The moment I met Luke Walter I knew he would be a disaster.
It was something in the way his ripped up jeans clung to his body and the tight smile he wore, like it was a mask plastered onto his face. He looked like any other normal human being at the carnival, weaving through throngs of people, gently refusing the carnies offers to play their games, but unlike anyone else I've ever met, Luke Walter was dying slowly, like a flower as winter steals its last breath of air. I know, because I, too, was dying slowly, as I introduced myself to him by the mini donut stall. People are wrong to say that opposites attract, because that's not entirely true. You see, in the case of me and Luke Walter, we were both dying things and dying things, I realized as I kissed him that night, like to die together.
My head rests on the heel of my hand as I force my eyes open to stare at the page in front of me. The ink seemed smeared, like it just rained and I wipe my hand across it, but I blink and the words are illegible again. The desk I'm sitting in squeaks every time I move, so I try to keep as still as I can but it's nearly impossible when it's so damn uncomfortable. It doesn't help that the monotonous voice that's narrating "The Heart Of Darkness" for us coming from the cassette tape makes me want to either fall asleep or start pleading for an early release from class. Most of my classmates are in the same position, and I see that half of them are taking a nap when we turn the next page.
"This is boring," the boy next to me whines to his friends, soft enough so that our teacher can't hear. "Let's just watch the movie, and get over with it."
My fingers brush against the words on the page. "The Heart of Darkness" is kind of a snooze fest. In front of the classroom, a black leather shoe taps the air and the book is rested on a pair of khakis that are freshly ironed. They wrinkle when he stands up to pause the tape when the chapter comes to an end. Finally.
"What is the point of this book?" Our teacher asks, softly and gently which for him is worse than yelling. "Kim, can you tell me?"
Kim, who proceeds to flick her gum into the garbage and roll her eyes before saying,"I don't know. To... teach us about a guy named Marlow who had a poor choice in hobbies?"
The class giggles but he doesn't.
"Hilarious," he replies, in which his tone implies that her response is definitely not hilarious. "Can anyone else tell me why we are reading this?"
I sit in my desk, my fingers tracing the pencil marks that have ground tiny graphite rivers into the surface, and I think about Marlow's story.
"Hana?"
I look up.
His blue eyes are just as intense as the night I met him, except then, the lights from the Ferris wheel danced in them whereas now it's just the reflection of my face. "Can you explain to the class why we are reading this?"
Usually he'd ignore me in class, even if I was the only student with my hand raised. At first, when we realized how star-crossed we actually were, we both avoided eye contact, refused to touch when he handed me back papers, and I resorted to asking other students the answers to my questions to avoid awkward conversations . Eventually, we sat down together after class and agreed that we were being ridiculous. I need the course to graduate, and I would not be dropping out of English Lit anytime soon. So we came up with a plan: Normalcy to the point of exhaustion. Tight smiles when we talked, cheery goodbyes along with the rest of the class when I walked out the door, friendly waves in the hallways. But one night, I bumped right into him as he was walking home and when the anemic street light twinkled in his eyes just like the Ferris wheel, I couldn't help myself. I kissed him. I kissed Luke Walter, a teacher, and I felt like an awful, dirty person until he started to kiss me back.
All that crap about knowing something is wrong but it feeling so right is complete and utter crap. You know when something is wrong. And kissing Luke that night, it felt wrong.
But that didn't mean I didn't want it. It didn't mean I was going to push him away. After all, we were both broken, dying things. I'm not going to say I'm a good girl who gets great grades and prays to Jesus every night because I'm not. I get mediocre grades, I've gotten myself into some nasty situations and the last time I prayed was in Bible school back when I still believed in the tooth fairy. But will say this: I did not plan on falling in love with Luke and I know he sure as hell didn't plan on falling in love with me. It just happened. Disaster or not.
"Hana?"
I snap out of it and say the first thing that comes to my mind. "Two evils."
He raises his eyebrow at me like the answer intrigues him. "Would you mind elaborating?"
My eyes wander down to his shirt and don't miss the fact that Luke has the button at the curve of his neck undone. He is making this normalcy thing nearly impossible.
"I... um... I think what the author was trying to say was that Marlow had to choose between the lesser of two evils: hypocrisy or malevolent people."
The corner of Luke's mouth curve into the beginning of a smile.
"And?"
"And... I think we have to deal with the same sort of thing in our lives too. Just, you know, not in trousers."
He laughs and in return, I smile at him. It's times like these when I forget where we are and what we're up against; we are just Luke and Hana, laughing at the choice of men's fashion in the 1900s. He never seems to forget though, because when the moment is over, he is back to being Mr. Walter. He can snap back into place like a rubber band whereas I resist until I am forced to face the harsh and brutal truth.
