Chapter 25
I stand off to the side, watching, enveloped by a blanket of catatonia. I prefer anxiety to this. At least anxiety is active. Has a sense of urgency to it. Feels alive and real, like it matters. This feels like nothing, like death.
It’s the second week that I haven’t seen him.
I stayed after class a few days ago to get info from the hook-nosed sub.
All he said was that he heard Mr. Korgy was out for “personal reasons.” I tried to push as subtly as I could, to not sound obsessed, to keep the questions as standard as possible and my tone as even as possible.
I asked if he’d heard if Mr. Korgy was okay, or when he was coming back, but Mr. Condren said they don’t tell him much around here.
“I’m just a sub,” he shrugged.
The numbness settled in and hasn’t left since.
“Waldo, would you take our picture?” Frannie asks. “Before we get all sweaty from the dance floor.”
I snap photos of her and Tristan flanked by balloon arches, standing in front of a big banner with Winter Formal scrawled across it in cursive.
They look sweet and wholesome and an uncomfortable amount of related.
Frannie scrolls through the pictures and asks me to take a couple more “to not cut off the Winter Formal banner” but it’s actually so she can favor the good side she pretends to be above having.
Eventually the air grows thick with sweat and hormones and the moves start to get more suggestive. Everyone’s gyrating except Frannie and Tristan, who leave room for Jesus between them, which makes them look even more related.
“Hey Waldo!” I hear someone say, loud above the music. I turn to face a tall boy with messy hair and floppy limbs who I only vaguely recognize due to his forgettable face—not unattractive but bland, like a paper plate or a packet of cream of wheat with no toppings. Just…there.
“Mr. Korgy’s class, right?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah,” I shout back.
“Nolan,” he says.
“Hi.”
“Kinda spooky, huh?” he asks. “That he’s just gone? Where do ya think he went?”
“I don’t know. Have you heard anything? Do you have any idea?” I ask, too quickly.
“Nope,” he says casually. “Jake said he might’ve killed himself but I was like, there’s no way. That’d be on the news for sure.”
“So what then?” I ask, my throat clenching. “What do you think happened?”
“Who knows, guess we’ll see,” Nolan says. “So why aren’t you dancing? Cuz the music’s bad or cuz your moves are bad?”
“Both.”
“Ah, well damnit. If it was cuz your moves are bad, I was gonna suggest that you dance with me, because your moves couldn’t possibly be worse than mine.”
“Too bad it’s both then,” I shrug. It’s not the kindest rejection, but it’s what I have energy for and at least I’m not wasting his time. His efforts are better served somewhere else.
I head in the opposite direction, heaving open the double doors. A heavyset chaperone asks where I’m headed, over-policing because a high school dance is the one place in his life he gets to exercise authority.
“Restroom,” I say over my shoulder.
“There’s a closer one the other way,” he says, puffing out his chest.
“I could use a walk.”
“Fine,” he says with an I’ll-allow-it nod. “But hurry back.”
I turn at the end of the hallway and keep walking until I get to Mr. Korgy’s classroom door. Inside it’s dark. I twist the cold steel doorknob.
I had hoped it would smell like him but instead it just smells like pencil shavings and chalk.
Any ordinary classroom. Not his classroom.
I want to feel his classroom. I want to feel him.
I touch his desk. His Bic pens. His earth-toned paper clips.
His mechanical pencils. His Magic Rub erasers and bright yellow highlighters, his ruled paper and hole punchers and the paper circles that rain out from them.
I touch the arms of his chair, caressing the balding leather that his elbows have rubbed against so many times.
I lean down and breathe in the chair, then the back of the chair, and then the seat of it.
“Waldo?”
His silhouette looms in the doorway. He steps forward and lets the door shut behind him. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t move.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
I look at him for a long beat. I will something to come out of my mouth but nothing does.
He gives me a look. Aren’t you gonna say something?
