Man-Shaped Mirror

Lisa went, then Rebecca, then Angel. A couple of girls I don't know very well swam and finished at under one minute. If I could keep my time just above one minute, that would be enough.

I'm suddenly at the front of the line. Paulhan sees me and grins. Twin reflections of my face dance across the lenses of his shades. Cecelia climbs out of the water. Her time is exactly one minute. I take a deep breath, pull down my goggles and leap in.

I kick furiously. I make sure to keep my legs straight and rigid. My arms move quickly, and they carry me faster than I thought they'd be able to. I'm careful to keep them in the water as much as possible, and to split the water's surface with the sides of my palms when I bring them back under. Too much splashing slows you down.

The sound of my blood pulsating through me drowns everything out. I try to picture myself as a perfect mechanism, a powerful torpedo, even an unthinking wind-up toy.

I grow faint. I'm approaching the opposite wall of the pool. I just need to be there already. My head feels heavy but powerless, like an oncoming wave in the pool would snap it backwards. In a moment I'm inches from the wall, and I prepare myself to duck and turn. My head is heavier and heavier, like a solid anchor dropping into the bottom of a gaping ocean. Perhaps I wouldn't make the turn.

Did I?

***

"Sabine!"

Something wet is patting my face. A seal's tail.

"Can you hear me?"

A sonorous voice. More patting on my face. This must be some kind of game. Like peek-a-boo, except someone else was closing their hands over my eyes. Guess who?

My nose and my mouth suddenly fill with water. It welled up from my throat and it stings. My body is pulsating with a dull pain as I turn. I'm going to retch. Warm, salty water pours out of me instead. I can't smell anything but chlorine.

Someone's patting me on the back. A warm hand is clasped around my shoulders. My goggles are on crooked. I pull them off and see the swim team—a crowd of frightened, closely huddled girls—on the opposite side of the pool.

"Are you okay?"

Him. His face is tense, gripped with shock. His shades are gone now, and he's drenched. His clothes cling to him as he kneels next to me.

"What are you doing here?"

What's going on? Did I drown?

"Sabine, you passed out and almost drowned," he says urgently, "I had to get you out of the water."

I have no recollection of this. I'm just more tired than ever.

"Sabine, did you look in the mirror today? You've got dark circles under your eyes." He's watching me, his gaze sharp and intense. "You shouldn't even be in the pool."

This made me angry. Yes, I know. Thanks to you, you asshole.

I scramble to get up on my feet. My limbs feel frail, though Paulhan's arm is cradling my shoulders. I turn to him.

"Piece of shit..." I mutter under my breath as I kick him with what energy I have left.

Square in the shin.

Turning on my feet, I make my way towards the locker room. Soft gasps flare out of the flock of wide-eyed girls. Paulhan's sandals were suspended upon the placid surface of the pool. His shades sat at the bottom, motionless.

Sat Sept 9, 2006 11:45 AM

Sunlight is peeking in through the blinds. I guess it woke me up.

My cellphone is flashing—I reach for it. Eight missed calls, all from Kate, starting from last night. Four today. I sigh and hit "send." She picks up after one ring.

"Sa-BINE! Where have you been!?" I have to hold the phone away. Her voice reached a painful pitch.

"Um, sleeping." I rub my eyes and look at the clock.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?!"

"My clock says 11:45."

"God, how long did you sleep for anyway? I've been trying to call you since ten last night!"

"I don't know, like, fourteen hours? I feel kind of gross."

"Yeah, well I wonder why!"

"What's up?"

Kate sighs, deeply exasperated.

"What's up?! Don't you remember what happened? You kicked Mister Paulhan at the swim meet! You kicked him, Sabine! You are in deep shit!"

Oh, right...

"Um, honestly, I do not remember that. I just remember zonking out when I came home last night."

"Seriously, Sabine, how could you do that? You like, assaulted a teacher! After he pulled you out of the water and did like, CPR and everything!"

Uh, what?

"Look, if I did anything wrong I just wasn't with it, you know? I was totally out of it when it happened."

"Okay! I know! That's what Mister Paulhan told everyone. Angel told me he said you weren't yourself, so it's not a big de—"

"I barely slept all week because I was studying for that fucking quiz he was going to give me. I had to do that, and physics homework, study for history, and read through that Scarlet Letter novel for his class. Katie, his class is just fucking me!"

