Chapter 10
The first time Mr. Korgy asks me to stay after class, it’s the middle of October, my favorite time of year in Alaska. The days aren’t so short that they’re depressing, or so long that they’re neverending. An appropriate amount of day.
“Thanks for staying, Waldo,” Mr. Korgy says, shutting the door as the last of the stragglers file out.
He takes a seat on the edge of his desk and fiddles with the stem of one of the warty gourds he’s got perched on it. They’re an ugly nod to the season, which I appreciate. More personality than a pumpkin.
“I’m sure you’ve got places to be and people to see,” he says. “I’ll only keep you a sec.”
This is the only place I’ve wanted to be and he’s the only person I’ve wanted to see for the past six weeks since his class started.
Everything since then has been leading up to this.
Every time brushing my teeth, every meatloaf cafeteria lunch with Frannie, every part-time shift at Victoria’s Secret and haphazardly scribbled sticky note I peel off the counter.
Every cardboard frozen-dinner tray and every late-night shopping binge and every sack of sugary candy loaded with colorful food dyes.
Every mundane activity has been plowed through, hurdled over, gone through the motions of, so that I can get to this. The first moment I’m alone with him.
“So,” he says, narrowing his eyes, “I wanted to tell you I really like what you’ve been doing in class.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t thank me. Just being honest,” he shrugs. “Are you always so engaged in school?”
I’m not. I usually scrape by doing the bare minimum, sneaking naps in classes and letting my assignments collect Goldfish cracker dust at the bottom of my backpack.
I don’t even really care about the social aspects—fitting in with this group or that, clutching my pearls over who’s gonna invite me to junior prom.
(It was Paul Bornstein. We had sex in the back of his car.
We both understood through such nonverbal cues as my disgustedly spitting his watery cum into an old Slurpee cup in his center console, and his flirting with Lexi Shepherd the entire night, that it was, undeniably, over between us.)
“Um. I wouldn’t say I’m usually engaged in school. I would say I engage with things that grab my attention.”
“I see. So writing grabs your attention then?”
I can’t tell him that the only reason I’ve taken an interest in writing is because I’ve taken an interest in him. That he is the goal. The objective. That writing is just a means to an end. A chance to impress him, or, better, to connect with him.
“I guess you could say that.”
“Well good,” he says. “You have something a lot of my other students, most of my other students, don’t have. Do you know what that is?”
I shake my head.
“A voice,” he says.
“That’s a rarity,” he says.
“And you have one. You have a strong voice,” he says.
And yet right now, in his presence, I’m unable to say a word.