“So you will fail on purpose?” he asked.
She knew that she had walked into a trap, though she wasn’t sure who had set it. “I guess I will, yeah.”
“Do you understand why I’m confused?”
She nodded. She wasn’t asking him to understand; she was asking him to help her. “I don’t want to give that speech. I don’t want people to look at me. I don’t want them to wonder why I’m the valedictorian and I’m not even going to college.”
“Wait, why aren’t you going to coll—” he began to question, but she cut him off.
“The point is, I’m asking you to help me. You’re my favorite teacher, the best teacher I’ve ever had, and I’m asking you to please help me. I’ll do my very best in your class and you’ll give me an F and everything will be fine.”
She could tell that he had no idea what was going on. She watched the confusion and consternation disappear from his face with such suddenness that she was afraid of him for a brief moment.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” she almost shouted. “Thank you so much, Mr. Jackson.”
“But I won’t fail you. I can’t do that. I’ll give you a D. I’ll give you a D minus even, but I’m not flunking you.” He smiled, and she felt, again, the warmth of his kindness.
Without thinking, or perhaps thinking so forcefully that she made her fantasies come true, she put her arms around him and kissed him. When it was over, something entirely new having begun, he looked into her eyes and she smiled without reservation.
“Congratulations,” he said. “For reasons beyond me, you are no longer the smartest person in this school.”
“It’s nice to hear,” she said. “It feels so good to hear that.”
In Georgia, Izzy used some of the money from the graduation card to purchase two tickets for a movie that was so layered and complicated that it offered, according to reviews, at least three mind-blowing twists in the first hour. She chose it because she hoped the difficulty of the plot would force Hal to focus on the movie instead of the pregnancy. Of course, it could backfire and he would completely ignore the movie and simply vibrate with anxiety about his role, past, present, and future, in Izzy’s condition.
She ordered a bucket of soda so the sugar would keep them alert. She assumed that caffeine and sugar were bad for the child but it was so early in the pregnancy that she believed there must be some kind of grace period. It had been hard, in this first week after realizing that she was pregnant, to think of the baby as a thing separate from herself. She kept imagining the baby as simply some newly discovered muscle or bone in her body and that it didn’t require any alteration in her lifestyle. She did not want to acknowledge that the baby would demand attention to her own body in order to keep it safe. Throughout her adolescence, she treated her body as a damned vessel that she would pilot until it exploded or sank, without any upkeep or care. Once she paid for the soda, she asserted her belief in a grace period and took a long, satisfied sip, fighting back the hiccups that came immediately after. Hal, either in solidarity with Izzy or simply working himself into a smaller and smaller box within his mind, did not say a thing about the soda.
They found seats directly in the middle of the theater, space all around them, and Hal immediately took out his cell phone and popped the battery out of it. He was terrified of being a public nuisance, the mere idea of his phone ringing during a movie making him so scared that he did not trust even the act of turning it off. To suggest setting the phone to vibrate would send him, she imagined, into a fit. He handed the battery to Izzy, who had left her own phone in the car, prepared for this phobia of Hal’s. She put it in her purse so as to keep the phone and battery as far apart as possible. Still, fidgeting in his seat, Hal next removed his wallet and change and lip balm and placed them all at his feet with the hollowed-out cell phone. For anything that required relaxation, Hal had explained to Izzy that he needed to do a fair amount of prep work to even consider the prospect, and she was as fine with it as a person could be, because she actually liked watching the way, as he literally stripped the distractions from his body, that he gradually calmed himself. It was like viewing some strange, unsanctioned form of yoga. He handed his ring of keys to Izzy because they would make a jangly sound if his feet accidentally touched them on the floor. Now, his pockets emptied of objects, finally free to focus on the movie, he kissed Izzy on the cheek, the first sign of affection since they’d left the park. Just then, two young men shuffled into the seats directly behind them, jostling her seat as they sat down. She registered Hal’s irritation, the fact that any stranger would choose to be near another stranger, but he calmed just as the previews came on, and she watched the green glow of the screen reflect across Hal’s face and his eyes widen with anticipation. Whatever came next, his body seemed to suggest to her, he was ready.