3. Quentin
Chapter three
Quentin
The bell rang. I turned away from the blackboard and toward my students. “Okay, guys, before you bolt out, grab your graded assignments from last week.”
The ninth graders got up from their blue plastic chairs, chatting and laughing, shoes squeaking on the grey linoleum floor, as they walked by my desk, where I handed them back their homework.
“Great job on the conclusion, Hannah.”
“Thank you, Mr. Avery.”
“James, here’s yours. Fantastic work, as ever. Carson, well done. Alex… I can tell you wrote this in a hurry.”
The blond boy grinned sheepishly.
“Don’t skirt so close to the deadline next time. I know you can do better,” I said before handing over the paper.
“It was an emergency, Mr. Avery. Really!”
“Of course it was. Now, get out. Enjoy the sunny weather.”
“You, too, Mr. A!”
“Bye, Mr. Avery! ”
The last student shuffled out of my social studies classroom. I cleared the blackboard and collected my things. Outside the window, the sun was shining brightly, not a cloud in sight—an unusually hot day for May. I didn’t enjoy the early summer heat nearly as much as my teenage students. I preferred long sleeves to hide the scars on my arms, but that made me sweat, and sweat hurt and itched on my damaged skin.
I left the classroom and made my way through Brightwater High School, past the rows of dark-blue lockers, toward the parking lot.
Students greeted me left and right. The academic year was drawing to a close, the new students had gotten used to the way I looked and I could walk through the hallways unbothered. In a few months, after the summer break, that would change. New freshmen would pour through those doors and into my classroom and they would stare and whisper. They always did. I’d gotten used to it. I was in my eleventh year as a teacher, and the initial awkwardness when entering a new classroom no longer bothered me because I knew the kids would get used to the sight of me eventually.
I got into my car, turned on the AC, and opened the first two buttons of my shirt, massaging the sore skin where the shirt collar had rubbed against my scars. The radio played a love song, an oldie from the nineties that I remembered from my youth, when love still had been part of my life.
I reached my apartment fifteen minutes later and pulled the car into my parking spot. As I unbuckled the seat belt, I noticed unusual activity on the staircase. It looked like two people were trying to push a mattress up the narrow stairs to the second floor. One of them was Leah, Arlene Miller’s granddaughter, who lived on the same floor as me. The other one was a red-haired woman I’d never seen before—my new neighbor, probably .
The apartment next to mine had been vacant since Lawrence Johnson had moved to a retirement home two months before. I watched the woman throwing her weight against the mattress, trying to squeeze the unruly thing up the stairs. She was on the younger side, early thirties maybe. And she was very attractive. Even from my car, I could tell. She had a pretty face and a well-shaped body, and I’d always been a fan of red hair, not that it mattered much. I tried to be polite with my neighbors, but I kept to myself otherwise. As long as this woman was quiet and clean enough to not draw rats to the building, I was content.
The mattress slipped from Leah’s grip, and she cursed loudly.
I got out of my car. The two weren’t making much progress, so offering my assistance was the right thing to do.
As I approached, my new neighbor turned her head. She noticed me… and recoiled.
She immediately tried to compose herself and gave me a forced smile and a nod, but her politeness could not hide the disgust completely. I was so used to that response, I understood why people reacted that way. I owned a mirror, after all. But it still hurt, and coming from a beautiful woman, it hurt a little worse than usual. Her reaction made me lose all interest in pushing that mattress up the stairs. Instead, I quickly nodded back and turned around, fleeing back to my car. Maybe she thought I’d forgotten something on the back seat, or maybe she saw through me and realized I was just being rude. I didn’t care, as long as I got away from her judgmental gaze.