

Bamm. Bamm.Bamm.

Yes, that is a doorknob jiggling frantically back and forth. How precise of you, excellent listening. Let’s lean in, get closer, listen harder.

“Hello! Someone open the door! Please!”

Bamm. Bamm.

More of the jiggling doorknob.

Oooh. That was a knee to the door, a large moan. She’s hurt herself.

“Someone open the door!!!!”

A purse thuds to the ground, I hear the tap of smart phone keys. Yes, she is texting someone or updating her Facebook status, bound to get a laugh when you are stuck in the restroom. Wonder which she did? Some things listening just won’t tell you.

“Arrgh! Let me out of here. Bang. Bang. Bang.”

Yes, I hear it too, footsteps coming toward the little hall! She is saved!

Bang. Bang. Bang. “Someone HELP ME!” Her voice sounds young, annunciated, entitled, and disgusted. My bet is she is single, makes her own way and is used to having it, not used to being stuck in the bathroom at the coffee shop, if you know what I mean.

Ahh, listen. Here we are.

“Hello? Are you stuck in there?”

“Yes! Thank God! Please get me out!”

Let’s fast forward. We hear him leave and tell the lady at the counter. She gets her manager and the manager called a lock smith after calmly telling the woman how sorry they were and that they would have her out soon.

Meantime our hero walks back and we hear the men’s room door shut, some running water and a flush. Most obviously he has taken care of his basic needs. Then we hear him walk out of the bathroom, you can hear the warm air suck the cold air in, squish it and release its chilly puff into the room.

Now we hear the door again, his deep calm voice speaking to the manager’s more frantic and busied tone.

“Sure, whatever might help her and thank you sir!” she says.

We hear tapping, low grunting and the woman saying thank you, over and over.

BAM! The door falls, leaving its hinges. She screams, blood curdling. Patrons nervously laugh. Perhaps he should have warned her. We didn’t hear him do that. Never mind though, she sighs deeply and says, “Thank you.”

Do you hear it too? Reserve, softness, a bashful hum to her voice, this is new. She must find him handsome.

And he, his voice as he says, “No problem, glad I could help.” It is deeper, he clears his throat no less than three times for six words to be uttered. He sounds stunned. We can guess that she must be very attractive.

“Would you like to come out now?” he ask.

“Yes, but my purse…” she says meekly.

“Grab it and I’ll help you over the door.” he says, voice restored.

“That’s just it, it’s under the door.”

Laughter. Soft, interested laughter erupts. We can only imagine eyes gazing, quickly looking down, chiseled chin, scruffy cheeks, long, silky hair, blue eyes, brown eyes, love, maybe.

Maybe love, yes. It is Valentine’s Day after all.

Stuck. Really, truly stuck. On Valentine’s Day. How poetic, how pathetically true.

I stared at the broken latch that kept me prisoner in the dark one-pot bathroom. The little dive I had chosen to drown my sorrows in that year provided fantastic comfort food. They did not, however, provide fantastic facilities when duty called. And there I was, back there alone, a bare bulb eyeballing me from the center of the ceiling as I contemplated the possibilities. I could try calling out for help, but the local garage band performing in a corner of the dining room was sure to drown me out. Banging on the door was out, too, for the same reason – they were that loud. And I had purposefully left my cell phone at home. I wasn’t in the mood for my mother’s annual pity-call.

“Oh, honey, you are such a lovely girl. I don’t know why the boys aren’t lining up for a chance to be with you,” she would whine. Then the tone would change, suspicious – “Or are they lining up, and you just won’t give any of them the time of day? That would be just like you. Tell me the truth, now, did you get an invite this Valentine’s?” I would offer silence, stewing at her pestering, the same every year. “Or – oh, love, you can be honest with me – do you fancy the girls instead? Are you afraid to tell –“

“No, Mom, for the gazillionth time, no,” I’d growl. “And please stop asking me that.”

