My office hours and the evening classes had ended an hour ago. I sat
alone in the suite of cubicles that I had shared with others of the
part time science facility. Stillness hung in the building. It was
the special feeling that an empty building has in the evening, most
likely nothing real, an artifact of imagination.
An article photocopied from a journal ages ago lay to the left of my
battered laptop. A cup of lukewarm tea cooled still further on the
right. A sleeve of Girl Scout short breads spilled out on the desk. I
struggled with a suitably synonym to break the serviceable but
monotonous prose of my dissertation.
The sound of the wind outside through the bare branches mixed with
the hum of the ventilators. They blended to fill the quiet between
the rustle as I turned pages in my search for the best word. The
knock on the door barely competed with the sounds of the silence.
After a pause where I wondered if I had really heard it, the person
repeated the soft rap on the door. My fear confirmed, I stood to
weave my way to the door. I cursed softly. My open times where I
taught high school was spend grading mountains of homework. My
roommates succeeded in their efforts to distract me at home.
I opened the door to a student, not the absent-minded colleague I
had expected. Her plain face burst into a wide mouthed smile. Her
large brown eyes, made larger still by the thick lenses of her
glasses, glanced down to my hands.
“Is that for me?” she asked, pointing at the thesaurus in my hands,
giggling like she had made a joke. She laughed outright when it was
clear I had no clue about what was funny about her question. “Are you
busy?”
“Not really.” I gestured her inside. “I guess I can help you for a
moment.”
She thanked me, then stepped in from the hall, and followed me back
to my cubicle. After I sat down, she dropped he book bag on the floor
next to the chair reserved for students. She moved the chair up
closer to the desk. She sat. Our knees nearly touched.
“So.” I couldn’t remember her name, but I remembered her from class.
“How can I help you?”
I don’t need any help.” She took a cookie from the desk. “I was
passing by after they closed the library. I saw your light and
thought I’d say hello.”
“Oh,” I said with a sigh. “I really don’t have time to chat. I’ve
been working on my dissertation.”
She looked at the cookie and then placed it back on the desk. With
an apology, she stood and left. I went back to my work. I picked up
the cookie and bit into it. Her name, I remembered at last, was Lucy.
That night I knew that I dreamt, but what happened was real. Lucy
sat against the trunk of a maple with flaming red foliage. It was one
tree of many; each with leaves of red, yellow and orange. The ground
was bare except for the normal ground cover and a few leaves that had
already fallen from their branches.
I was still some distance away when she saw me. She stood and waved
at me. With hands in the pockets of the barn jacket I wore, I slowly
made my way to where she waited. The air was crisp and the sky a
clear, happy blue.
I stopped a few feet away from her. She ran the rest of the way. Her
arms wrapped around me and pulled me tight against her. I had a
momentary glance down her shirt before she pressed her cheek against
my chest. She tilted her head to look at me.
“Yay,” she cheered. “You ate the cookie.”
“The cookie?”
She giggled. “It was a special cookie.”
“It was a Girl Scout cookie. A Trefoil.”
She pushed away from me so that we stood an arms-length apart. She
reached up and placed a hand behind my ear. Withdrawing it, she said,
“You don’t mean this one, do you?” Her hand opened to reveal a cookie
identical to all those I ate earlier. She popped it in her mouth. “I
pulled a switch on you this evening. I’m sorry, but I’m a bit of a
witch that way.”
“And all this…?” I waved a hand around at the trees.
“Is magic.”
“I didn’t mean the trick with the cookie.”
“Neither did I. That was just sleight of hand. All of this,” she
waved her hand around us, “I made with real magic. I placed a spell
on a cookie. Fortunately, not only is your weakness for Girl Scout
cookies legendary, but my little sister is a Girl Scout, so I had a
way to get one – our freezer is full of them. The hard part was
making the switch. I’m a lot better with real magic than I am with
illusion.”
“A spell? You placed a spell? On a cookie?”
She nodded.
Her smile told me that she was laughing at me on the inside. It
wouldn’t have been a cruel laughter if it had been vocalized; her
eyes betrayed that much. She shared with my father an indulgent look,
the one I received as a kid when he teased me.
“And that let you invade my mind?” I asked with a look on my face
calculated to present superior disbelief.
Her laugh broke to the surface.
“I’m not inside your head. This is…” She paused, biting her
lower lip and letting her eyes roll up in the time-honored way I’ve
seen students do as they struggled to phrase something they half
understood. “This is someplace outside of us, like the way the real
world is during our wake time. My gran says it’s of mind but not in
mind.”
She plopped down onto the ground, leaning back against the tree.
Her eyes closed. I was forced to stare down into her eyelids or sit
next to her; I chose to sit. She reached her hand out to mine.
