thinking backwards...
They don't want me to tell you I'm in the program myself. They're afraid it would tarnish your image of me. Mr. Gato laughed. As if, as if you had any respect for me to begin with. Any image to tarnish. Dogshit don't rust.
The boys snorted or guffawed, but the girl smiled tensely, her eyes wide with concern.
Neither does gold. She blurted, and blushed. She could feel her acne becoming inflamed, sensed sweat breaking out on her oily skin, which would create a freaky shining waxy mask where her face should be. No her face shouldn't be anywhere.
On the cover of Vogue...a voice silently intruded her head. Shut up. Ego. Sometimes she'd catch a glimpse of herself that was startling in its beauty. A trick of the light, a freaky camera angle that hid her flawed androgynous bone structure. A nasty illusion that made it harder to peer at her real self, her none-self. When the illusion faded out. And it always faded out and a truer image of herself dancing, not as a tu-tu'd swan but on a pole, a 10 foot pole, with which no one would want to touch her. Or better, a bag lady, pushing a shopping cart...yes, she'd definitely get a shopping cart, not one of those old bucket ones from Winn Dixie, but one of the sleeker models like from CVS. Ross the bastards, attached a 10 foot pole to each cart so no homeless person could run out the door with it--the pole made the cart too tall to fit though the Exits. But she could fit just as much into the smaller cart. The Red Cross when she worked drawing blood, taught her to pack neatly, cleverly, precisely. She'd be great packing up a boat...maybe she should sell her services...cleaning services. So she'd never have to sleep with a boy she didn't like much for weed ever again.
Mr. Gato looked startled. Gold? I wouldn't go that far. Maybe silver, which doesn't rust but does tarnish.
Why are you so weird?
It would take eons to explain. You have eons?
What's an eon? Like an electron?
You mean an Ion? He goes to the chalkboard and selects the largest piece of chalk...not very large. Chalk was cheap. He used a lot of it, but it didn't come naturally. Talk, that was, not to him. And yet he became a teacher. Deliberately choosing to face his worst nightmare every morning of his working life. A charged electron? He was a counter-phobist-- he'd made up the word but not the concept--doing the things that scare you the most. For whatever reason. Builds character. Speaking of the defects of: he had to be more careful in smaller groups not to turn friendliness to flirting. Bunnies were boiled over lesser crimes.
After 12 years of teaching, he'd developed a style that was casual but not intimate. Rarely, a student caught his eye for whatever reason: a Sumerian Goddess profile ... a particular sort of girlish-boy or Tomboy...a precociously sharp wit ...or a quirky bottomless well of thoughts. This gold girl, this special needs girl, was a little too close to his preferred profile. He mentally took 3 steps back from her. Too bad, being the only girl in the group.
They're either idolized or brutalized. Right, black and white thinking...the very thing I warn against. He had 2 adolescent stepdaughters, one of each alleged type...but the lines blurred and Luz, labeled "fair game" at 12, three years before he came on the scene, sometimes found herself an object of worship, albeit on a smaller scale. Her older sister, Mercedes
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