Every mom thinks her daughter is beautiful. Well, most moms, anyway. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that lovely to her was homely to the rest of the world, especially here in New York City. A Midwestern girl like me, without any fashion sense, stood out like a lone palomino in a corral filled with stunning black Arabians. Not to mention, I was married, albeit to my job. I arrived early, stayed late, copyediting in my little corner of the small publishing firm that hired me straight out of college. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was exactly what I wanted. Why couldn’t my mom understand that? I was happy.

Wasn’t I?

Or was I just…. Stuck?

So this was where my aha moment would take place, in a grimy bathroom? No way. I wouldn’t let my life come down to this moment of irony. I would stay stuck, thank you very much, until further notice. I would unstick on my own terms. Mind you, unsticking myself from the current mess…

…would require that my future husband arrive, jiggle the handle of said grimy bathroom’s door, see the knob fall into his hand, reach through the hole left there, and open the door to the rest of our lives.

Now I call my mother on Valentine’s Day.

Inside the box of stale breakfast cereal, she found her marriage. Not in a metaphorical way, now. I mean she found her wedding ring right there in the corn flakes with the dried strawberries and such. She couldn’t remember when it got there, but it must have been that last time that she poured the cereal from the box into that airtight plastic container. Trouble is, the plastic tub isn’t as big as the box, so the bites left in the box are a craps shoot: either they’ll still be good after she eats a few bowls and remembers to top off the tub, or they’ll have become breakfast, lunch, dinner, and grave for weevils.

So there’s her marriage, all dusty with sugar and corn bits, fallen down in a bag in a box in the pantry in the dark. By the time she’d missed her ring, she couldn’t imagine how long it had been gone. What with the dusting and cooking and taking out the dirty cat litter days without end, it could have been last year for all she knew. His always sat on a shelf in his closet, and she never took hers off. Must had fallen somewhere. She figured it would turn up.

I helped her look once. She suggested we try the garage because she had recently reorganized the brooms. We stood near the mop and I toed a nearby bucket. She turned over a dustpan. Then she looked toward the garage door and declared the search pointless. We returned to our tea and hummus.

He rolled over every night. She edged away without thinking about it, turned to her belly, breathed deeply unto sleep, and stuck out a foot to the cold. This made waking an easy affair—sliding out on the coffee-pot side of the bed and doing her exercises in the dark while it brewed. She chose the same mug every morning and watched the early news.

Their marriage fell into the cereal in much the same way: they gave each other “to do” lists, they forgot to discuss dinner, they sat on separate couches, they primarily talked about the cat. Mundane life is a blessing to the settled, but they passed their days neither content nor discontent. She did not despise him but simply stopped noticing him, the way one can avoid every piece of furniture in a familiar house even in the dark. So she avoided him.

When she found her ring that morning after so long without it on her finger or even in her mind, she thought it might be a cheap prize. Then she paced it to the pantry and back to the stove. She wondered if she should put it back on. She wasn’t one for ceremony and now had grown accustomed to the freedom of so many fingers.

That’s about when he came to the kitchen looking for coffee. Grabbed his mug and the milk, passed her close, and turned back to see what she had in her hand. Looked at her face, then back at her hand. Reached his hand out to hers. Then pulled it back gently without ever touching her. She was glad—didn’t seem like his place, she thought. And she walked her ring to her jewelry box for safekeeping.

That morning was crisp and bright, the clouds knitting small and accidental lines across the long sky. We sat in the kitchen like always as she pulled the story around. I ate the leftover bread with butter made from yogurt; she just talked. I slurped my tea and didn’t much care. After all, I’d helped her look once.

Driving back into town, late at night, I feel a bit like a teenager sneaking in after curfew. The city lights rise up from the prairie, a greenish glow against the low clouds, and this place suddenly seems foreign. I glance at my cell phone for the umpteenth time. Still no calls. I had been gone for two weeks, and no one from here called me.

My husband is behind the wheel, talking on his bluetooth to his friends. He’s been dialing one after another to keep himself awake. With each connection he so easily makes, I feel even smaller and more lost in my little introverted world. I want to be home already. I want to be among my familiar things. I want to hold my children close, to feel the familiar pulse of their breath and luscious weight of their sleeping bodies settled against me, but they are latched securely into their car seats behind me, and we have 40 more miles to pass through yet. I lace my arm through Roy’s, letting my fingers rest on top of his hand on the steering wheel, and gratitude for this gift overwhelms me: wherever the Air Force sends us, we have each other. We have this family unit, with all its quirks and all its glory, a gift to take us from one place to the next. We are in this together.

