loose girl, maybe, you were. On all these dating sites, with all these siblings; your parents were copulating drunks who made all these kids and then let them scatter about the country, creating complications and surfing them like waves to new states. You don’t live on the nice side of West Fargo, you live on the lesser side, unlike Mr. Knodel, North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year, who lives in an attractive, neutral-colored house with a hose that coils up and grass nobody forgets to water.
You look at him, during this. And you think about back then. And you think, What if time had never gone forward? And you could be back there again. When everything was clean and everybody was alive. What if your hands and his hands were still friends. And Hoy says, You indicated that prior to your junior year, that you’d been close with Mr. Knodel before that.
You say, Correct.
How did that come about? says Hoy.
You think, hard, about the answer to this. You close your mind’s eye. And just like that, there you are. Out of the black death of your present, and back in the considerable heaven of the past.
Maggie’s destiny arrives one afternoon without a clarion call. It comes on cat feet, like everything else in the world that has the power to destroy you.
She had only heard about him. Some of the girls were talking about how hot he was. Slick dark hair with a little front wing, like it had been gelled into permanent salute. Charming, dark eyes. The kind of teacher who makes you want to come to school, even on cold North Dakota mornings. His name, in the hallways, had become the kind of name one whispers, because of how much excitement it conjured.
Mister Knodel.
Maggie is not the type to take someone’s word about someone else’s hotness. And she won’t go along with popular opinion, just to fit in. Her friends say she has no filter. They laugh about it but secretly they’re happy she’s on their team. She’s the type to tell a man he isn’t going to step outside so he might as well not say, Do you want to step outside?
Finally, this one day, between second and third periods, she gets a look at him in the hallway as he walks by. He’s wearing khakis, a button-down, and a tie. It isn’t some meteoric moment. It rarely is a big deal the first time you meet the next VIP of your life. She says to her friends, Well ya, he’s cute, but he certainly isn’t all he was cracked up to be.
There aren’t a lot of hot male teachers. There aren’t any, actually. There are two other young male teachers, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Krinke, who together with Mr. Knodel are the three amigos. Beyond being close with one another they are also connected with the students in all sorts of ways like text messaging, especially with the kids they coach; Mr. Murphy and Mr. Knodel coach student congress, and Mr. Krinke and Mr. Knodel coach speech and debate together. They hang out after school at restaurants that serve beer flights, like the Spitfire Bar & Grill. Applebee’s. TGI Friday’s. They watch games and drink a few lagers. During the school day they eat what they call a guys’ lunch in Mr. Knodel’s room. They discuss fantasy football and take large, unapologetic bites out of club sandwiches.
Of the three amigos, Mr. Knodel is the catch. Five foot ten, 190 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Not a catch in the traditional sense—he’s married, with kids. A catch meaning he is the most attractive of the under-forty teachers pool. If you can’t go to Las Vegas, you go to Foxwoods.
By the second semester of her freshman year, Maggie has Mr. Knodel for English. She’s interested in the class. She sits upright and raises her hand and smiles and is mostly on time. They talk after class. He looks into her eyes and listens, like a good teacher.
Everything is clicking into place. When West Fargo plays Fargo South in the girls’ soccer semifinals, the coach calls Maggie up and she begins to shake all over like a small bird. He tells her they need her muscle out there. They lose, but it’s because of her that they almost don’t. The air is crisp, the day sunny, and she remembers thinking, I have the rest of my life to do this, and anything else I want.