Robert Swartwood
“David has a gun.”
…..“What?”
…..“In his backpack. I saw it there when he was putting away his notebook.”
…..Miles turns away from erasing the blackboard. Class is over and it’s just him and Jeremy alone in the room.
…..“I’m not joking,” Jeremy says. “I saw it.”
…..Miles opens his mouth but then shuts it. He isn’t sure what to say. He is thinking that if anyone in his class — anyone in the entire school — was to have a gun in his backpack, it would be Jeremy.
…..“You don’t believe me, do you, Mr. L. What — you don’t think your perfect student David Rudy could bring a gun to school?”
…..Miles doesn’t care much for Jeremy’s attitude, his tone of voice. But he isn’t surprised. This is just the type of kid Jeremy is. The kind who always wears baggy jeans and black hoodies, who has multiple rings in his ears, even one in his nose, who has spiky hair, and who so far this semester is averaging a thirty-seven in Miles’s class.
…..He opens his mouth again to say something — what, he still isn’t sure — when there is a knock at the door and a voice says, “Mr. L, do you have a moment?”
…..Stephanie stands in the doorway, one of his students from last year, one of his best, holding her books to her chest.
…..Miles says to Jeremy, “I’ll take care of it, I will. I’ll call Mr. Banks about it right now. Okay?”
…..To Miles’s surprise Jeremy looks as if a great weight has just been lifted off his shoulders. He nods, says okay, then walks out of the classroom. When he’s gone Stephanie closes the door and smiles at him.
…..“I can’t wait for tonight.”
…..“Stephanie —”
…..“I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
…..“Listen —”
…..“It’s going be great, I know it is.”
…..Miles opens his mouth again but suddenly Stephanie is in front of him, less than a foot away, and he can smell her, the combination of her shampoo and body soap, and before he knows it she says, “I can’t wait,” and leans forward, up on her tiptoes, and places her lips against his.
***
He isn’t a bad man. He really isn’t. But he is an aging man and has very little in his life besides his wife and two children, and he knows his relationship with Stephanie is wrong, but in the same way it isn’t not right either, because there is nothing sexual between them, nothing too inappropriate, not like what happened to one of his colleagues, that band director who got himself arrested three years ago because the girl in question had been fifteen at the time. No, Stephanie is eighteen, which means that if anything were to happen he wouldn’t go to jail.
…..But it doesn’t matter anyway because nothing is going to happen, they are just friends who are meeting two counties away to see a movie, nothing more than that, some foreign film playing in limited release that they both want to see.
…..Except that kiss — that kiss stays with him all morning, and he can’t get it out of his head, not the softness of those lips, or the strawberry taste of her lip gloss, or how for just an instant she tried to slip her tongue into his mouth.
…..This is what he thinks about all that morning leading up to lunch, having placed Jeremy and his outrageous claims to the back of his mind, and he doesn’t even remember it until after second block, when in the lunchroom one of his colleagues asks him if he heard about David Rudy.
…..“No, what?”
…..“He had a fucking gun in his backpack. Can you believe it? Cops came and took him away, placed the handcuffs on him and everything.”
…..“You’re kidding.”
…..“No. And do you want to know the craziest part? Jeremy Cochran was the one who turned him in. Went directly to the office and reported it to Banks. You ask me, I would have pegged that kid being the one to bring a gun to school. Fucking crazy or what?”
***
His prep period is the very last period of the day, and that is when he calls his wife and explains he’s going to stay late grading research papers. He says things like “I know, I wish I didn’t have to,” and “Yeah, I miss you too,” and “Hopefully they won’t be so bad and I’ll get them graded right away.” He finishes by saying “I love you” but the words sound false even to his own ears. The rest of the time he sits at his desk and stares at the empty seat David Rudy had occupied earlier today.
…..When the dismissal bell rings he doesn’t move from his desk. He continues sitting there, watching the clock. At three-fifteen exactly he stands up, collects his things, locks his classroom door, and makes his way through the nearly-deserted halls of the high school.
…..He drives the seventeen miles to a town he’s only just passed through before. He passes the independent movie theater twice before pulling into the small gravel lot. He parks right next to Stephanie’s car, a brand-new white Jetta her parents gave her as a birthday present.
…..He doesn’t go inside. He just sits there, staring at the broken marquee: P INT OF VIEW.
…..After awhile he starts the car and leaves the parking lot. He drives around town, not sure what he’s looking for, and stops when he comes to a park.
…..Here there is a pond with a gazebo. Ducks float around on the water. He gets out and walks up to the pond’s edge. His hands are in his pocket. He brings out all the change he has — four pennies, one nickel, one dime, two quarters — and he starts tossing them into the water, one at a time, the coins splashing with a plunk and creating ripples on an otherwise peaceful surface.
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Robert Swartwood is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, forthcoming from W.W. Norton. He blogs at www.robertswartwood.com.
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