This is our tenth home in fifteen years. I have come to learn the pattern of assimilation. I can easily explain it to my friends who have children. It mirrors pregnancy: the first trimester is all peaks and valleys, lurching emotions and nausea. Loss of friends and fear of the unknown intermingles with excitement and anticipation and the thrill of knowing something new is just around the bend. After a few months, though, the newness wears off and the second trimester arrives. Familiarity is there as routines settle into place – and then wham! That last trimester hits you out of nowhere. You physically ache with longing for this new place to actually be home. You know people, but you don’t feel known. You labor and long for everything to be settled, for this season to be finished.

It is officially the third trimester. I sigh audibly and my husband squeezes my hand as he finishes his call.

“Just a few more miles, hon,” he encourages, thinking my sigh was travel-related. It is, in a way. I am weary of traveling, of potted-plant roots that are easily transferred when I’d rather have the deep stretching, solid structures of the oak tree rippling beneath our front lawn.

Just a few more miles.

At home the next morning, we are all a bit hung over from twelve hours in the car, cranky and creaky and hungry. I reach into the pantry, pull out the box of Cheerios, check the date on the milk in the fridge – still good, get the coffee going. Absentmindedly, I reach into the box to eat a handful of o’s as I gaze out the window into the back yard. A snowy blanket covers everything. The first snow of the season struck while we were gone. The change makes even the known unfamiliar again.

I spit the stale cardboard-flavored cereal into the sink. Blech. Tears unexpectedly fill my eyes. I’m no cryer. What the heck? It’s just cereal! But it’s not just cereal. It’s the fact that I can’t run across the street to my old friend from the last place we lived, giggle over my daring jaunt in a bathrobe barely concealed by my coat, and grab a fresh box of cereal. How long, Lord? I want to feel home. I want to BE home. I want…

A flicker of red catches my eye out the window, and I am startled to find a cardinal on the deck, brilliant and bold against the white snow. We had a family of cardinals that frequented our deck two assignments ago. I always loved to watch them out at the bird feeder – yes, the same bird feeder where this cardinal was now busily scavenging.

The phone rings. Someone from the church, asking to schedule a playdate. I pull out the empty calendar and fill in a spot. I scramble eggs. I refill the bird feeder. I sigh, audibly. Hope flutters in to refill my lungs.

Inside the box of stale breakfast cereal tan clumps tumbled out, crinkling past the cellophane bag and dinging into the large brown bowl. Marissa grabbed her carton of organic milk and poured it over the top of the organic cereal which was past its prime because she had bought it, tasted it and gotten some Frosted Flakes instead. Now, out of Frosted Flakes, she was forced to eat her grains. They tasted far more like fried Styrofoam drizzled in honey than anything good for her. Spoonful by spoonful she crammed the lackluster breakfast in to her mouth so that she could get to work. After all, it was the first day of school.

Marissa tapped her heels through the drab brown hallway. As she turned into her classroom the cool blue and green colors on the walls warmed and energized her. The shiny white acrylic bookshelves were lined with textbooks and plastic bins for storage. She had painted clouds on the ceiling so pale one could not tell for sure if they were actually there. Her yellow shirt dress and bright orange heels shone like the sun in that room, just as she had intended. The principal stuck her head in, complimented Marissa and went on down the hallway. She glanced at the clock on the wall, ten more minutes.

She walked to each desk and placed a neat stack of papers on top just under their vinyl lettered names. Five minutes before the children were to arrive she applied some lip gloss and straightened the already straight papers on her desk. She grabbed a mirror and checked her hair, not ready to fall victim to a child’s cruel humor their very first day together. Her blonde hair hung straight and limp over her shoulders, her turquoise blue eyes the brightest thing on her clear pale face. She said a quick prayer for herself and her students then walked to the door, one minute left.

