Free Teach Me by R. A. Nelson Page A

to say. “Right here.” At the very last second, I realize how idiotic that would look. What am I turning into?
    “Nope, not really.”
    He grins. “How can you not really have a cavity?”
    “I’ll tell you about it later.”
    “Don’t,” he says.
    “What?”
    Somebody else has got his attention again.
    We shove our trays together through the slot in the wall, meaty steam bathing our faces. He heads out the door into the empty hall.
    “We probably shouldn’t be doing this,” he says when I catch up.
    I’m wounded infinitely. It’s as if a rogue star has raced across my path, ripped my sun away. I apparently can’t keep the pain out of my face.
    “Damn. I’m sorry, no, I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t mean last night. No! I meant talking about it at school. It’s—you can’t believe how bad it would be. We have to be really careful. You know that.”
    I’m back, out-of-body experience over. “Oh. Oh. You’re right. I’m sorry, that was stupid. I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s just—you know that feeling you get when you’re not sure anything is—”
    He reaches over, squeezes my hand. Just as quickly, he lets go, is looking straight ahead, speaking to me sideways. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry at all. Meet me after school. Wait for me in your car. It’ll be about thirty minutes after everybody else is gone. Can you?”
    Can I?
    My heart flies away.
    It’s real.
    His shoulder brushes my hair as he turns to go. Now I’m an exploding star, a supernova, throwing out all my energy in a single titanic burst radiated directly at his departing back:
    Love.
    I love him so much.
    For a long time I close my eyes walking up the hall after he’s gone. Knowing there is no possible way I can hit anything. Not now, not ever.

dawn of creation
    Wait.
    I’m in a frenzy of anticipation the rest of the day.
    His car is still there when I come out of the gym. Kids are streaming past me. For once in my life, I can’t study them. I’m not even a part of their species anymore.
    I sit in Wilkie Collins, head down, as if interested in something in my lap. I wish I had a book to read, but the only thing in the glove box is a cheapie Easy Eye paperback from Mom’s seventies collection. I can’t concentrate enough to read anyway, especially Return of the Native . I’m parked a few rows from his Honda, every muscle tense, body quivering with questions: What now? Where to from here?
    It’s the ultimate exercise in self-control.
    There.
    I laser beam him with my eyes as he slowly makes his way from the gym to the little green car in the teachers’ lot. How I worship his walk. Why isn’t the ground cracking open in his wake? Why aren’t the clouds above his sweet head moving in a weird new way?
    Why do I love him so much? What is it? I think it might be this:
    He’s not showing me a new world; he’s showing me an old one. One I’ve kept buried deep inside under layers of science, grades, math, my parents’ expectations, my hyper-developed sense of responsibility, my achiever’s overdrive—
    It’s a world without boundaries. One that I remember from being a kid. A world beyond measure, beyond physical stuff. A world that’s more like the universe than science will ever be. That’s what he’s promising me, whether he knows it or not. He said it himself: It’s a mystery .
    I roll down the window; he puts his hands in.
    “Follow me.”
    I follow slowly out of the lot and we drive forever across town to an overgrown research park waiting for future soft industry. I’ve seen this place before with Dad. Because of NASA, Huntsville is a high-tech boom town, gobbling up land as fast as it can be annexed and zoned.
    Right now this place is nothing but monster roads cutting through a lot of meadows and cotton fields gone fallow. We find a dead cul-de-sac and come to a stop at the broken end of the asphalt under the shade of a sycamore tree. We’re surrounded by acres of waving broom sage the color