“So we are in another dimension?”
“Shit.” Even her swearing seemed somehow cheerful. “You science
geeks are so literal minded. I think it’s from all the Star Trek
that you watch, but if it makes you feel better, yeah it’s like
another dimension. My chemistry teacher was the same way.”
“Your chemistry teacher?”
“Anyway, my gran taught me. Really, I guess she’s still teaching
me, because I really don’t totally understand the theory part, but
I’m really good at the doing part. I’ve been doing this for a long
time. This is my — I guess you’d call it my happy place.”
“Your chemistry teacher,” I tried again to remind her.
“Yeah, like him. We did lots of stuff here.” She tilted her head
to the side. It came to a rest against my shoulder. “I like older
men. I don’t mean old guys, like my dad or his drinking buddies.
Guys like you. With experience but still look nice.
“But you all have some problem with girls my age. I mean, just
’cause of some stupid law or stupid rule, you act like we can’t have
any fun together. But because we’re here, not in the real world, we
can…”
I sighed.
“Lucy, those laws and rules are not stupid. They’re meant to
protect you.”
“I don’t want to be protected, I want to be fucked.”
I heaved another sigh before throwing her hand off mine. I stood
without looking back.
“Sometimes, young lady, it isn’t about what you want,” I said as I
walked away.
I left both Lucy and the tree behind, making my way straight through
the golden forest and back to what I hoped were my own dreams. Her
calls to me were soon lost in the distance.
Time and most of a week passed. Homework got graded. Under the
expert guidance of my roommate, beer was drunk. And another Tuesday
made a slow march to evening and then my weekly lecture. Lucy waited
at the front of the room when I entered. Our eyes met for an instant.
She smiled and lifted her hand in greeting.
I nodded to her as I organized my overheads for the lesson. The
chairs filled themselves to the point that they mostly got to. I
began to speak. Some listened. Others stared off into the air behind
me as if they were the victims of some stage hypnotist. Still others
had their eyes shut; I imagined snores escaping them. Lucy, I
noticed, was among the first group.
I spoke in a mindless manner I sometimes find myself in with
material that is overly familiar. That left part of my mind able to
scan the students. Lucy seemed not to notice that I wasn’t giving my
full attention to the lecture. She followed my movements as I droned
on. Her legs didn’t even have the nervous movements under her skirt
that most of the others had.
I looked a moment at her legs, before focusing myself back to the
lecture. I found myself again looking at her after a few overhead
sheets. I glanced at her legs then moved up to her face and her dark
eyes. She didn’t seem to notice that I stared into them longer than
I should. I pulled my attention back to the lecture.
When I finished, Lucy tapped the girl next to her, a young blonde
with a cheek against her notebook, in time for both to copy the
reading assignment I gave out. As she bent over to her neighbor, I
got a good look down her top. I turned away to one of the students
who had a question for me.
There is always a couple or so who come up after the class with
something they were too frightened to ask in front of everyone else.
I answered as best as I could while I cleaned up and put away my
overheads. I pointedly did not look for Lucy. Having satisfied the
last student, I went to the overhead to shut it down for the night.
Off to the side, along the metal bordering the glass, lay a single
Trefoil. I jerked my head up and scanned the classroom, but I was
alone. I glanced back at the cookie, but like earlier with Lucy
herself, I caught myself staring at it. I thought that I should
leave it, but the idea that someone else would eat it stopped me.
Later, I realized that I only needed to throw it in the garbage, but
that was later. I reached down and grasped it. Without any
hesitation, I nibbled at it, savoring the simple goodness of the
shortbread as each crumb melted on my tongue.
That night in my sleep, the leaves were thick on the ground, even
with the limbs still covered with gold. They rustled around my feet
as I walked along straight line to a maple with flame red leaves
sitting square on top of a small hill. It was an obvious landmark
and therefore an obvious signal; I was surprised to not find her
waiting beneath it.
I waited instead.
A patch of thick, green grass strangely bare of leaves surrounded
the silver trunk of the tree. I sat down with my legs straight out
from my body and leaned against the smooth bark. The grass made a
nice cushion for my behind. The breeze was soft and almost warm.
Closing my eyes, I turned my face up into a sunbeam that found its
way through the canopy.
I could see why this was a special place for Lucy.
If I weren’t already asleep, I would have drifted away as I
listened. It was absolutely silent. I couldn’t even make out the
sound of wind through the branches or the rustling of the leaves,
both on the ground and those still clinging above. I sat there for a
long time before I heard footsteps in the leaves.
They came behind me, growing louder as she moved closer to me and
our meeting place. I rolled my head to the side. Just as I opened
my eyes, Lucy appeared around the tree. She smiled.
