My Soul to Keep

CHAPTER 7



Mr. Parker’s mouth dropped open like a toddler had crawled under his desk and whacked him in the giblets. I tried not to giggle as he slowly closed his mouth and stood up from behind his desk. I expected him to start shouting obscenities about the stupidity of pre-marital sex, but he walked around and closed the door behind me. I could practically hear the phone call he would make to my mother in my head.

“Connor, I hope I don’t need to give you a lecture about how dangerous it is for someone of your age to engage in such activities?”

“No, sir. Trust me when I say, it was an accident and won’t be happening again for as long as I live my life as a single person. Such activities are best left to those with more experience and have joined their lives in holy matrimony.” I fought hard to keep my face sincere and deadpan. I didn’t know what the hell was going on with me, but I liked it. Not only had I come up with the most unbelievable lie in the universe, I sounded heartily sorry for it too.

“Good. Tell you what. I won’t get involved in this at all. If you’ve learned your lesson, no harm has been done. Just be grateful it was a scare and not the real thing, young man. To help you learn even more from this unpleasantness, I have an idea. You’re going to do something for me I hope will teach you how to be a little more responsible in the future. We have a new student here at our school. She has a disability requiring the help of other students. She has a visual impairment and will require assistance getting from one class to the next. Would you be interested in helping her as sort of a penance for your errors?”

My mind focused in on Jessica, sitting out in the waiting room and I nodded enthusiastically. I definitely wouldn’t mind spending more time with her. I hate to admit it, especially after the lie I just told Mr. Parker, but I hadn’t even kissed a girl let alone done enough to get one pregnant. I definitely wouldn’t mind kissing Jessica if the chance ever came up.

“Good. Mrs. Rhodes has her schedule, and I believe most of her classes coincide with yours. Please make her feel at home here at James Underwood. I’m counting on you. Mr. Sullivan, please be a little more careful in the future?”

“I plan on it, sir.”

He nodded and I stood, collecting my belongings. I refrained from running down the hall to introduce myself again to Jessica. I rounded the corner and saw Mrs. Rhodes sitting with her talking about her classes. I walked through the gate and made my way over to them.

“Um, Mrs Rhodes?”

“Yes, Connor?”

“I just talked to Mr. Parker. He asked me to take Jessica around to her classes….”

“Really? That’s good! Jessica, may I introduce you to Connor Sullivan? I guess he’s going to be showing you around our wonderful school.”

“We met briefly before. Thank you, Mrs. Rhodes,” she said and gave a dazzling smile. My heart dropped into my stomach.

She stood and I tried very hard not to notice the amount of leg visible as she slid forward on the plastic couch that had been made decades before I was born. Why did every piece of furniture in our school have to be green? Politely, I kept my eyes riveted to the crack on the cushion a full seat to her left. I won’t lie. It was more for my benefit than hers. If I hadn’t averted my eyes, walking down the hall in a few moments would be pretty embarrassing.

“Hello again,” I said with what I hoped to be a measure of sophistication.

“Hi, yourself. Which way are we heading?” She flipped her cane with her wrist and it went from a mass of jumbled pieces to a complete cane in a split second. I guess she'd been blind for a while.

“Can I see your schedule?” Mrs. Rhodes handed it to me with a brief smile before heading back behind the counter.

I glanced through it and smiled as I realized almost all of our classes matched up. I briefly wondered if I'd been set up by Mr. Parker. The only difference was fourth hour. I had PE and Jessica, study hall. Would they let me drop PE? I doubted it, but it would be nice.

“Looks like we’re off to the wonderful world of algebra,” I said and got a groan from my new partner. Guess she felt the same way I did about it.

“Joy. Lead on, MacDuff.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” she said with a giggle sounding vaguely like music.

“Um, I’ve never done this before. Would it be easier for you to hold on to my arm or do you want to walk and I’ll just tell you about stairs and stuff?”

“Ooh, a handicapped virgin. This is always fun.” She didn’t sound bitter, more like teasing. I wondered how many “virgins” she had to deal with. “Since it’s the first day and I have absolutely no idea as to how this place is laid out, would you mind if I hang on to your arm?”

“Not at all,” I said with minimal cracking in my voice. The thought of actually touching Jessica sent my heart into overdrive. I could practically hear it in my ears.

I held my arm out to her and waited. It took me about a minute to realize she couldn’t see it. I reached down with my right hand and gently grabbed hers to pull it on top of my waiting arm.

As soon as my fingertips touched her skin, my heart went from fast to threatening to jump out of my chest and run a marathon. There weren’t any sparks of electricity like you see in the movies, rather a quiet feeling of power, belonging, home, safety, and chocolate. I didn’t want to let go. Ever.

I heard Jessica give a little gasp and I hoped it meant she felt it too. I pulled her hand closer to me and spread her fingers over my wrist to let her know I would guide her. She closed her fingers on my wrist and I concentrated very hard on the linoleum floor beneath me, the sunlight coming through the window, and the smells surrounding us. Anything to take my mind off the feeling of her hand on my arm. I took one small step forward to let her know which way we were going and she took a step to match mine.

