Chapter 9

I concentrated on school, because that took my mind off of Tasha and Jill. I did not think about the fact that Nevada was only an hour and a half from Kansas City. I jerked off a lot. February came and I hung around the placement office a lot. Other kids did, too, but the staff all knew my name. I wrote down each place and then found it on a map when I got home. Nothing was anywhere near close to Nevada.

Tasha called me less often. I knew her internship was nearing its end but when I asked about that she said it was up in the air, and that the company might offer her a job. Two months later she was telling me the same thing.

What nobody was telling me was that the company did offer Tasha a job. It was a job she could do anywhere, as long as she had internet access and fairly high speed service. She received and sent huge blocks of data that she pored through doing whatever debuggers do. And, because she could work from anywhere, she chose to work from Jill’s house, with its extra bedroom. She had been going to Nevada most weekends and they didn’t tell me.

They didn’t want to tell me because both of them were in contact with schools within fifty miles of Nevada. Jill did most of it, because she wanted to do it in person, instead of on the phone, where she could be blown off. She visited the school and talked to the principal. She gave each one my name and what my degree would be in, which was elementary education, and asked them to keep in touch with her if a position opened up.

Most of the time she was told that the needs of the schools were sent to universities.

“Is there a rule that you can’t hire somebody off the street?” she would ask.

“No, as long as that person is qualified,” was always the answer.

“Well, he’ll be qualified, and if you offer him a job you won’t have to worry about being short of that teacher when school starts.”

One woman said, “Well, I suppose it’s always good to have a teacher in your back pocket.”

Many schools didn’t even advertise for teachers until it was summer, and teachers who had contracts the previous year were offered a new contract before they looked elsewhere. Because of that, many schools didn’t know if or how many vacancies they’d have until that was all done. So everybody was on pins and needles.

I almost screwed the pooch because every opening the placement office had was in some far flung little school in places that had hardly any population at all. I wouldn’t have cared about that, if it was close to Jill, but none of them were within five hundred miles.

So I called Jill and said, “I’m going to come to Nevada and sign on to be a substitute teacher. I can get some kind of other job to pay my share. Can I do that and live with you?”

I was nervous as hell, because half the time Jill had discouraged me from doing something like this. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still didn’t believe I could be lucky enough to score a woman like her. Did she see me as a kid? Was I the kid who had mowed her lawn and then she lost control and did something she was now sorry for?

“Well...” she said softly. “I suppose we could give that a trial run, but I think you should get a full-time position. You’ll need that for career progression.”

“Maybe there will be one at the school in Nevada,” I said. “They’re bound to need a teacher sooner or later and if they know me from subbing then maybe they’ll hire me.”

“We’ll see,” she said. She did not sound excited and I was afraid to ask her how she did feel.

“You can’t count on something like that,” said Jill. “I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“If I can be with you, nothing could disappoint me.”

Mom and Dad said they were coming to commencement and asked if they had to have tickets to get in. It was the first one they held since Covid, which is why they hadn’t gone to Tasha’s. To be honest, Tasha didn’t have a commencement.

“I kind of doubt it,” I said. “It’s going to be in the basketball arena and that seats thousands of people. I think I saw somewhere there are twenty-six hundred people graduating, but a quarter of them might not have anybody there to see them. When they hand out sheepskins they start with one college and then proceed to other ones, so, for example, after the college of engineering finishes everybody who was there for that will leave. Then another college will do it. Nobody said anything about tickets and because it’s very fluid, tickets wouldn’t make much sense anyway.”

“Well, find out,” said Mom. “I do not want to get there and find out I’ll have to wait in the car for you to come out.”

“That won’t happen,” I said. “Look, it’s going to be a long, boring thing where 99.9% of the time you won’t be interested in what’s going on. You don’t have to come.”

“Yes we do,” said my mother. “Your father didn’t think you’d finish and I’m going to make him watch you prove him wrong.”

“I did not say that!” I heard him object from across the room. “All I said was that the article I read said a third of students who start don’t graduate.”

“I knew what you meant,” grumbled Mom.

“It doesn’t matter, now,” I said. “If you want to come, come. If you don’t come my feelings won’t be hurt.”

They didn’t tell me Tasha would be coming with them.