The rest happened so fast, so alarmingly fast that Marissa was not able to recount the day at all to her mother or her sister that evening. She had planned for this day, prepared and been absolutely ready for anything. She had not been ready for freckles and dimples or floppy dishwater hair. She had not been ready for his laughter that bubbled up like an underground spring or the sound of her voice, sharp and acerbic poured over his antics like dirty water on a warm fire. Nothing she said had gotten to him, nothing slowed him down nor deterred him from his love of laughter and life. He couldn’t sit still, he would not listen. He was the wrench in her otherwise perfect first day. That wasn’t what upset her though.

“All right class, let’s go over our list and what you will take home to your parents today.”
He had coughed and sputtered what she was sure was a curse word. The class had nervously giggled, eyeing Marissa to see how she would handle it. She knew she had to get it under control the first time if she wanted her class to listen to her at all. She sent the young boy, Adam, to the corner in a spare desk where he adamantly denied anything but coughing. At lunch he had walked up, placed his arm on her shoulder and said, “Ms. H, you’re the hottest teacher at this whole school.” With that he had walked away, but not before turning and winking, giving full press to the deep dimples on both sides of his freckled cheeks and the brilliant grin of either a future movie star or a nefarious criminal. Time would tell. Time would tell.

They were all in the pool, his floppy blonde hair clinging to his forehead, soft swollen freckles dancing on top of his cheeks and nose, dimples set just so. He would sneeze and say a bad word with it, swim under the water and grab the girls bottoms, the entire time those eight children were there, Kevin was the center of their attention and every time his giant blue eyes fell on Marissa her heart swelled just before she looked back to see if her dad was watching. Kevin laughed and evaded the lifeguard, flipping him off but not so that anyone but the lifeguard could see it. The lifeguard knew him by name but just like everyone else surrounding Kevin, he let it all slide.

Yes, forever yes, she did and would. They talked about nothing and everything. He sat close, attentive, still and quiet. She wrote poems about him. He kissed her two best friends. It never mattered, near him was enough. He got held back a grade. He was always in trouble, but the Kevin Marissa saw was just a young boy, a normal young boy with life all wrapped up to go. Her father told her, “That boy won’t live to see sixteen. He thinks he is invincible.”

When they were sixteen Marissa started hanging out with new friends at their new high school. Kevin was a grade behind now, still stuck in Middle School. She saw him all of the time but not like when they were twelve to fourteen. He quit skateboarding to drive. He was the only eighth grader with a license. It wouldn’t matter what he did or didn’t do. As reckless as he was with his life, Marissa was equally as reckless with her adoration of him but life has a way of pulling things apart.

“Ms. H! Can I go to my locker?”
“No Adam, you can’t.”
“Ms. H, I don’t know the answer to that question but you look pretty in blue, you know that?”
“Thank you Adam.”

Halfway through her first year of teaching Adam got in trouble with the police. She heard him bragging about it to his followers and she saw the secret fascination, the worship set in their eyes. His mother conferenced with her to discuss his medicine and doctor’s visits. She was strained and tired but when Adam walked up her face softened. He was her baby, it was obvious to Marissa the poor woman was at a loss and totally in love with her son regardless.

Her shiny white cabinets had graffiti on them by April. The books no longer neatly lined but tossed in upside down and sideways, the vinyl lettered names tattered and torn. She was grading papers. Was that an “a” or a “c”? Adam specialized in writing down two letters, erasing and repeating until it arguably could be both. Adam specialized in blurring the lines.

“Marissa! What are you doing here?”
“Hey Kevin, Michael brought me, said I had to try this place out.”
“It’s not your kind of place. I’ll see you later.”
She had smiled, patted his arm which he had jerked away and then walked over to Michael and told him Kevin was there. Michael went over and spoke to him, shook his hand and returned so that they could dance. He leaned in and whispered, “He’s dealing. I heard he was a cop and here he is selling me stuff!”
A few hours later Michael told her, it was bunk. Kevin’s stuff hadn’t done a thing. They left. Marissa drove Michael home and then went to her boyfriend’s house to visit. She was nineteen. All of that night as Colin talked or tried to kiss her, she was trying to reconcile Kevin before and Kevin after. “What happened?” she wondered distractedly.

