Bad Teacher

“Let’s go,” I say, clearing my throat, and I turn out of the parking lot and drive off.

I bring her to her place, not mine. I think she needs something familiar now, something where she’ll feel at ease. When we’re in her room, she sits down on her bed and stares at me with eyes that remind me of death.

I clear my throat again. “Well, I’ll be going then.”

As I turn around, she says, “Stay. Please.”

I sigh, look down at my shoes, and think it over.

Should I?

This is a dorm room, and I’m her teacher.

I shouldn’t be anywhere near this place, let alone be alone with her. Yet how could I leave? Not when she begs me like that.

“Are you sure? This is your place. Not mine. I don’t … belong here.”

“But I do, and you belong with me.” Her words strangle me, suffocate me with a kind of love I can’t ignore. “Like I belong to you,” she continues. “Right?”

I don’t respond.

I don’t even know how.

“Can you stay? For me?” she asks.

For a moment, I let my head rest against the door.

It’s too late to turn the knob and open it.

It’s too late to run.

I already made my choice long ago.

With a soft smile on my face, I turn around and walk toward her. I sit down beside her on her bed, which feels like it might collapse under my weight. I bobble around on it, and she looks at me funnily.

“Quite a bed,” I say. “You sleep in this?”

“Every day,” she says, crawling up her bed further and pulling up her legs so she can hug them.

“Hmm …” I turn my head toward her. “I think it’s due for an upgrade.”

She laughs. “Really? That’s what you’re gonna say?”

“Well, I just think you deserve a better night’s sleep. That’s all.”

“Right … well, I don’t have the money for that, as much as I’d like to.”

“I do.”

She frowns, then blushes as I smile at her.

Maybe I can buy her one sometime.

“So … how are you feeling?” I ask. “Does it hurt anywhere?”

“No, but I do feel like shit,” she says. “Mostly because of the alcohol.”

“How much did you have to drink?”

“Too much …” She shakes her head like she can’t believe she did that.

“Why?” I ask.

Her face turns sour. “I don’t know …”

“Yes, you do,” I muse, looking at her directly. “You just don’t want to tell me.”

“Maybe,” she says after a while.

The silence is deafening, and I put my arm around her shoulder and pull her close. A single tear rolls down her cheek, and I lift my finger to her face to wipe it off. I hate to see her cry. Hate seeing her hurt, no matter in what way, but it chews at my heart.

“You can tell me,” I whisper, hugging her close.

“I don’t like talking about it,” she says, looking frustrated. “Especially not to …”

“Strangers?”

“But you’re not a stranger.”

I cup her chin and caress her softly. “I’m no stranger, and I don’t want to be. You can tell me anything, Hailey. Even the bad stuff.”

She swallows and nods slowly. “It’s my mom’s boyfriend. He called and told me I need to quit college and come back home.”

My eyes widen. “What? Why?”

“Because he’s an asshole and wants me to feel miserable.” She frowns. “He treats my mom and me like shit. Always has.”

“Fuck … What now?”

“I don’t know. Knowing him, he’ll come and get me himself. His threats aren’t empty; that I do know.”

“Jesus …” I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. “Is this what’s been bothering you?”

“Not just this. There’s always something going on in my ‘family.’” She makes quotation marks with her fingers. “If you can call that a family. We haven’t been one since my dad …”

She chokes up.

I caress her back softly, trying to encourage her to speak, even though anger rips me apart. I want to know more about her mom’s boyfriend so I can pound some common sense into him, but I know I need to be here for her now.

“My dad …” she murmurs. “He died when I was just a kid. Cancer. Fuck. Fucking fuck cancer.”

Another tear runs down her cheek. “I still miss him every single day.” She rubs her earrings and stares off into space for a while.

“He gave you those ice-cream earrings?” I ask.

She lifts her head with a surprised look on her face. “Who told you that?”

“You did. In the restaurant, remember?”

“Oh … right. Yeah. My dad gave them to me when I was little. I always used to love getting ice cream with him at a shop right at the corner of our street. I loved it so much that he gave me these as a birthday present. It was such a long time ago, and it was before …”

“Before your mom’s new boyfriend.”