He shakes his head, gives me a hate-filled look. I watch him turn, open the glass door and walk off into the night.
Ryan
I slip into the botanical gardens when the fog is thick. The bushes are wet and I can hardly make out the colors of the flowers because the mist is so dense. I chose this morning to come here because of the fog. No one else is around. Who visits a garden on a cool, foggy October day? I'm eighteen now, technically all grown up. Even my father thinks of me as grown. He gave me a car when I started my senior year. A long time coming, to my way of thinking.
Dad quit his job and took another one where he doesn't have to travel. He blames himself in part for what happened to me, but we're both in therapy, and according to Dr. Wehrenberg, Dad got so angry because he was supposed to be my “protector.” He was supposed to keep me safe, but Lori caught him off guard and made him feel as if he wasn't doing his job as a father. The doc also says that Dad hasn't ever really forgiven Mom for choosing death over staying alive and being married to him.
Therapy is helping Dad, but I'm bored with all the psychobabble, so I sit and nod and pretend I care. Mom killed herself. It happened. Ancient history. I grew up, went after something I wanted. No one seems to get that part.
I pass a clump of yellow mums and on impulse pick several to make a bouquet. I ignore the sign saying DO NOT PICK FLOWERS. I want them and I'm in the habit of taking what I want. No one gets that, either.
Sometimes I think about Honey. She's moved to another neighborhood, and I've heard she's going to some private all-girls school. I never saw her again after that night we talked in her basement, but I'm over being mad at her. Sometimes I miss her—not her, exactly, but the old days when we were kids and hanging out together. She was right about society having a double standard for men and women— the courts are way harder on male teachers who sex it up with girl students than on female teachers who nail guys.
Lori went to jail, but not for long. Turns out that sixteen is the age of consent in Georgia, so the system could only get her for having sex with me when I was fifteen. She got a good lawyer and a sympathetic judge, who was, according to my dad, “an old fart who fell for her good looks,” and she only got six months' jail time and nine months' probation and instructions to stay away from me. She can't teach school ever again.
Another thing I've learned is that high school girls who sleep around are considered easy—unless they do it for true love, of course; then it's permissible. But a guy can have sex with lots of girls, without using true love as an excuse, and he's considered experienced. That's the way it's been for me these past two years at school.
I told Dad I wanted to stay at McAllister, and he let me. At first, every time I walked down the hall, heads turned and the whispering started. My attorney and my shrink said “talk to no one,” but everyone knows about “that guy Ryan who was nailing his hot teacher.” I'm a recovering victim to my teachers, a hero in the eyes of guys at my school, bad-boy attractive to girls who want to try me out. No use wasting good publicity.
I remember telling Lori that she was my first. Girls like hearing that. I don't know why. The truth is, she wasn't my first. The story I told about the girl in the closet was mostly true except for the part about her crying and begging off. She didn't. We went all the way, and I'm telling you, sex inside a cramped closet is no thrill. Not like being with Lori in her bed. There were a couple of others before Lori, but there's no reason to detail them.
A guy has to know how to pick the right girls, though. Zero in on the shy ones, the low-profile and needy ones—except when handed a license by circumstance to take any girl you want. Like the license I was handed when the truth came out about me and Lori. I even hooked up briefly with Jordan Leslie, the senior cheerleading queen on the rebound from Lars.
My dad, my shrink, the cops, the press, all say the same thing about Lori. “She's a predator.” “She's a child molester.” Can't say I agree, because I don't feel like a victim.
Thinking back, I set out to be seduced by Lori. From the first time I saw her, I wanted to get something going between us. I never thought it would actually happen, but I sure wanted it to. Turned out we both wanted the same thing—each other. I was honked when I found out I wasn't her first boy lover. But I got my head around it after a few sessions with Doc Wehrenberg. I learned that Lori was sexually abused by her father. Her mother knew but didn't protect her. Classic breeding ground for her obsession with young boys, the doc says. “It's about control, not sex,” he told me. Whatever.
Doc Wehrenberg also explained that Lori is bipolar—something her attorney used in court to her advantage. She suffers from depression and then swings into manic high gear. I've seen that part with my own eyes. But Lori's taking meds now, and they're supposed to be helping her control her moods.
My shrink believes Lori was a mother substitute in my life. Get real! Lori was hot, beautiful, and I wanted to have sex with her. Sneaking around with her pumped me up and gave me a kind of excitement I'd never had before. Sometimes I think shrinks must have their heads up their butts. I guess Doc Wehrenberg has to tie up all the loose ends to make the pieces fit, but he's not really getting who I am. No one knows the real Ryan, and I'm not about to let my guard down.
I agree with my shrink about one thing, though. In the end it all comes down to power—who has it, who can use it to their advantage to get what they want. Power is everything, and when you have power over someone, it makes you strong and in control.
I wind my way through the foggy paths to the Memory Garden, where statues of nymphs and cherubs line beds of rosebushes. My heart's pounding, wondering if she'll really be here. Then, on a bench far at the back of a place marked CONTEMPLATION AREA, I see her. Her head's covered with a scarf and she's wearing a black coat. Her legs are crossed and she has a book open on her lap. A ruse, I know. She's come to meet me. A risky move on her part, but she's come because I asked her to.
We've been in contact for over a year, but no one knows it. We've exchanged e-mails all this time, but this is our first meeting. I wasn't sure she'd really be here, but when I think about it, she doesn't have anyone else—no family, no friends, no job—and all because of me. Sure, life would be different if I hadn't gotten involved with her, but I did and I'm not one bit sorry. As a bonus, she says she still loves me. Do I love her? Well, I love knowing she needs me. I love knowing I have power and control this time. “Symbiosis”—the interdependence of two separate kinds of organisms. I paid attention in biology, so I recognize it when I see it happening.
Lori tugs her coat more tightly around her. She's cold. I can hardly wait to warm her up. Power surges through me like an electrical charge.
I know what I want. I want Lori. I've wanted her from day one, when she stood in front of our class and our eyes connected. It took months of flirting, talking, sneaking off together to the coffeehouse, participating in special projects, making sure I was always available, before the inevitable happened.
We've been separated for three years now. Lori's been called every detestable name there is. According to the “why don't they mind their own business” experts, I'm still considered a kid, a victim who needs to recover from Lori's sexual exploitation of me. Recover from what? I'm just fine.
In seconds, we'll be together again. It's our destiny. Lori has no one else. She's bound to me, and this time I'll be in the driver's seat. She'll give me anything I want. And I'll make sure she never deserts me. Mom checked out when I was two, but this is about me and Lori and the way she makes me feel, the sense of power I have when I'm with her. I never, ever connected Lori with my mother. Lori was connected to getting my rocks off. She taught me things, did things to me and with me that no high school girl would have done.
Just before I step out of the fog, I relish the fire of anticipation blazing through me, just the way it felt the first time Lori took me to her bed. Watching her through the mist, I can't help wondering—which of us is the predator and which the prey?
