Chapter 7

When class was over and the kids were leaving, Cecelia stood up and walked to the front of the room.

"You talked to Mr. Grimes about Ted Masters," she said.

"I did, indeed," said Bob.

"I didn't ask you to do that."

"I didn't do it for you," he said. "I did if for the next woman. He's a jerk with no morals. Why expose the kids to that kind of mentality?"

"Isn't that a little harsh? I mean you got him fired."

"He got himself fired," said Bob. "All I did was send him to a gay bar. All he had to do was turn around and walk out. Apparently he decided to do something else instead."

"Mr. Grimes said he would have fired him anyway," Cecelia pointed out. "Obviously that's for what he said to me."

"Look," he said, sounding exasperated. "You've been talking about how men are pigs. OK, so I did something about one of them. You were just complaining about how you didn't appreciate it when boys are boys. It SOUNDS like you want something done about it. But when somebody DOES something about it, you say it's harsh. Make up your mind, OK?"

She went home, where her mother tried to have a conversation with her about what teaching was like. She was distracted by what Bob had said, though. She couldn't avoid the fact that he was right. She did need to make up her mind about how to deal with this thing that she now realized had had a big impact on her life for years. And she couldn't talk to her mother about it. If her mother found out what had happened to Ted Masters, she'd almost certainly say it was Cecelia's fault. Her mother was old fashioned enough to believe that a woman should be subservient to the man.

The next day she was still thinking about her relationships with men. It was frustrating to think about it though, so she let herself be distracted by just listening to Bob teach. He talked about how, after World War I, the United States assumed the role of being responsible for the whole world. He gave examples, and asked the kids to decide whether decisions made back then had been good ones or not. He added how the war to end all wars had depleted world resources and manpower, which caused most nations to center their attention on their own troubles, to the exclusion of all else. He talked about how that repaved the way for fascists and the communists to build and consolidate their power while the rest of the world licked its wounds in isolation.

"We're still doing that today," he said, and asked for examples. He got five or six, smiling wider and wider as the kids participated. "So, which should we do?" he asked. "Should we get out of Iraq lock, stock and barrel? That's what world opinion says we should do. Should we close our borders and say 'Fine, world, if you don't want our help, then you can just do it all yourself'?"

An argument between several students erupted. All Bob did was make sure everybody who wanted to say something had the chance to say it. He let that go on for half an hour as the kids got passionate about their particular stance. Then he called a halt to the discussion.

"As you can see, there is disagreement about how to proceed," he said. "That's not new. What's new is that in another year or two YOU will be voting to choose the politicians to represent you. If you run for office yourself, you'll be making the decisions on what to do about this and every other problem this country faces. YOU are the leaders of tomorrow. And if you refuse to lead, then you will join the group of millions of Americans who don't vote, and have to take whatever comes along. You can't avoid that. You'll be one or the other.

"But we didn't cause all these problems," complained one girl.

"True," said Bob. "But you still either have to solve them or live with them. That's just life. Which is why history is important to understand. Maybe, if enough people get into power who understand history, and the lessons we can learn from history, better decisions will be made."

The rest of the week was like that, and Cecelia was reminded, over and over again, of why she had loved Mr. Hawkins' class.

There were other reminders as well.

Each afternoon, when she went home, she had to masturbate to get rid of the horny, edgy feelings she got from staring at him all day long.

After another weekend and two more school days that seemed to fly by as she crammed harder than she ever had for finals in college, Cecelia was given center stage by Bob, who simply said "OK, folks. Miss Carter will lead the class today."

The things she noticed about the class had nothing to do with the subject under discussion. She saw Donny nodding off. She saw Kinesha and Katrina exchange notes. Hector spent a lot of time looking out of the window. Ramona and Haley doodled. And all the boys, when they looked at her at all, seemed to focus below her neck.

When the final bell rang Cecelia thought she had utterly failed at her first attempt to teach a class. It was easily the worst six hours of her life, as far as she was concerned.

It was three-thirty. Cecelia sat limply in the swivel chair Bob normally used when he wasn't standing or moving around the room as he taught. Bob smiled as he looked at her. She looked forlorn, like she'd run a very long race and come in last.

"Mr. Hawkins, were we like that?" she asked tiredly.

"Was who like what?"

"When I was a student here," she explained. "Were we that horrible?"

"They weren't so bad today," he judged out loud. "Thomas Atwater actually answered a question. That's a first."

