Still Life: Seventh-Grade Art Teacher Gets High Marks

I'm a woman now. I have means to be mean and get away with it. He died—too fast for my liking. I’d already hired a detective, ready to face it— or at least harass the details of the since-me life he must have lived. I've never spoken about it, the last time we talked. He called me from a pay booth because his wife was home. I answered on my plastic ConAir phone because my parents were at work: What did you tell them? I told them nothing. Nothing happened when I was gathered in the room with the same advisor who told me to use vinegar on my underarms to stave off the stink of puberty the year before. Has your mother ever talked to you? The counselor, with the vice principal and nurse— not asking if it had happened but if I knew what it meant. Big of them to think I had the right words for it: Consort, statutory, inappropriate. It's always ok if they’re in love, I answered like it was still a hypothetical. It wasn’t enough to stop them from handing it back to me— to let me deny it, file it away, case closed, parents informed and unconcerned. Even the police were relieved there was no paperwork.