Somehow he had become her due North and she became lost without him. She didn’t want to marry him, she just desperately yearned to run into him at the store and hug him, message him on Facebook, drive by his mom’s house and see Kevin’s kids in the yard playing one day. Adam could have been his son for all the similarities. With that realization her eyes flooded up with tears. She choked them back quietly and blinked it all away noticing the blurred lines of sky and sun. The yellow gold warmth poured over her shoulders while the powder blue sky’s wind exhaled soft sighs, leaving chill bumps over her.
Kevin. Adam. Adam. Kevin. For an entire school year the parallels had consumed her. Marissa began to wonder, if she talked to Kevin, what would he tell her to do with Adam? What advice would he have?

“Marissa-issa!”
“Kevin? Are you drunk?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“How did you get my number?”
“Your dad gave it to me.”
“Really? My dad gave you my number?”
“Yes ma’m, told him I was Michael.” The laughter erupted, except it didn’t bubble up anymore. It was a stuttering laugh, unsure of itself.
“How are you, Kevin?”
“Not so very good but I wanted to tell you something important.”
“Okay.”
“I think I might have loved you a lot. I think, I wish I would have kissed you.” There was total silence. No punch line. No laughter.
“Kevin, I would have liked that, a kiss, but…”
“Don’t say it. I’ve never been good enough for you. I’ve known that the whole time, I’m a mess. I just needed to say it, okay?”
“You were plenty good enough. I always thought I wasn’t good enough for you.”
“Marissa-issa, you are smarter than that. He slurred. You are the only good thing I was ever attracted to.”
“Kevin, are you okay?”
He blurted out a short, terse laugh and cursed under his breath. “I’ve got to go Marissa. I’m as okay as I was ever going to get, I guess. I love you Issa, always will. Don’t believe everything you hear about me, okay?”

He hung up after that.

Two days later Michael’s mom had called. She said that Kevin had overdosed night before last and that the funeral would be the next day. Marissa stood in shock and did everything she was supposed to do. Sent a card to his parents, went to the funeral and to this day she lay one flower on his grave every year on top of this hill, nestled under a giant oak tree. All the facts aside there were some days that she thought he’d show up around some corner, freckles and dimples, floppy hair.

“Kevin, he’s just like you. What can I do?” She said out loud over his grave.
There was no answer of course and no whisper in the wind to tell her.
May came, and as it went, her students had matured by almost a year. The girls were prepubescent and the boys pretended to be. Kayli still cried over everything, Angela would always know the right answers, Devon would always find a way to scrape, cut, twist or break some part of his body and Chandler would always be the quiet one that never spoke out loud. Adam would always be a thief. He stole hearts, collected them and never brought them back, just like Kevin. She met with his mom one last time, they brought Adam in at the end of the meeting and she told him looking him in his eyes,

“Adam, despite the trouble you have been in I want you to know that I have loved being your teacher, more than you could ever know. I’m always here for you.” To which he replied with an enormous smile,

“I know that Ms. H, that’s why you are everybody’s favorite teacher, you are nice.”

“I’m not being nice Adam and I’m not just everybody’s teacher I am your teacher. You have problems, you come tell me, got it?”

“Yes, ma’m. Thank you.”

“Thank you Adam, for being you.”

His laughter gurgled up and around the room, padding the rough cinderblock walls and Marisssa finally understood why. He didn’t believe her.

“I mean it Adam, I’m glad you are you. I wouldn’t want you any other way.” she said staring him directly in the eye.

His laughter stopped abruptly. He looked at her and a shy smile that only allowed a glimmer of silver braces to be seen held back the dimples.

“Thank you Ms. H. Ditto.”

And then he was gone. She sighed and packed up her stuff. She turned to look at her room, she loved it more this day than she ever had on the first day. She had come in here ready to teach and fix these kids. They had taught and fixed her instead.