“How far is our first class?”

“Not far, just up the stairs and to the left. Mr. Johnson is our teacher, nice guy for a troll.”

That earned me a short burst of her musical laughter and I smiled. They needed to make a recording of her laugh and play it for the criminally insane. I’m sure they would be cured within a week.

We made it up the stairwell without her falling. I sighed with relief when we made it. I won't lie, I was worried. The strangest thing about the whole situation was the reason for my fear. I was more afraid she would get hurt than that the whole school would see me drop the blind girl down the stairs. Luckily everyone already started first period and the stairs were relatively vacant. I probably would have dropped her if I had to maneuver her through a torrent of students.

Mr. Johnson had his back to the class and furiously scribbled archaic algebraic equations on the green blackboard (why are blackboards green?) like some sort of magic spell. I know it’s just numbers, but when I looked at it spread out in all its glory, it looked more like Sanskrit or Cuneiform than math. Either way it hurt my head.

“You’re late, Mr. Sullivan. Please take your seat,” Mr. Johnson said without turning around. Apparently he didn’t get the memo about getting a new student.

“We have a new student, sir.”

He turned and gave me an annoyed look before realizing she was blind. The depth of her handicap hit me. How would she do her home work, take tests, follow along on the blackboard? I hated algebra with a passion, but at least I could see it. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for Jessica.

“Welcome to our classroom Ms…”

“James. Jessica James.” I stifled a giggle and vowed to start calling her Jessie. It became sort of a moral imperative.

“Shut up,” Jessie whispered out of the side of her mouth. She must have heard the beginnings of my laugh.

“Well, there just happens to be an empty desk next to Mr. Sullivan. Why don’t you sit there and we’ll get back to the lesson?”

I nodded at Mr. Johnson and took a tentative step toward the pair of desks in the middle of the room. Jessica felt the tug of my arm and took a step to match mine. Maybe this would be easier than I thought. I walked her to the opening at her desk and as soon as her cane clanked against the metal leg, she reached out with a tentative hand and felt around. I could imagine what the wooden top felt like to her soft hand. When she reached the edge, she waved her hand around the empty space of the chair. She gauged the space and slid neatly into the empty spot leaving me to gawk at her for a few minutes before I realized she was listening for me to leave. Realizing every set of eyes in the class were watching me staring at Jessica, I did just that.

I slid into my desk, pulled my book out of my backpack, and opened it to a random page. The sounds of Mr. Johnson’s chalk striking the board were the only ones in the classroom. I took a quick peek at my new friend and I saw her tilt her head away from me like she listened to the mathematical equations being drawn on the board. She gave a little smile, I sighed at the cuteness of it, and she smiled a little more. Embarrassed, I paid attention to the board.

Johnson stopped writing and stepped away from his equation. He looked around the room for a victim, I mean volunteer, and I slid as low in my seat as possible. I shouldn’t have moved at all. Teachers have vision just like a Tyrannosaurus Rex and only see movement.

“Mr. Sullivan, why don’t you come up to the board and show our new student the ease at which you can solve the equation?”

“I’d rather not, sir. I planned on explaining everything to her so she knows where we are…”

“I’d rather you did. Up here now, please. You can explain to the whole class exactly what you’re doing.”

Undercurrents of laughter spread through the room and forced blood and heat to rise into my cheeks. I gave a little sigh, resigned myself to my doom, and made my way to the front of the class. My hand shook as I reached for the tiny sliver of chalk in the metal tray beneath the blackboard that seemed to have grown four times its normal size. Slowly, I lifted my hand and gripped the chalk between my thumb and finger. With a small puff of dust it shattered into three-hundred and seventeen pieces.

I mean that literally. Time froze and my brain picked out not only each piece of chalk suspended in the air between my hand and the floor, but the thirty-six pieces still trapped between my thumb and finger. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

“Today, Mr. Sullivan.”

I looked back at Johnson standing at the rear of the classroom with his arms folded over his brown suit jacket. I gave a wan little smile and turned back around, reaching for another piece of chalk. This time I gripped it as lightly as possible without dropping it to the linoleum floor.

I gave a nervous laugh at my shaking hand as it brought the chalk to the board right under the jumble of numbers Mr. Johnson left to torture me. I closed my eyes, opened them, and tried to focus. The numbers seemed to float in front of the board and started to glow almost blue. They stayed the color as the letters in the equations flared red. My hand became a blur and my mouth started giving a play-by-play recap of everything my hand did like some crazed sports announcer on television. The worst part of the whole thing was my brain understood everything I said. As I wrote the final answer on the board and boxed it in, the last of my breath flew from my lungs and I spun to face the class.

Everyone stared, and by everyone I mean every student (including the blind one) and the teacher. They sat there open mouthed like I'd sprouted wings. I glanced behind me to make sure I hadn’t.

“Is that right?”

Mr. Johnson nodded at my question and I gave a quick sigh before heading back to my empty seat and tried very hard to make myself as small as possible.