"Thomas Atwater is a little pissant," she grumbled.

"How can you say that?" laughed Bob. "He participated in your class."

Because he spent the whole class staring at my..." She stopped and her cheeks pinked up.

Bob knew what she had failed to say. His reaction to that surprised him, in a way, because his mouth supplied the word "breasts?" before he could stop it. She looked up at him sharply, blushing a deeper color of red.

"Yes," she said, her voice level. "Nothing has changed." She meant that nothing had changed as far as the boys in this class were concerned, but the thought intruded that nothing had changed for her either, in terms of the crush she had on Mr. Hawkins. "Maybe nothing ever will," she muttered.

"Well, if you feel that way, then at least you know what you need to do," said Bob, causing her to look at him questioningly. "Adapt," he continued. "When you accept the part of the situation you can't change, you stop wasting time and energy worrying about that. Then you can concentrate on the things you CAN change."

"So, I just get used to men ogling me," she said.

"Like I said before. Boys will be boys, no matter how old they are."

"You're not that way," she said.

"Of course I am," he laughed. "I love looking at women just like any other man."

"You must do it differently," she said. "I don't remember you ogling the girls in class. You don't leer at me now, like Denny did at lunch. I think I've kind of held you in my mind as the representative of gentlemen everywhere."

"Well thank you," he said, the smile gone from his face. "But don't put too much stock in that. When a man is acting like a gentleman around a woman it generally means he's either trying to get something from her, or doesn't find her attractive."

"That's a horrible thing to say!" she objected.

"Probably," he admitted. "But I still think it's basically true."

"So, because you're acting like a gentleman, you want something from me," she said. "What do you want from me?"

A dozen things zipped through Bob's mind. They were quite similar in many respects, because all of them involved the two of them naked, doing various delightful things. He couldn't very well say that, though.

"I ... um ... I want you to feel relaxed and confident so you can succeed at student teaching," he said.

She looked at him for what seemed like a long time.

"You just lied to me," she said.

"I did?"

"Tell me you didn't."

He opened his mouth, but he felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"I DO want that for you," he insisted.

"I believe that, but not in the context of answering that question," she said. "I'm not stupid. It can't be that you want me to do something for you as a teacher. You know all you have to do is ask and I'll do anything. You're my supervisor. What does that leave?"

"It's a stupid theory," he said hastily. "And it WAS an awful thing to say. Let's just forget it."

"Sex," she said softly. Her eyes blinked and her face changed shapes several times in a matter of seconds. It was so fast that he couldn't make any sense of any of the emotions that flitted past. "That's what you meant, isn't it."

Bob sighed. He hoped this wouldn't drive her away, but he'd opened his big mouth. He at least owed it to her to try to put her fears at rest.

"Look," he said. "I'm a guy, OK? You already know I think you're beautiful." He thought about how, if she hadn't gotten drunk the other night she'd have known a lot more. "But that has nothing to do with our professional relationship. I'm not trying to get anything from you, or talk you into anything. I can't help noticing you as a woman, but I AM trying to control that. In a way, I'm the proof that my theory is wrong, because I'm really NOT trying to get anything from you. It was a bad generalization, and I shouldn't have said it. All generalizations are bad ... including this one."

"I had a crush on you when I took your class," she blurted. It had just burst out of her, but it made her feel better in one way, while worse in another. She thought of several things he might say, but wasn't ready for what he DID say.

"I suppose I had a bit of a crush on you too." He looked sad. "But those were just the natural feelings that men and women have for each other," he said. "It doesn't have to mean anything all these years later.

She closed her eyes. Something inside her wanted to shout for joy that he'd felt things for her, while she dreamed about him. She knew she couldn't let out that shout, because he also said what had happened back then didn't mean anything now.

And that was the problem she finally acknowledged, in those few seconds. Her real problem was that she WANTED it to mean something now.

And he didn't.

She picked up her purse. "I'll see you tomorrow," she said, and then left quickly, before the emotions fighting for control inside her caused tears to flow.

In her room that night Cecelia felt like she was seventeen again. It was awful, and she remembered feeling awful then too, at times like this. With a few years under her belt, though, she realized how pathetic she'd been back then, kissing her pillow and rubbing between her legs while whispering his name.

"The first step to solving a problem is admitting there's a problem," she told herself.

She admitted a lot of things to herself that night, before she finally fell into a restless sleep.