Just talking about it made me irritated.

"I'm still worried for you."

"Well, what could happen? Am I going to get suspended?"

Kate's mom is on the school board. Maybe she can help me out.

"I don't know. I don't think so. I begged my mom and told her what happened. You might actually be able to get out of it. We're not going to find out until Monday though."

"Okay... I guess we'll see." I rub my face. I just don't want to think about that right now.

"So did he really do CPR? Are you positive?"

"Um, yeah, Sabine. Angel and everyone there saw it. He fucking saved you. You have no idea how fucking jealous I am right now. I would not have kicked him."

"That is so gross."

"Oh, shut up. Hey I gotta run. But look, please don't do something like that again. You're just so totally crazy sometimes."

"Um, sure."

"Okay I'm gonna go. Oh, so I overheard Joe talking to Branden last night. He said he's going to ask you to homecoming with him. You should say no."

"I wasn't thinking of even going homecoming."

"Well, you should go. Just not with him. Bye!"

She hung up. I look at the clock again. It's 11:49. I try not to picture Paulhan performing CPR on me. It just felt wrong. Like, predatory.

I pull my bag onto the bed and start sorting through all the homework for the weekend. First thing on the pile is a handwritten prompt for an essay on The Scarlet Letter. It's a photocopy of Paulhan's writing. The strokes in his letters go this way and that. Some r's and e's join, some dots are absent from their i's. The page is littered with curly, dismembered insect legs. Why do English teachers write so illegibly?

You're going to compose an essay on the question of ETHICS in The Scarlet Letter. You're going to need to know the difference between MORALITY and ETHICS before you get started. Analyze the CONFLICTS that arise between the two systems of VALUES as the characters navigate through the narrative. Identify key themes that support your argument. Remember to cite examples.

Here we go.

Mon Sept 11, 2006 7:51 AM

I was called into principal Smith's office first thing in the morning.

Nothing much happened, actually. Mister Smith reprimanded me for not taking care of myself and then lashing out at a teacher. Everyone in the office knows the story already. After staying up all week making up for reading she didn't do over the summer, Sabine exerted herself during the season's first swim meet. She passed out, Mister Paulhan saved her, and in a delirious state she kicked him in the shin. Right. What a silly girl.

"You're a bright student, Sabine. Everyone gets tripped up sometimes, I know that. But you have to stay mindful. One more mess-up and you might end up facing graver consequences."

He may as well have wagged his finger at me.

"Don't forget to thank Mister Paulhan. He saved you, and he spoke up for you, too."

"I will, Mister Smith. Thank you."

***

I open the door to Room 54. Paulhan is standing before the class, his hand suspended in front of the chalkboard. Thirty pairs of eyes are trained on me.

Paulhan says nothing as I make my way to the back of the room. I make eye contact with no one. No one utters a word, and class continues.

***

Word of the incident had spread throughout the school over the course of the day, if not already over the weekend. I'm now a sensation of sorts. Little freshman girls point and whisper when I walk by them in the halls. The punks and goths have been eyeing me with a newfound affinity.

"Don't worry, Sabine," Kate assured me, "next week it'll all blow over."

Otherwise, the day has been painfully slow. I guess it's all been building up to right now, the start of sixth period.

I'm waiting outside Room 54, shifting restlessly on my feet. The school's hallways grow quiet as students and teachers file indoors. A flock of gulls touch down in the quad, bickering noisily for scraps. I check my cellphone—it's twelve past one. I peer inside the windows. The room is dark, the chairs empty.

And then he finally appears. He looks sharp. He's in a thin white shirt, only the top button left undone, as always. Sleeves rolled up. Slim black slacks, the same black belt. Black leather oxfords. A binder in one arm, a set of keys in one hand. He struts up to the door and starts flipping through the keys. I look up at him. Right, he's got to be over six feet tall.

"Hey there," he says. His eyes, again, are unreadable. I search for a hint of expression in his face and find nothing. He fits a key into the door.

"Hi, Mister Paulhan." My voice is soft and meek. I just can't help it.

"You know, I think that's the first time you've actually addressed me as 'Mister Paulhan,'" he says as the door clicks open.

"Oh." Okay... "What did I call you before?"

"I don't think you did at all."

He isn't making eye contact anymore as he flips the light on and strides to his desk. A week into school, all these motions were becoming a familiar routine for him.

