Alissa Nutting

I couldn’t stop looking at his empty chair. Had he, in fact, told his parents about our whispered exchange? Perhaps he’d confessed just before open house and his parents, who then consulted their lawyer, were told that any contact with the soon-to-be defendant was a bad idea. Worse yet, perhaps one of his parents was a lawyer. Perhaps both of them were. Were they plotting their case right now?

“Well like in some redneck states adults can marry minors with the parents’ consent and stuff,” Gash said.

“Yes.” I smiled. Never had I imagined my later years unfolding in a holler of West Virginia, paying the families of young men reverse dowries to marry me for their fourteenth year of life and then divorce on their next birthday.

What are other social roles where sexual impropriety is taboo?”

“Politicians,” one student yelled. Then, from the front row in a very quiet voice, Frank Pachenko called out, “Teachers.”

“But, like, that’s exactly what we expect now,” Danny said. The bass and enthusiasm of his voice gratefully drowned out Frank’s comment, which I pretended not to hear. “I mean, like, look at past presidents. JFK was a player. Clinton got it sucked in office.” The room exploded with shrieks of laughter that made my ears ring; the vocal chaos in the aftermath of the comment made the twenty-five students sound like a full auditorium.

“Okay, okay,” I called out. “Let’s settle down. If we want to talk about grown-up subjects we have to act like grown-ups.”

“Mrs. Price,” Marissa chided, her acne-riddled face suddenly full of ancient knowledge. “We are so not grown-ups.”

“But can’t you act it?” I said encouragingly. “Can’t you pretend?”

They were a room full of reality TV hopefuls; in that moment, they swore that they could.