When the class bell rings, I gather my things and hop into the line of students streaming out the door, when Luke says behind me,"Hana, may I speak to you for a moment?"
I stay behind.
Once the door closes behind me, Luke sinks in his desk and watches me as I plop myself down in the desk across from him.
"You do know that it's chicken nuggets today, right?" I ask him. "You know, the best lunch this school offers and that I am not going to get any if I stay? "
He smiles lightly. "I'm aware."
I shrug and say nonchalantly,"Okay then."
We sit in silence. The air is stifling in here, and I watch as he unbuttons another button. When he does, his fingers brush against the thin white scar on his chest. "Result of my miserable childhood," he said one night when I asked. On both his shoulders, white circles are branded there. Cigarette butts. That much I knew. I have the same scars on my own body from a relationship that ended with him putting a bullet through the roof of his mouth. Same scars but from different people, in different times, all with the same result: Two people who are dying inside from the secrets we hold. Broken by our pasts.
His fingers drum on the table, and I reach across the desk and flatten his fingers to the desk gently.
"Stop," I whisper. My hand burns on top of his.
He stops. His eyes flick down to our hands and he slides his out from under mine. The warmness fades from my hand when his hands move to rest on his knees. The look he has tells me I'm not going to like what he's about to say. "This has to stop, Hana," he murmurs forcefully, unforgiving.
"Luke-"
"I am your teacher," he hisses. His finger stabs the papers on his desk. "I could lose my job and you would never be looked at the same way again."
"We've been over this."
"And how many times have you actually listened?" He asks. His eyes bore into mine, demanding to know. I roll my eyes, annoyed. Obviously that was the wrong thing to do because he slams his hand down on the desk, the papers fluttering from the sudden contact. "Dammit, Hana! This is serious."
"I know," I snap. "We've been over that, too."
"Stop acting like a child!"
"I'm not!"
He leans back in his chair, defeated. His fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. "Hana..." He begins slowly. "I can't do this anymore."
I know what he means but I don't want to hear it. "Do what?" I murmur.
"Us."
At that one word, a simple two letter word, my eyes start to burn. I look down at the desk to avoid Luke's stare. In the corner, someone scratched "life sucks" into the wood. Well, kid, you're not wrong.
"I'm sorry," he says, but really he's not. I don't know how I avoided it all this time, but now I see a lightness in his eyes that wasn't there before. I weighed him down. But it wasn't fair of him to string me along if all he was going to do was cut the thin tightrope we were walking on.
"No," I say, "you're not. You're a bastard and a coward who doesn't want to even try to fight for what he wants. You're a liar. You're pathetic. You're a lot of things, Luke, but sorry is not one of them."
I expect him to yell back, to tell me that I'm wrong, but he just picks up a red correcting pen and says, "I'd like to finish grading my papers, Hana, so you may go to lunch now." His pen hits the paper, and it's clear that the conversation is done and so are we.
It's final. Done. Over. Complete.
Everything we had, everything we shared, just shuffled into a nice neat stack like the one he's holding to shove in back of the file cabinet and hope to God no one else ever sees it and, God forbid, if he ever feels it again. I wish I could throw my arms across his desk and swipe off everything in one clear smooth move like they do in the movies. Pencils would fly out of their container and their pointy perfect tips would snap. His papers would flutter to the ground gracefully, almost beautifully, but then his spilled coffee mug would stain the paper an ugly brown color. I want to show him that my heart is not the only thing that can break.
But I don't.
Slowly, unsteady, I gather my things at the desk my hands shaking, and walk out of the door without looking back. When I get to my locker, I am crying. Not sobbing, but slow silent tears that drip down my face that I can hide if I want to. I don't bother sticking my books into my backpack. I just throw the straps over my shoulders and start walking towards the parking lot. I've never gone home without being actually sick or without the office's permission, but there is a first for everything. It's funny because I never knew that sneaking out of school could be that easy. When I get outside, the sun batters down on my shoulders as I walk to my car. The farther I walk, the easier it gets, I realize. My chest doesn't feel like it's going to collapse and, after a couple more steps, my legs don't feel like lead, I even smile, as I open up my car door.
Every mile feels like a new breath of fresh air even though I am still crying. Luke and I need miles and miles, I think as I turn off the exit onto the highway, is what I intended to give us.
I had a theory about dying things. I believed dying things wanted to die together, but that is also not necessarily true. You see, people are attracted to broken things because we want to fix them. Sometimes, like in the case of Luke Walter and I, broken, dying things try to fix each other, but they don't know how because being fixed is not something they are similar with. Love is a gray line, full of do's and don'ts and wrongs and right turns. Nothing makes sense, nothing is completely wrong or completely right but one thing is for sure. Luke and I, the dying things, were not meant to die.
We were meant to live.