They all got there three hours before I was supposed to be in the field house. When I saw Tasha I felt this pain in my groin and turned around to adjust things so that when I got the boner I would inevitably get, it wouldn’t embarrass me. Or her, come to think of it. I got hugs all around and Tasha did not take it easy on me. She rubbed her loins against mine gently and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to fuck you unconscious, tonight.”

What she was talking about was that our parents wanted to stay overnight so they would be fresh for the drive back home and they had reserved two rooms six months earlier. They did that on advice from somebody they knew who said it would be impossible to find a room on graduation day.

“We figured we could cancel one of the rooms if nobody was coming with us,” said Dad. “Tasha wasn’t sure she could come until about a month ago.”

“Oh really?” I shot daggers at my sister with my eyes. “She didn’t mention that when we talked on the phone back then.”

“I wasn’t sure I could come,” she said. “I know how you idolize me and all that, and I didn’t want you to be crushed if you thought I was going to be here and then couldn’t be.”

“Be nice,” said Mom. “This is a big day for him; for all of us!”

“Two rooms,” I said.

“Well, we knew you wouldn’t want to sleep in a room with us, and the rooms only had two beds. We hope you won’t mind if Tasha sleeps in the other room, too.”

“Or, Tasha and I could go back to the apartment we lived in together for three years,” I said. “I still have that and Mary would love to see her.”

Everybody looked at me.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” said Dad. “We could have just stayed with Bobby.”

“Two can fit there, but not four,” I said.

“Well, then,” said Mom. “We can gather in our room until your father and I want to retire. Then the two of you can go spend one last night in Bobby’s apartment.”

We didn’t go out to eat until after the ceremony, when I was officially a licensed teacher.

At least in that state.

We went to a Golden Corral and I couldn’t get Tasha alone in any semblance of privacy until we stood in line, together, at the buffet, waiting to get meat.

“I should be furious with you,” I said.

“But you’re not,” she came back. “I didn’t dare tell you and then not be able to be here.”

“We’re sharing our old room, tonight,” I sighed.

“I told you I was going to fuck your socks off.”

“No, you said you were going to fuck me unconscious.”

“Don’t argue, or I’ll stay in the other bedroom all night,” she threatened.

“There are only sheets and blankets for one bed,” I said.

We finished eating around five P.M. and nobody had any plans on what to do until it was time to go to bed. So I showed them around the campus a little bit, and then around town, pointing out places that catered to students so much that locals rarely went there.

“Stuff there is more expensive than if you go farther away from campus, but most students don’t know that, or don’t have transportation.”

“Is that where all that money I gave you went?” asked my father. I knew he was joking but Mom slapped his elbow anyway.

They inevitably asked what my future intentions were and I told them the pickings were slim unless you wanted to teach in a big city, or some one-room schoolhouse in North Dakota.

“I’m thinking of just substituting somewhere and then they’ll know me and when they have an opening I’ll get it.”

“You could do that at home,” said Mom. “You could even live in your old room.”

“Thanks, but I’m supposed to strike out on my own,” I said.

“The place I’m living has some space you could probably get cheap,” said Tasha, as if she didn’t really care about it.

“Where do you live?” asked Mom.

“It’s only temporary,” said Tasha. “Remember Mrs. Pastrianni, who lived next door to us?”

“Yes,” said Mom. “She moved away while you were at college.”

“I know. We kept in touch, every so often, and when I was offered a job I told her about it. I said I couldn’t decide where to live and she said I could come stay with her until I made that decision. She lives in a town named Nevada, in Missouri.”

“Well, it’s a small world,” said Mom, “but why all the secrecy about that? You’ve been so closed-mouth I was afraid you were working for the CIA or something like that.”

“No. I was just embarrassed to tell you what was going on, because I knew you’d do what you just did with Bobby: invite me to live at home. I love you both dearly, but I want to be on my own, you know?”

“Of course we know,” said Mom. “We want you to be happy. All I want is for you to settle down somewhere and start making me some grandbabies.”

“Gina, let the girl work a while before you pressure her to have sex with some man I probably wouldn’t approve of,” said Dad.

Tasha had not looked at me the whole time she informed our parents that she was living with the woman who had already produced a grandchild for my mother. Finally she glanced my way.

She did not look guilty.