Queer Fires by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin and Blount
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13 | EMMETT

It wasn’t like Jim and I were trained detectives, or bounty hunters, or anything like that. But apparently being a schoolteacher involved a lot more than playing with your pud and thinking up dumbass assignments about Lord Byron. One of those things, it turned out—at least, in a rural school like the one in Vehpese—involved tracking down truants.

“Believe it or not—” Jim said, and he had one of those lovely, self-conscious Jim smiles—the way he smiled when he thought something was funny and knew I wouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself. “—teenagers are not actually that savvy or sophisticated. Leaving aside, for the moment, all those TV shows where the teenagers are played by twentysomethings and have their lines written for them by fortysomethings who have watched too much West Wing and Sex and the City.”

“This is literally the bitchiest I’ve ever seen you,” I said, “and you’re still practically a saint.”

Jim rolled his eyes.

“I’m seriously living for this. Please don’t stop. Ever.”

“When kids don’t show up to school, they’re usually at home. And if they’re not at home, they’re somewhere else they usually go—a friend’s house, a relative’s. Somewhere they feel safe.”

“Did you ever think about tracking me down when I played hooky?”

“You were never truant.” Jim looked up and down the street, and then he waved for me to follow as he jogged west. “Your mom always called you in sick.”

“Oh my God, for real? That’s a waste of all those days I did it to fuck with her.”

Jim had his little Jim smile again. His hair was lank from the last two days, and he had shadows under his eyes, and somehow he’d gotten a smear of dirt on his jawline where there was, for Mr. Clean-Cut-Jim-Spencer, an interesting amount of red-gold stubble. But the smile was what did me in. How could somebody be simultaneously so nerdy and so hot? Nature abhors a paradox—or maybe I made that up.

“What?” I finally asked.

He checked the street signs at the intersection and turned and kept jogging.

“Just tell me.” I loped alongside him. “What?”

“Junior year?”

“Yeah?”

He hesitated. “I shouldn’t.”

“You’re not my teacher anymore. I can beat you up if I want to.”

He burst out laughing, and to be fair, it was definitely laughable. Psych ops? Sure, Jim was totally outclassed. But anything physical—anything seriously physical—and he’d hand me my ass. He was jacked, all that adult muscle nicely developed and on display even under the bulky sweatshirt.

“Please?” I asked, and it sounded a little like whining.

“You had way more absences than the district allows. You shouldn’t have gotten credit for second semester.”

“Uh, ok. But I did. I graduated.”

“Well, yes. Your mother brought in a doctor’s note.”

I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but I could sense the existential horror waiting on the other side of Jimbo’s fucking punchline.

“From her gynecologist,” Jim said, and his grin glittered again. He was trying not to laugh. “We—the other teachers and I—we called it your hysterical pregnancy.”

I couldn’t help it: I shoved him.

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