“Ms. Devereaux,” I said, finally finding my voice. “I hear you loud and clear. Most stories about women don’t neatly fit into a feminist paradigm. This includes Jane Eyre and the other books you mentioned. So let’s talk about that.” I open one arm wide to encompass the entire class. “What do you all think?”
“Just one more thing, Mr. Faulkner,” Marisa said, and the students swiveled their attention back to her. “You all remember watching Much Ado About Nothing last week? Keanu playing some sort of sad pirate villain?” A few chuckles. “There was a line that Beatrice said—I can’t remember the actress, the woman who played Professor Trelawney in the Harry Potter movies …”
“Emma Thompson,” I said.
Marisa nodded. “Yes, thank you. Beatrice has this great line when she’s furious with Claudio for publicly humiliating her cousin. ‘I would eat his heart in the marketplace.’ Now that’s what I’m talking about. If anyone did anything to try and humiliate me, I would eat his heart in the marketplace.” The students applauded, and Marisa smiled and bowed, then gestured to me as if handing back control of the class. The rest of the class went really well, the students buzzing about mixed messages and sexism across texts, but I still felt uneasy about the way Marisa had handled it. And Marisa had embarrassed Sarah Solomon by shutting her down.
I brought this up with Marisa after class, and her eyes grew wide and she seemed upset by the idea that she had distressed Sarah. The next day before class, she pulled Sarah aside and apologized to her. But something about the whole episode stuck with me. Marisa has been doing that kind of thing lately, pushing boundaries. Two days ago, when I passed out essay prompts to my AP students, Marisa was sitting in her usual place at her desk at the back of the room. When I placed the last copy of the essay prompt on her desk so she could better follow along with the class, she took the opportunity to brush her hand up my thigh, deliberately, suggestively. I flinched—I nearly jumped, to be honest—then darted a glance around the room to see if anyone else had noticed. The students appeared to all be looking at their own sheets. I stared at Marisa, who was also looking down at the essay prompt on her desk. Then she smiled, slowly, without looking away from the sheet of paper.
The same evening, I went back to school to watch a volleyball match in the gym, and to my surprise Marisa was there. We watched the match for a few minutes, standing close to each other, me wanting to bring up what Marisa had done earlier that day but feeling awkward about it. When Marisa suddenly said she wanted to talk to me, I felt relieved. She led me out of the gym and into the Stone House and down the Humanities hallway. I assumed we were going to our classroom, but she stopped outside the school counselor’s office. “I left something in here that I need to show you,” she said. “Do you have your master key?”
I hesitated, then unlocked the office. We both stepped in, and Marisa closed the door behind us.
“What—” I said, and then Marisa was kissing me, guiding my hands under her blouse.
I pulled away. “Marisa, what are you doing?”
“I wanted you,” she said, her face tilted up to mine. It was dark in the room, but light from the parking lot next to the Stone House came through the blinds, a false moonlight. “I wanted you today. I’m sorry I startled you in our classroom. I’ll be more careful.”
I relaxed a bit, my hands at her waist. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for that. It just—caught me off guard.”
“Hmm,” Marisa said, and her hands slid up the back of my shirt. “That sounds fun.”
I kissed her, long and slow. When we finally broke apart, I murmured, “Why don’t we go to my place?”
Marisa smiled and took her lower lip between her teeth. “There’s a very comfortable couch right over there,” she said. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Have you ever been fucked on a couch, Ethan?”
Which is how Marisa ended up straddling me on the couch in Cara Delonghi’s office, riding me to a shouted orgasm while the entire school cheered in the next building.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I have been grading my students’ practice AP exam essays and have just taken a break to search my office for my grade book, which I have once again misplaced, when there’s a knock and Coleman Carter is in the doorway.
“Father Coleman,” I say.
“Have you checked your email?” he asks.
“I’m notoriously bad about checking my email.” As I say this, I wake up my laptop and look at my inbox. There’s a message from Jean Edwards, Teri Merchant’s assistant, sent at 9:14 this morning: Ethan, are you free to stop by Teri’s office at 11:00? It is now almost a quarter past eleven.
I look at Coleman. “What’s going on?”
He shrugs, clearly making a tremendous effort to look clueless. “I’ll walk you over,” he says.
I look at him suspiciously. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
I stand, lock my office door, and walk down the hall with him. We take a sharp turn to the left toward the front entrance and then go up one flight of stairs to the administration level. The door to Teri’s office proper is open, so I walk in. Teri is seated behind her desk, talking to a student sitting in a chair facing her. The student turns around. It is Mark Mitchell, who bothered to shave today, so his moon face is round and smooth as a baby’s.
“Mr. Faulkner,” Teri says. Teri Merchant is approaching fifty and looks a bit matronly in her sweater sets, but underneath the professional exterior is a shrewd intelligence that has served her well as a
