When she didn’t show for class or our art history final, I made my way to the Edward Yancy art building. She wasn’t there either, but the student showcase was up, and I recognized her artwork before I saw her name on it.
From a distance, it looked like the ocean.
It was painted a deep shade of turquoise with some red elements popping out from the canvas and textured in a way I couldn’t understand until I stepped closer.
If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought she’d painted over trash. But I did know better and I saw each element of our time together beneath the water.
A red carnival ticket. A receipt from the Patty Wagon. A hot chocolate envelope. Ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise packets. A peanut butter M&M’s wrapper. A Coors Light bottle cap. The edge of a Parker’s Pizza box.
A condom wrapper. That one threw me, but I checked closely—it was my brand.
A hospital visitor’s badge. The corner of a napkin from High Octane, displaying their vintage gas pump logo.
I ran my fingers along the red baseball threads that connected everything together.
Down in the corner, I saw the small white card that confirmed what I already knew.
Picking up the Pieces – A Mixed Medium Production by E. Tyler.
Maybe she had blown me off, but what her words didn’t say, her art did. Our time together had mattered, maybe as much to her as it had to me.
After that, I started going to the coffee shop twice a day every day to see if she was working. She wasn’t. Not one single time.
I thought of asking a manager when and if she was on the schedule, but that seemed a little over the top and desperate. Which I was, but there was no need to announce it.
By the first day at my new job, I told myself it was time to let it go. She’d gotten what she’d needed from me and that was that. Being blown off had wounded my heart and my ego, but it was time to stop nursing those wounds and focus on my future. I had classes to teach and hockey team tryouts to prepare for.
That morning, I showered, trimmed up the beard that had grown in since I quit shaving two weeks ago, and put on khaki Dockers with a button down pale blue Oxford shirt. I spent five minutes in front of my full-length mirror deciding whether or not to wear a blue and red striped tie that reminded me of her painting, finally deciding I might as well.
Maybe that would take the attention off the bags under my bloodshot eyes.
I dabbed on some Armani cologne, but her scent still lingered. It kept me up most nights, hoping she’d appear like she’d done before. I was a self-destructive addict that couldn’t bring myself to walk away and return to my room inside the house. I didn’t want to risk not being in the camper if she came back. I even slept with the door unlocked.
There was a thunderstorm the first day of school, causing the scent of rain and wildflowers to assault my senses as I entered my empty classroom that morning. Being ghosted and haunted were both new for me. I didn’t like it. I wondered if I’d ever caused anyone to feel this way. From now on, I knew I had to be more careful with the women I was intimate with. I did my best to shake off my jangled nerves as I printed my name on the board in blue dry erase marker.
Mr. Singleton.
It seemed so adult, so formal. I would’ve preferred just to be called Coach, but I remembered what I’d learned from my student advisor—if I didn’t establish my authority during the first week of school, I never would.
I took a deep breath, greeting my students as they began to trickle in a few at a time.
Not long ago, I was a high school student myself. And yet, looking at them, it felt like a lifetime ago. They seemed like children—so sure of themselves and so blissfully unaware of the harsh real world realities breathing down their necks. Most of them stared at cell phones or continued conversations with each other, barely paying me any attention.
It wasn’t until a tall, athletic-looking kid with a nasty shiner took his seat that I started to doubt my abilities.
The entire right side of his face showed the faint hint of bruising and he was limping a little. Surely, he w
asn’t being physically abused at home or bullied here at school already.
I reminded myself that I got into plenty of fights in high school. He was a senior, practically a grown man for all intents and purposes, and it wasn’t my business anyway. Except, as his teacher it actually was. This was the part I wasn’t prepared for. They don’t put that in the books.
When the final morning bell rang, I closed the classroom door. Feeling suddenly hot and claustrophobic, I undid the buttons on the cuffs of my shirt, rolling up my sleeves before starting class.
“Good morning,” I greeted the students in my homeroom, lifting the stack of papers off my desk. I handed several to the students in the front rows to pass backward. “I’m Mr. Singleton. What you’ll find in this packet is everything you need to successfully pass Government this semester. As you already know, it’s a requirement to graduate.”
A petite but curvy redhead entered late and snuck quietly toward the back. I hadn’t taken attendance yet, so I didn’t make an issue of it. She smiled apologetically. Hopefully it wouldn’t continue to be a problem.
Once the packets were distributed, I picked up the blue cards with their schedules and grabbed the class roster to take attendance. Figuring it’d been easier to handle them both at once, I began handing them out as I read off their names. When I got to the E’s and shiner kid answered here to Drew Echols, my world tilted off its axis.