Teacher's Pet

“No, no, I can do it. I’m just really relieved that you’re being so cool about this!” And he laughed, and I could tell that he’d thought I was going to take it much worse than I had.

21.

Tessa

After Lindsey and I were done with classes for the day, we went to the library to do some work. I finished reading Beloved for my feminist fiction class and then I wrote out a bullet list of everything that I had due. There was no way I was going to be able to write two different articles for submission to the Daily Journal, so I’d just write the one and send it to that email address and hope that it was the last time that person would ever be in contact with me.

“What’s that?” Lindsey asked, looking over at my notebook.

“It’s just all the shit I have to try to finish before the end of the semester.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Damn, that’s a lot. I was freaking out because I have two papers to finish.”

I sighed. “I wish I had just two. I’ve got a start on pretty much everything, excep

t the article.”

“You should write something totally ridiculous,” she said. “Something like . . . oh, I don’t know, maybe something like what it says about your personality if you hang the toilet paper over the roll or under the roll.”

I laughed. “I don’t think so. What does it say about your personality, though?”

“I have no clue! It’s totally ridiculous. But it would serve that person right, whoever the hell they are. You could just make something up.”

“Maybe I should.”

“It could be something like you’d read in The Onion.”

“Except those articles are actually funny. Whoever sent this doesn’t deserve something that people are going to like. I’ll think of something.”

When Lindsey and I were done studying, we packed up our stuff. She had parked in the smaller north parking lot, so we went opposite directions after we left the library. I dug through my purse for my phone to text Leo and see if he was still here or if he’d already left for the day. I tapped at the screen as I walked along, glancing up every so often to make sure I didn’t run into something.

I heard some commotion, and as I rounded the corner into the main quad, I saw that there was a group of people hanging out by the benches. It was Nick, Seth, and a bunch of their friends.

They were horsing around, and Nick shoved Seth, and Seth shoved him back, and then Nick tackled him, and they both went sprawling. They were laughing as they hit the ground, throwing their backpacks off their shoulders so they could really try to get each other into a headlock or something. Seth’s backpack was open, though, and when it hit the ground, his stuff spilled out; a spiral notebook, a three-ring binder, a few textbooks. The wind caught some of the loose papers and they spiraled away. I made a grab for one, but it skittered just out of reach; I stomped my foot down on another stapled bunch right as it crossed my path.

“Hey!” I said. “Your shit’s blowing away!”

They stopped and Nick looked right at me. “Did you just offer to blow me?” he yelled, and his friends cracked up.

Seth seized the moment and pounced on him, and they went back to wrestling. I picked up the paper and was about to grab for another when the words on the page happened to catch my attention. Civic engagement is a crucial component of a healthy, functioning democracy.

I kept reading, the words familiar, even though it was Seth’s name at the top of the paper. I had written this! This was the second paper I had written for whoever it was that had been sending me those letters. I stopped reading and stared at the two of them, who had all but forgotten about me. Seth had sent those letters? It seemed impossible. He was probably the last person on earth I would’ve ever suspected of doing something like that. But the proof was right there.

“Tessa!” Nick yelled. Seth still had him in a headlock. “Come on; join us!”

More laughter ensued. Some of the guys looked in my direction to see if I was actually going to take Nick up on his offer, but when I didn’t move, they looked back to Seth and Nick. No one seemed to notice that I had the paper in my hands, and no one said a thing when I walked away with it.

I hurried to my car, and when I got in, I threw my backpack into the passenger seat, and I read the whole paper. My words seemed almost unrecognizable to me, but they were most certainly the words I had written, despite the fact that it was Seth’s name at the top.

I put the paper down on my backpack. What was I supposed to do? Go back and confront him? What would I say? My stomach muscles clenched. If Seth was the one that had been sending those emails, then it meant that he also knew about Leo and me. But how? How the hell had he figured that out?

I decided not to confront him about it, at least not right now, when he was with all of his friends. I got my keys out of my purse and I saw that Leo had texted back. He was out doing some errands, but he’d be back to the apartment in a little while, and was there anything special I wanted for dinner tonight?

Whatever you get is fine, I typed back. I wanted to call him and tell him right then and there, but I decided to wait. It wasn’t the sort of news I wanted to break to him over the phone, when he was standing in line at the grocery store.

As I drove, I wracked my brain trying to figure out how it was that Seth could have found out about Leo and me. Seth barely even noticed me; the only reason he knew I existed was because Nick and I had been seeing each other. Or at least, that’s what I had always assumed.

Maybe I should email him, at the anonymous email address he’d set up. I know it’s you, Seth, I’d write, and I’m not going to write any more of your damn papers!