I can’t tell what’s underneath it. Irritation?
Intrigue? Yearning? I hate that he can do this, that he can block me from him like this, seal himself off and become unreadable when I’m always so glaring, so obvious, so transparent. I clear my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
“I’m here to catch up on work,” he says slowly, almost melodically. “I’m very behind. I’ve been gone for two weeks.”
He takes a step toward me. It’s confident. Measured. Almost graceful. He’s completely in control.
“Your turn,” he says, taking another step toward me. “Why are you in my classroom, Waldo?”
I don’t have an answer for him.
“You should get back to the dance,” he says, his tone even.
“I don’t want to go back to the dance.”
“You need to.”
“Have you been avoiding me?”
“What?”
“Is that why you disappeared?”
“It had nothing to do with you.”
“Why have you been gone then? Where have you been?”
“It’s…my dad died,” he says finally as he leans against his desk. “We knew it was coming. He wasn’t in great health. Didn’t take care of himself. Still. It was a shock.”
“Are you alright?” I ask.
“Yes, yeah, I’m…pushing through. More than anything, I needed to be there for my mom.”
He pulls a mechanical pencil from his cup holder and clicks the eraser tip. Then again. Then again. “Now get back to the dance, alright?”
“Can I hug you first?”
“What?”
“Can I hug you? Then I’ll go back to the dance. I just want to comfort you. I want to help you feel better.”
He doesn’t respond, which I take as a yes.
I step toward him and hug him but he doesn’t move, so I lift his arms and extend them to wrap around me.
His sweat stains press against me, bleeding through the armpits of his button-down.
I run my hands along his back and rest my head on his chest, breathing him in.
We stay here, suspended in each other’s arms.
And then I feel him grow. Now I know. Undeniably.
He wants me. Or at least his body does. Maybe his mind feels guilty about it, tangled up in morals and society and everything else.
But his body wants mine. And mine wants his.
And bodies don’t overthink and worry and analyze and doubt. Bodies just do.
I push his shoulders down so he sits in his chair, then I crawl into his lap and drape my legs over his, straddling him.
“Waldo, get off me.”
“I can’t,” I say, shaking my head.
“Please, Waldo…”
“You’re hard for me,” I whisper into his ear.
He leans his head back, agony tearing through him.
He shuts his eyes and shoots his breath out, resisting, or trying to, but he grows even harder.
Emboldened by his bulge, I trace his ear.
Cup his face. Run my hands through his hair.
He’s lined up underneath me and throbbing with heat, desperate to be free. I reach down to help.
“No, no,” he says.
“Please let me.”
“No,” he repeats, more sternly this time. He breaks away and touches his mouth, stunned. I grab his hand and put his finger in my mouth and suck on it while I look into his beautiful blue eyes. Into his sad, sad soul.
“Are you sure about that, Mr. Korgy?” I ask, licking his finger while I grind on him slowly. He’s so hard it hurts.
“Yes. Yeah. I’m—Jesus, Waldo. I’m sure. We…can’t,” he says.
“Look at me,” I order, teasing him with my rhythm.
“Waldo—”
“Aren’t you gonna look at me, Mr. Korgy?”
“I-I can’t,” he says. “Please, Waldo—”
“I want you to look at me.”
“Waldo, please get off me—”
“No,” I say, rocking on him. Picking up my pace. “Just like you can’t look at me, I can’t get off of you. Because I see that you’re hurting and all I want is to make you feel good.”
A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead. “Slow down, Waldo.”
“Call me baby.”
“I, I ca—”
“Call me baby.”
“Slow down, baby.”
“I can’t slow down. I want you to know how much I need you,” I say, sliding myself down the length of him, then again, then again. “I…need…you,” I whisper.
“Fuck…” he moans, his expression shifting from ecstasy to surrender to shock.
“Oh god,” he says. “Oh god.”
A surge of heat. A convulsion. A small wet patch shines through his khakis.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”