“Yeah, this won’t help with yours either, but here we are in this situation.” Adrenaline surged through me as I boldly replied with that. “Even if you want to pretend your feelings aren’t there, you admitted you made mistakes here too. You don’t want to make my life hard for this and you really don’t want to give up your job. This way neither of those things happen. We handle this like adults, in that high school-y feelings-y kind of way you described. We’ll just accept that what is, is, and what can never be. That’s the best thing for both of us. Okay?”
Ms. Wagner just stared at me with this half-squinty glare the whole time I talked. Without opening her mouth, I heard her give a long, nasal sigh. “Fine,” she finally said quietly, never taking her eyes off of me. “This conversation never happened. I don’t know about your feelings, you won’t bring them up to me or anyone else again, and you have one week to get your shit together. I’m being very serious. If I don’t see change in the following week, I’ll be letting the proper authorities know and you’ll be put in a new English class. Do I make myself clear?”
This was a new level of authority. She was downright scary. “Y-yes,” I managed.
“Good. Get out of my classroom,” she told me quietly yet firmly, her expression never changing. Without another word, I quickly left the room, scared to ever look back. I was lucky as hell that I got away with what I did, and I wasn’t exactly a schemer or anything – this didn’t set back my plans, this shattered my entire worldview. I had to clue what tomorrow looked like anymore, or hell, who I even was.
***
For the next full week, the door to Ms. Wagner’s room was closed and locked during lunch period. I asked Johnny about it, and he said that Ms. Wagner had told him she now had important matters to tend to during lunch. Part of me felt bad about that, but part of me also didn’t. Instead of hanging out with her, I decided to uphold my promise to her and, get this, I was the one to approach Johnny about spending lunch period together to compare study notes. Needless to say he agreed immediately.
Between that and hanging out with Lucy again after school, I was back to my old social standing and more pretty darn quickly. I didn’t know if Ms. Wagner had a pair of binoculars on my situation, but if she did, she’d know I was really trying. It was actually kind of cool – Lucy was now the one grateful that I was spending time around her, and being gracious enough to give Johnny my presence meant that my standing went up with his friends, even if his standing went down because “he was taking orders from a girl.” Johnny didn’t care, bless him.
After a week and a half of this, full of confidence (and having rehearsed this), I swaggered on over to Ms. Wagner’s room one day after school after all of the students had let her room. She was busy marking papers, and I coughed into my hand to get her attention. Wordlessly, she raised her head and looked at me.
“We cool?” was all I said.
“I hear you and Johnny are getting close,” she simply replied.
“Yeah, I’m spending more time with him. And Lucy. I even hung out with his group once or twice too. It’s kind of new ground for me, socially at least.”
“Good for you, I’m proud of you,” she replied with a slight, muted smile. After I waited for a bit longer, she sighed quickly. “Yes, we’re cool.”
“I’m glad to hear that. If we are, do you think we could keep doing lunchtimes? I feel myself slipping again.”
“I’m afraid I’m now quite busy during lunchtimes,” she simply answered, looking back to her papers. “I had to cancel my tutoring with all students. If you need assistance, I’m sure I can help you get a study buddy to help you.”
“We both know you’re not busy during lunches, Ms. Wagner,” I softly protested.
“Easy,” she warned, looking back up at me suddenly. I shivered. While I was doing my best to move on from her on the outside, on the inside I was still lusting for her as badly as ever, if not more. I just needed to not let that show. The better she thought I was doing, the better this would be for me. I may never have had Mrs. Potter as a teacher, but I could act decently well.
“Well, I’ll just need to find another way to improve my grades,” I said flatly. “I was just coming by to see what my options were.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, giving me another muted smile.
We may have been cool, but sadly, we were colder than we had ever been.
***
Johnny went ballistic when I suggested that we should go on a date sometime. Go figure, he said yes immediately. One weird public kiss in the main hall later, and it was public knowledge – Mina and Johnny were dating.
Of course, most people reacted to “Mina” with “Who?” And I was totally okay with that. I wasn’t going out with him for clout. I wasn’t going out with him for anyone to notice. Well, anyone but one person.
I sent him little notes during homeroom class. If Ms. Wagner asked the class to get into pairs, we’d always pair up. It got to the point where she’d smirk at us and tell us to pair up with anyone but each other. I think that either she was as good an actor as I was, or she had genuinely gotten over our past stint – she was smiling at me more and more, and I was back to being a student for her. For anyone else, that was business as usual, but sadly, for me, it was a step up.
Sometimes, when I was feeling brave, I’d ask for Johnny to scoot his desk over next to mine, and put his arm around me. We were known as that “cozy couple” in class. Never famous for PDA – aside from that one kiss in the main hall, we never did anything in public, and even behind closed doors all we did was kiss a few more times, he was actually super respectful of my boundaries – but known for those sweet gestures. The arm around my shoulder, sharing hoodies… the school photographer even snapped a few photos of us for the yearbook, but approached me afterwards telling me that if he broke up with me and it was nasty, she’d delete the photos instead when yearbook came around.
I asked him to put his arm around me during first period often. To him, I probably had my eyes closed, basking in his comfort, but he didn’t know that I was staring Ms. Wagner down the whole time, with an innocent expression of course. I could still smell her. I could still picture her with that hair tie off. I still masturbated with her pen; in fact, I almost exclusively masturbated using her pen.
Sometimes she would innocently smile, and sometimes she would roll her eyes with varying levels of “oh, those kids” to genuine annoyance at me. But way back, behind the facade of her expression, I swear I saw something in her eyes – a flicker of jealousy. At this point even though my crush never went away, my heart had done a surprisingly good job taking this and had just hardened, so while I figured things between us would never happen, I was happy seeing what I thought (and hoped) was jealousy in her eyes, as a consolation prize.
And who knows? Maybe after I graduated, if my feelings were still there… I could play the long game.