"Look, Mister Paulhan, I'm really, really sorry about what happened on Friday," I try not to sound too pathetic. I just need make sure he and I are at least on neutral terms, even if it means feeling painfully awkward.

"Really, I am. I had no idea what I was doing."

"Don't worry about it, Sabine. I know you were out of it." He sits down and flips his laptop open. "It was just awkward, that's all it was. But it's nothing. Don't worry about it."

A stifling silence creeps into the room as he starts clicking around on the computer.

Is this where I'm supposed to thank him for helping me? I realize I just can't bring myself to say it. It's even more uncomfortable than apologizing to this man.

"Aren't you going to sit down?" he asks.

I pick a desk at a safe distance and sit down. Paulhan looks up from his laptop.

"Oh, right. I need your paper from you, Sabine. The one on the Hawthorne Book. You left really quickly this morning and I didn't get it from you."

"Right, I forgot. Sorry." I dig through my bag and find it. The product of my weekend's turmoil is printed on twelve crispy white sheets, stapled together in the upper left corner at a forty-five degree angle. The trick isn't to widen the margins or blow up the font size. The trick is to use Baskerville.

I hand the essay to him.

"Excellent," he says, reaching over and grasping it gently. "I'll have the papers graded by Friday's class."

Another silence blankets the room.

"So did you ever get your sunglasses out of the pool?" I ask. My hands are damp. I confine them to my knees.

Paulhan's eyes are glued to the screen. He had slipped my essay into a pile of student papers next to him.

"Yeah, I went back in and fished them out after you left."

***

"Hey!"

Joe calls out to me as I stride through the parking lot. I'm on my way home. His idiot friends peer at me in unison, their suntanned elbows resting on the hood of his black Mustang. Mac Dre is booming out from the open windows.

I don't really want to go over there. So I stay where I am, my hands clutching the strap of my bag.

The sun is incredibly strong. Hanging out in the parking lot all afternoon must be why Joe's so dark all the time. He does a light jog to where I'm standing.

"What up, Sabine."

"Hey Joe." I manage a forced smile. He leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

"Baby," he purrs, "are you okay? I heard you kicked a teacher last week." He tries to smother a chuckle.

"I'm fine now, I was just really tired all last week, you know? Everything's okay."

"I know, we didn't chill at all last week. Or over the weekend either," he takes my hands in his. "I miss you. You want to come over tonight? We should hang out."

I pull away.

"Maybe... look, I have to run. I'll give you a call later about it, okay?"

"You need a ride?" he asks, puzzled.

"No, no, I'll be fine. You know I live really close."

Joe limbers back to his posse as I pace out of the parking lot.

"Sabine!" he calls out," I forgot to ask you something!"

I hold my hand up and motion for him to call me. Then I turn the corner and I'm gone. I need to get Kate on the phone as soon as possible.

***

"Um. What?"

"Yeah. He didn't even look at me when I asked him if he got his sunglasses back. He just said, 'Yeah, I went in again and got them after you left.'"

"Okay. I don't see what's wrong with that at all."

"I don't know. He didn't make eye contact with me. He didn't even look at me. He wasn't nice, or mean, he was just... nothing. I just got this vibe that he was deliberately guilting me the entire time. Like, brutally."

"Maybe it's because you are guilty. I mean, you attacked the guy after he saved you. You didn't even thank him. And you didn't read for his class. I know you. If I were you I would be pretty guilty."

"You just have to have been there. Katie, I have to see him on three occasions. I see him every morning, every afternoon, and then twice a week for swim meets. I have a better idea of what he's like than you do. Every time I talk to him it's like some kind of test he puts me through. I swear, he's a sly fuck."

"Yow, harsh words. Look, you know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think you have a crush on him."

"What?!"

"Yeah, I think you're hot for Paulhan. I knew it. You'd tell yourself and everyone that you hate him, and then completely turn it around. Look at you now. You're totally sprung."

"Katie, you are so full of shit."

"Whatever you wanna say," she sang, "I just know. Come on, you're calling me up to talk about him, all pissed and everything. It's okay, he kissed you and touched your boobs while you were passed out. I don't blame you."

I can only scoff. She can be such an idiot.

"Think about it. Just from what you've told me, it sounds like he didn't even say a whole lot. Don't you think you're reading into what he does a little too much? I mean, you're like, hanging on his every word."

