Here it comes.
“I…" She began awkwardly, glancing back at Ethan, hoping he would save her. He showed no signs of speaking up.
"I must have left it at home.” May lied, look straight ahead, unwilling to look back to see what kind of faux-apologetic face Ethan was surely working up to.
“We are well into the semester,” Mrs. Nelson said, addressing the whole class now. “and I don’t think there is any excuse for you people to be forgetting your books at this point. We’re changing the rules, starting now. Zero tolerance. May, you are joining me after school for some hard labor.”
May wanted to die, then and there. Everybody was looking at her, some faces showing pity, some smug, and some mad. As though it would be her fault if they ever got in trouble in the future for the same offense. She felt tears burning her eyes, and tried to stay composed, but her chin started to quiver uncontrollably, so she just tucked her head into her arms on her desk and prayed for a swift deliverance.
Throughout the period, Mrs. Nelson seemed to delight in taking every opportunity to embarrass May further. At one point, she had the students take turns each reading a paragraph out loud, working around the room in a snake-like pattern. When it got to be May’s turn, the girl next to her silently offered May her book.
As she was reaching to accept the loaner book, Mrs. Nelson interrupted, “No, no, no… everyone must use their own book. Oh, that’s right! May didn’t think she needed hers today. Well, she doesn’t need her participation points for the day, either.”
The end of class came, and May wished she could just slink out the door without having to face any of her friends, or worse, Ryan and Ethan. She was just so embarrassed, and wanted to forget the whole thing. She was also so very angry with herself for being so pathetic and gutless when it came to Ethan. This had truly been her lowest hour, and she hated herself.
But she knew she had to face Ethan, at the very least. He still had her book. She wished he would have enough insight into human nature to have seen the benefit in just leaving the book on his desk and walking away. Hope as she might, May knew he’d be standing there when she finally got up and turned around. She wasn’t wrong.
“Geez…” He said, with a sheepish smile as he held her book out to her. “Mrs. Nelson was being a serious harpy today!”
May grabbed the book from him as she walked past, giving him a weak smile but refusing to verbalize a response. She wished her silence would hurt his feelings, but she knew it wouldn’t. Maybe she should have glared instead of smiled, she thought after the fact.
As she walked through the door into the hall, she passed Ryan. He was standing near the door, apparently having watched the little exchange. He didn’t say anything to May, but she thought she saw a look of disapproval on his face. She almost felt a stabbing in her heart, when she thought it was for her. Then, she looked a little more closely and realized it was aimed at Ethan. This silent chivalry only built up more the already formidable fortress of perfection she imagined surrounding Ryan.
The end of the school day came, and May drearily separated herself from her group of girlfriends gathered around their lockers. Her best friend Emily followed her as she walked towards the English classroom.
“Good Luck, May!” She said, trying to sound cheery.
“Thanks, Emily… I feel like such an idiot.” Emily was the only person May had told the whole incident to. Emily was a fierce friend, and very trustworthy. It gave May a feeling of reassurance about whatever she’d have to endure with Mrs. Nelson, knowing that Emily would be a phone call away afterwards.
“Do you think Jared will need a ride from me, since you have to stay late?” Emily was one of the girls who wished May’s brother would pay them more attention. It sometimes made for an interesting dynamic when she came over to hang out at their house.
“No, sorry,” May answered, remembering what her brother had said that morning, “he was going somewhere after school and leaving me with the car, anyway.”
A flash of disappointment showed in Emily’s eyes, but she quickly brushed it off.
“Well, again… Good Luck! And call me.”
As it turned out, the scene from English class had been the worst part of May’s punishment. The “hard labor” Mrs. Nelson had planned was nothing more than shredding a ream of papers for her, and that only took about fifteen minutes.
May collected her things from her locker, and made her way out to the parking lot, hoping she wouldn’t have trouble finding where Jared had parked this morning. Her anxiety was in vain, because as she turned the corner around the building in front of the parking lot, she could see there were only a handful of cars left. The white dodge hatchback was easy to spot.
She pulled the car out of the parking lot, feeling very peaceful about the lack of traffic. She headed home, it was a fairly direct drive along a secondary street, interrupted every few blocks by stop signs.
When she was only two stop signs away from home, something bad happened.
She stopped as she was supposed to, and looked both ways… left, right; …she remembered from Driver’s Ed that she was supposed to look left, again. But she didn’t. There hadn’t been anyone there the first time, so she thought she was in the clear. She pulled into the intersection just in time to notice another car barreling toward her on the driver’s side. She slammed her breaks, and reflexively turned the wheel away from the impact. The other driver also made evasive maneuvers, but it wasn’t enough to avoid impact. The sound of metal crunching and glass breaking echoed through May’s head, and as the two cars stopped and sat there now eerily still, she could only stare. That did NOT just happen.
Yet it had. May could barely contain her tears as she exchanged information with the amazingly understanding woman who she had just caused to have an accident. Both cars were still drivable, but they both had some obvious and significant damage.
May managed to get her car back home, and a new pit formed in her stomach when she realized she’d have to face her mom and dad, and Jared. It was his car, too. And it was wrecked. Her mom wasn’t at home, as usual… and she went inside, trying to decide whether it would be better to call her mom and tell her now, or just wait until she got home. May didn’t want to bother her Dad at work, she reasoned. She also figured her mom would be home soon enough, and the damage had been done… she was unhurt, so there was no point in worrying her mom with a call to come home.
So May wandered around the house, unsure of what to do with herself. She didn’t want to call Emily. She would probably cry, and didn’t want to embarrass herself. She felt too keyed up to do her homework, so she decided to just go lay on her bed, and hopefully fall asleep. She stopped off in the laundry room on the way to pull on a fresh pair of pajamas, even though it was still the afternoon.
As May walked into her room, she noticed that her mother had hung her new mirror, as promised. It was centered on the wall over her dresser, and she walked over to really stare into it for the first time. Her face showed signs of her tears, she was blotchy around the eyes and her eyelashes were still wet.
She looked into her own eyes, and found herself thinking back to Ethan, and the wiles his eyes unleashed on her earlier in the day. She was suddenly filled with a vicious loathing for the boy that she had never felt before. Always she had disliked herself for how she gave him exactly what he wanted, never had she disliked him personally for it. She realized that everything that had caused this day to go horribly could be laid squarely at his feet. If he hadn’t beguiled her into lending him her book, she wouldn’t have gotten in trouble, wouldn’t have had to stay late, and wouldn’t have been at that exact intersection at that exact time, and her family’s car wouldn’t now have a caved-in front driver’s side.
She looked herself square in the eyes again, and thought, if only. If only I had the backbone and the presence of self to refuse to let him flirt with me that way. If only I had a modicum of self-respect… “What might have been? I wish I could re-do this morning,” she said aloud into the mirror.
And suddenly, she felt a strange tingling sensation overcome her whole body. Then everything around her seemed to go black.
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