a group project for Aaron’s class a jock says out loud that Maggie doesn’t participate enough. She flips out in front of all the other students. She curses at him loudly. She feels confident that Aaron will not send her to the principal’s office. He won’t do anything to hurt her more, she knows. Or he’s scared of her. Either way.
Though Maggie doesn’t see Aaron very often outside his class, he does occasionally suggest that she remain behind after the period, and that’s when he asks how she’s doing. Sometimes she snidely replies, How do you think? Sometimes she says simply, I miss you. Always he looks back at her with a woeful expression, but there’s no mistaking the finality. She thinks that maybe he enjoys it. Maybe he needs to know she is still dying over him. For a few weeks, she stays away completely. She tries to bandage herself. After his class one day, Aaron instructs Maggie to stay back.
I have to tell you something important, he says. It’s about Murphy.
Aaron tells her that Shawn Krinke saw Aaron leave TGI Friday’s that night. Aaron doesn’t know what he actually saw, but he saw something. Then Mr. Krinke told Mr. Murphy, who already had suspicions, because Maggie would sign out of Newspaper and say she was going to Art, or to the washroom, but really she was going to Aaron’s classroom.
Maggie thinks back to the night when she picked him up. It was dark out but she couldn’t guarantee that Krinke wouldn’t have been able to see it was her from inside the restaurant. She feels that it’s her fault, that she needs to handle it.
So both Murphy and Krinke think we’re together? Maggie asks.
Well, we’re not—
That we were?
I don’t know, maybe.
Well fuck them.
Maggie feels glad, suddenly, to have an outlet for her pain that is closer to anger than grief. She tells Aaron she wants to confront Murphy.
That’s not a good idea, Aaron says. He sounds nervous, and frustrated by her immaturity. Sometimes he looks pained, the hero staying in a shitty marriage because he loves his kids too much. At other times, he looks the way he does now.
Maggie looks at the clock. She is going to be late for her next class so she tells him she’ll come back to hear the whole story, to make a plan. It’s somewhat comforting that they have this one last mission to complete together.
Later, Maggie gets up to leave in the middle of Mr. Murphy’s newspaper class and heads back to Aaron’s room. Mr. Murphy’s class was very different from any other because for the first fifteen minutes there were progress updates but then the students were set loose to get their stories finished. They could sign out to get interviews or go to the library.
But Maggie had stopped signing out. She just left.
Aaron is at his desk, grading papers. He looks beautiful and so far away.
Hey, she says.
Just then, she hears someone behind her. It’s Jeremy Murphy.
Oh good! Maggie says brashly. I’m glad you’re here. I want to talk about why you think something is going on between me and Knodel.
Murphy starts to speak, stumbling over his words.
I just wish you had said something to me first, Maggie says, if you had these concerns.
At this point, Aaron’s voice rises behind Maggie.
I understand, Aaron says, his speech suddenly and bizarrely formal, that Mr. Murphy probably just felt uncomfortable by the nature of—of our friendship, and perhaps—
Yes, Murphy says, precisely as Mr. Knodel was saying—
Maggie feels winded. They never in the past referred to each other as mister. It was always their last names, collegial.
Okay, well, I’ve had enough, Maggie says. I gotta get back to work.
She and Murphy walk back to his classroom together. It’s extremely awkward and they are completely silent.
This, she knew, signaled a new sort of over.
She begins hanging out with a male coworker from Buffalo Wild Wings. She smokes weed with him. When she takes a hit she imagines Aaron watching her. She blows out subversive little gusts of smoke. She does things Aaron will never know she does. She hopes the universe conveys to him that she’s being a bad girl.
One night there’s a teacher-student basketball game at the high school and Maggie’s friend Tessa is playing. Aaron is playing, too. He warns her. He says his boys will be there, and she knows this means his wife is coming. Maggie tells him she doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to see him any