Chapter 5

They were deep in what a generous philosopher might have called ‘discussion’ when the door opened and the janitor came in with his long-handled dust mop. He stopped and looked at his watch. Mindy looked at her own. It was a few minutes past five.

“Good grief,” she moaned. “Your parents are probably frantic.”

Bobby pulled out his cell phone and called home.

“Hi, Mom. I’m fine. I got delayed by a tutoring session. I got a chance to work on catching up in math, and lost track of the time.”

He paused. Mindy could hear a high-pitched voice coming from his phone.

“I know. I’m sorry. Do you want to talk to Miss Middlesex? She’s the one who was helping me.”

There was another pause while he listened. Mindy glanced at the Janitor, who had started sweeping the floor. His practiced, zig-zag motions, as he went around chair and table legs, was almost beautiful to watch. Bobby’s phone appeared in front of her face.

“She wants to talk to you,” said Bobby. He looked sheepish.

It was an unexpected moment of significance in Mindy’s life. She was aware of that, but only in an unformed, mystical sort of way. She could have apologized to Bobby’s mother and said it would never happen again and nothing would have changed. Her life could have gone on just as it was. But something deep inside her demanded more. That “more” involved Bobby, also in an un-formed, mystical way, but there was an undeniable desire in her to keep ... seeing ... Bobby. It was more than a mere ‘desire.’ It was a drive. She took the phone and put it to her ear. As a “muse” sometimes inhabits an author’s fingers, something in her brain took over and spoke for her.

“Mrs. Pendleton,” she said. “Hi. I’m mortified that I didn’t think of having Bobby call you sooner. We’re still at school. I got stuck with monitoring detention this week. Bobby was my only charge and we got to talking about his math homework. I minored in Mathematics. We both sort of lost track of the time as I was explaining things to him.”

“Thank you,” came a female voice on the phone. “I was worried. You know teenagers these days. They get into all sorts of trouble.”

“Well, I’m very sorry,” said Mindy. “It won’t happen again.”

“Oh don’t say that,” said Bobby’s mother. “He’s getting a D in math. We’d be grateful for any help you could give him. Maybe we could even hire you?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Mindy. “I don’t mind helping him. He’s a good boy, and it’s good to get back into the world of math for a bit. Based on what happened tonight, though, he may need more time than we’ll have in the time he has left in detention.”

“He can meet with you anytime,” said Mrs. Pendleton. “Any time at all. Put me back on the phone with him. And thank you so much!”

Mindy handed the phone back to Bobby and mouthed the word, “Sorry.”

When Bobby said he was there, he was told that he was to be at Mrs. Middlesex’s beck and call until his grade in math was raised to a B or better. That meant doing both extra credit and acing the final. He groaned and complained, because his intuition told him that was what was expected.

But the idea of spending more time around Mindy Middlesex didn’t bother him one bit.

They were standing outside the school, next to Mindy’s car. Bobby’s beat up 2011 Toyota Corolla was in the student parking lot.

“A D in algebra?” said Mindy, lifting one eyebrow.

“I was sick for a week and got behind,” said Bobby. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

“That can be fixed,” she said.

“But the real reason we’ll be ... um ... getting together ... will be to talk about the wand, right?” Bobby sounded hopeful.

“The real reason we’ll be meeting is to get your math grade up,” said Mindy, firmly. “If we have time, we can talk about the wand.”

“Okay,” said Bobby.

“Just like that? Okay?”

“Why not?” asked Bobby. “I do need to get my math grade up.”

Mindy had finished Bobby’s detention week paying attention only to math issues. She looked at the textbook, based on where they were at that time, and worked backwards until she found the place where he stopped understanding and got fuzzy. Then she took him forward slowly.

A week later they had their first session at her house. He’d already made enough progress that Mindy only made him work thirty minutes on “math stuff,” as he put it. Then she brought out the wand. They sat at her dining room table, where the math work had taken place.

“I’ve tried all sorts of things,” she said. “I can’t make it do anything at all. It’s just a baton.”

“What kind of things did you try?”

“I tried moving things. Like a spoon. I tried turning the radio on and off. Things like that.”

“Maybe I could try,” he said.

She taught him the motion, standing behind him and holding his hand until he got it right on his own.

“Okay, what next?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “That’s the problem. It looked like he was saying something, or mouthing words, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”

“Well, we know it isn’t Harry Potter,” he said. “If it was, at least we’d have done something like Neville Longbottom and blown something up.”

“That it isn’t Potter magic is a good thing,” said Mindy. “Can you imagine the chaos that would result if all that was real?”

Bobby waved the wand and said, “Move!” while pointing it at the vase of flowers in the center of the table. Nothing happened. He did it again and pushed at the vase with his other hand. When that produced nothing, he tried “directing” imaginary music while using the wand and telling the vase to move.

“I thought of that,” said Mindy. “It didn’t do anything for me, either.”

Bobby sat back and thought.

“What if it only works on people?” he suggested.

“I’m not trying it on people,” she said. “We know what happens to people it’s used on. Besides, this is silly. It’s not a magic wand. Magic doesn’t exist.”

“Try it on me,” he said, carelessly.

“No. Who knows what would happen? I could make a mistake without even knowing it and turn you into a frog, or something.”

“So you do believe in magic.” He grinned.

“No, I do not.”

“Then wave it at me and tell me to sing soprano. Even if that goes all wrong it won’t be terrible. You certainly can’t turn me into a frog trying to do that.”

“I don’t like this,” she said. “Let’s just forget about the wand.”

“Awww, come on, Miss Middlesex.” He stopped. “Mindy, I mean. Wait. I know. I know exactly what you should try.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Wave it at me and tell me to forget what you look like naked.”

She stared at him. He shrugged.

“You’d be doing me a favor, if it works,” he said.

“Am I that hideous?”

“You know better. It’s the opposite. I wasn’t being exactly truthful when I said my crush on you was gone. Ever since I saw you like that I can’t help but think about it. Sometimes, when I go to bed, I have to ... um ... never mind.”

Mindy knew what he’d stopped from saying. Several of the boys and men she’d gone out with had masturbated. It seemed that whenever she declined to have sex with a guy, that somehow led to a discussion about masturbation. In some cases, they’d asked her to do it to them. In one case, the guy had asked if he could jerk off and spurt on her naked body. Phil was the only man she’d agreed to do that kind of thing with. He had gotten off by asking her to masturbate in front of him, while he jerked until he was about to cum. But he didn’t want to shoot it on her body. He’d wanted to ejaculate in her mouth. She didn’t make him wear a condom for that.