“You came.”
I nodded.
“I didn’t think you would.”
I gave her a moment to sit next to me. She sat several inches away
from me. She didn’t look at me. She stared at her feet.
“If you didn’t expect me why did you give me the cookie?”
“I hoped.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I like you,” she said in a small voice. I nodded, but she didn’t
notice anything but her feet. “I like you a lot. You’re exactly the
type of guy I’ve always wanted.”
“Thanks. In a way, I’m flattered, but I’d think that you would want
someone closer to your age.”
“Why would that matter?” Her voice held a little heat. She also
turned to look at me. “It’s not like you’re old enough to be my dad.
And it’s not like I don’t like guys my age. I do, but I like you
better.”
After a sigh, she continued, “You really get into it when you teach.
You’re excited about it. You’re like my gran about magic. Or some
of the guys I really liked in school. You like what you’re doing.
You don’t just sit around. Gran calls it passion; I guess that’s
what I want.”
“And what about the things you said last time?” I said with a snort.
“You told me you liked older men.”
“That was all bullshit,” she answered, with all the stress on the
last word. “I made that crap up, because I wanted you to think… to
think that it was okay and that I was grown up.”
I placed a hand on her shoulder. When she frowned, I gave her a
reassuring grin. She turned away.
“Seducing teachers hardly proves that you’re mature. Girls who make
a habit of that usually aren’t.” I shook my head. “And anyone who
would fall for that wouldn’t treat you the way you want. That type
of teacher only wants you because they’re getting an easy piece of
tail.
“And to be honest, I thought you were after something like a better
grade or a chance to slack the rest of the term. However you say it,
I felt a little insulted that you would think so little of me that
you need to act like a character in a bad porn video.”
“Oh!” She brought her legs against her body. Her arms wrapped
around them, pulling them up tight. “So why’d you come back?”
“Maybe,” I lied, “it was because I like you.”
“Don’t tease me,” she said. Her forehead dropped against her knees,
hiding her face.
“I don’t tease.” I turned my head back up so I could look into the
canopy. It seemed naked; Lucy needed a squirrel or two to watch play
in the branches. “I think you’re cute. I know you’re smart and if
you are a little silly, it’s only because you’re still young. And
it’s a little endearing so I hope you never outgrow it.
“If you weren’t a student, but were, I don’t know, someone I met in
a coffee shop, I’d be all over you. But you are a student and I don’t
mess with students.”
“But we could be together here. No one would ever know.”
“Ethics are what you do when no is looking.”
“Classes are over in a month. We could get together in the real…”
“Lucy, you’d still be a student at the college. Maybe not mine, but
that doesn’t matter as long as I teach there. It would be unfair to
you and to other students. Even if it didn’t influence anything,
it’d still be wrong.” She looked up with a gleam in her eye. “And
no, you can’t just drop out. You have a future to look out for.”
With a sad sigh, she turned away again. A tear ran down her cheek.
We sat together in silence. In time and without a word, she stood
and walked away. I got up and watched; she never looked back.
Happy that I solved our problem, I went home to my own dreams.
The remainder of the semester flew and turned into the next. I saw
each of the last four classes. She lost some of the interest she had
before, but her grades stayed high. After that, I saw her in passing
in the halls evenings. Our individual classes met near each other
and I would look for her. She waved at me, but that was it. I felt
sad that I could not return to the status of favorite teacher, but
things were for the best.
After a while, she warmed to what she once was. Once we chatted as
we waited in line at the cafeteria. I had just gotten an offer from
the college to teach full time. She too had good news. She had been
accepted to transfer with a scholarship to State University. I gave
her a list of professors to avoid.
She thanked me with a tight hug.
I spent the summer locked away. I spent my days in front of the
computer, sitting around in my underwear. I drank an ungodly volume
of coffee. By the start of the new term, I somehow managed enough
pages to send a draft to my advisor at State University.
I walked into the room on the first day of my first term teaching
college full time. As I moved to the front of class, part of the
students brought themselves to attention. The rest waited for the
signals that I was starting to speak as they continued their
conversation. Someone had the confused expression of the lost and
waited to hear the class title. I placed my notes on the wooden
lectern set a top the old desk next to the overhead projector.
Inside the lectern, hidden from the class, was a box of Trefoils.
I gave a start, then paused before reaching for the box. There was
a note. I didn’t read it but saw that she had signed it. I returned
it and turned my attention to my class. It was short, shorter than I
had planned. I told them my expectations, passed around a syllabus,
and sent them out. I chased out the few who came up as fast as I
could. When they had left, I retrieved the box.
“Come see me. Love, Lucy.” I read as I tore open the box. The
cookie lasted two bites.