"Maybe I am, but I don't have a crush on him. People our age don't even have crushes anymore. That was junior high."

Kate cracks up. She hoots and guffaws.

"Look, okay, I'm interested in him. I have to say, he's hard to figure out. I just want to figure him out."

"Okay, have fun," she says flatly. "Psychopath."

"Sure. You're the one who wants to stab her brother. Or boink him, whichever it is."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Katie, you keep telling me to stay away from your brother. Or you're talking shit about him. Isn't he your brother? Don't you love him?"

"Uh, yeah, he is my brother. And I tell you to stay away from him because I know he likes you for all the wrong reasons."

"And those are?"

"Sabine, he likes you because he's a loser, and he thinks you're a loser, too. He smokes weed all day, his grades are shit, and he's probably going to get kicked out of football. He's not going to make the next drug test. He might even get expelled. I can see it already. He wants to date you because you're hot, you put out for him, and it will make him look good in front of his buddies. At this point he just can't get any of the popular girls who no one thinks is a weirdo."

"Wow, as if these aren't obvious reasons."

"Well, why do you put out for him then?"

"Um, he's hot and he has excellent sources for weed?"

"Ugh," she groans, "See? He's a terrible influence on you. What did you do all summer? Didn't you tell me your GPA dropped last semester? Don't you care about any of that?"

"Gee, mom, I'm really touched by your concern."

"Like she's ever around anyways. When's the last time you saw her?"

"I don't know. A week and a half ago?"

"Yeah, my point exactly. I think her taking that sales job hasn't done you a whole lot of good."

"Sure. Look, we took the SAT's already. My grades are spic and span, even though they aren't everything in the world. Anyway, I've got essays to write and some physics papers to finish. I'll catch you later, okay?"

"Fine. But hey, don't trip about Paulhan, alright?"

"Okay."

"Do keep the juicy details coming, though," she quips.

Fri Sept 15, 2006 7:38 AM

"Okay, class. Good morning."

Paulhan's voice is loud and steady. All eyes were on him. A stack of essays are cradled in his arm. One corner is fatter than the others, made thick with staples. Paulhan takes an essay by this corner and lifts it off the pile.

"This is just what you've been waiting for, people. I've got your final essays right here. As a whole, you've performed very well for a first assignment. I'm very happy." He dangles one at eye level. "Camie?"

Camie hobbles to his feet and retrieves his paper.

"Jacob."

"Shelley."

"Jessica."

"Mansi."

"Aaron."

The stack is thinning. A few sullen faces in the room. Some are beaming. Where's mine?

"Alright guys, you did a good job. Everyone's responses were excellent."

He shifts his gaze towards me. It's surprisingly warm.

"There are a couple papers that I think should be shared with the rest of the class. They were very interesting responses. Let's hear them." Paulhan smiles. "Sabine, would you care to read the conclusion of your essay for us?"

He holds up my paper. Traces of red pencil graced the first page.

Um, no.

"I think you can read it for me," I squeak. Out of the corner of my eye I see Bernard shooting me a hateful look. This attention is unbearable.

"Are you sure? I might mess it up." Paulhan's voice is laced with delight.

"No, no... you can read it." God, why do I always get put on the spot with him?

He flips past the pages, tucking them neatly behind the very last one. The room is silent. Paulhan begins to read, his voice powerful and unwavering:

"Hester Prynne's letter 'A' comes to mean a variety of things throughout the course of the narrative, as does its red color. Whereas red originally served to ostracize her from the community, in many instances it becomes a brilliant hue of pride. I would go so far as to say it takes on the color of her blood and her heart.

"In a similar vein, Hawthorne shows us that while Prynne's past deeds are deemed uncouth by her community, she continues to evolve as a character who has learned to reconcile her sins and embrace them as part of her identity.

"Prynne's social climate favored a black and white view of nature which they've imposed upon their existence. This is identified as ethics. Having experienced both extremes of the scales of ethics and morality, she was able to synthesize these conflicting views, developing a new, individual moral code of conduct for herself. Prynne found comfort in a clear, unclouded gray area.

"I recognize this reconciliation as a process which every modern human being must partake in and endure. In a way, it is each individual's arrival at an equilibrium."

The classroom was silent. Someone in the hallway trots past the window.