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  I tried to remember I didn’t know this teen’s life story; for all I knew his cries for negative attention were because his single mom worked two jobs and was too exhausted to be attentive to his emotional state when she was home.

  I turned back to the chalkboard, relieved I didn’t have to look at the group of thirty-eight teenagers as I wrote down the word. Nervous energy percolated inside of me. I wished I’d refilled my medication, but it was too expensive. I’d rationalized I hadn’t needed it to teach. Art class never made me think about sex to the point of becoming a horndog.

  It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d taught at Skinnersville High School, but it was the first time I’d been alone in a classroom full of students. I’d never taught this subject and I was hardly an expert on the material. Due to a traumatic experience in high school which resulted in homeschooling and online classes, I’d never taken sex education. I was afraid these kids had more practical applications with the subject matter than I did. The mortified expression on my face probably showed I was a virgin at twenty-one. I bet they could see I was faking my way through this lesson.

  Students continued to whisper and joke behind me.

  “God, Jon, shut up!” one of the girls said. “Maybe you should learn the word castration.”

  I stared at the green of the chalkboard. The students teasing each other was starting to get out of control. I was the teacher. I was the one who was supposed to be telling the kids to be mature, but all I wanted to do was run out of the room. Maybe it wasn’t too late. I could call the office and say I wasn’t well.

  But if I did, the vice principal and principal would think less of me. I wanted to show Skinnersville High I could handle any class. I was worthy to take over for Mrs. Johnson next year, and I was ready to fulfil my dream of becoming an art teacher.

  I tried to tell myself nothing would go wrong if I stayed. It wasn’t like I was actually having sex. Plus, my psychiatrist had insisted I hadn’t caused those electrical storms or the tornado by trying to have sex with my former boyfriends. My fear was all in my head.

  “When are we going to get to put the condoms on the bananas?” a boy shouted.

  The heat in my face crept down my neck. I tried to calm myself with slow yoga breaths, but it didn’t work. The chalk in my fingers slipped from my clammy hand. It shattered into twelve trillion pieces at my feet. The air tasted sharp, like ozone. Fluorescent lights above my head flickered. For a second, everything shimmered. I glanced down and did a double take at the chalk. It was still whole. I was certain it had broken.

  Magic was not real. There was no room for it in this world of science, technology, and teenage drama.

  I smoothed my bleached-blonde hair out of my eyes and pretended nothing was wrong. I was not about to have a psychotic episode. My heart thumped against my ribcage, and I felt lightheaded.

  I turned back to the room. One of the students crumpled up a piece of notebook paper and threw it at someone else’s head. A boy in the second row made no attempt to disguise the fact he was reading a Dungeon and Dragons book. That probably would have been me in high school. Ten students were on their cell phones. A girl in the front was obviously taking a selfie. The duck lips gave it away.

  I passed out the worksheets with their crossword puzzles and word searches, navigating through the maze of desks. There was hardly enough room to squeeze by some of the rows. The room obviously wasn’t intended to hold this many students. The blouse under my cardigan clung to my back with sweat.

  “Miss Lawrence, you don’t look so good,” Imani Washington whispered to me.

  I tried to smile. I knew her from the year before, when I’d done my student teaching at the middle school. That was before the statewide budget cuts had eliminated the art position—and the teacher who had been mentoring me—at the end of the year. Imani was a sweet girl. She sat near two other girls I had taught at the middle school. I wished none of my former students were there to witness my humiliation.

  Students moved to other seats and collaborated in groups on their busy work. I helped the students who raised their hands.

  Imani waved me over to her table again. “Annie, show Miss Lawrence your book.”

  The girl next to her showed me her sketches in an art journal. I recognized the blonde girl from the middle school, but I’d never had her in my classes. Most of drawings were anime characters with unnaturally large eyes, but some were pastel drawings.

  “This is really good shading,” I said, pointing to a charcoal portrait. “I like how you included highlights and midtone values.”

  Imani nudged her friend. “See, I told you it was good.”

  For a blissful sixty seconds I forgot about the pack of dire wolves around me as I switched into art teacher mode.

  Annie smiled shyly down at her book, turning the pages for me. In addition to characters with unnaturally large eyes, I noticed a pattern.

  “All of these people have their hands in their pockets or behind their back. Hmm. What are they hiding?” I teased her.

  She shook her head. “I have trouble with hands.”

  “I used to have a hard time with hands too,” I said. “I’ve got a few handy tricks up my sleeves for tackling details like that, if you think you can handle them.”

  “Miss Lawrence is so punny,” Imani said.

  The girls laughed and rolled their eyes at my lame middle school teacher humor. I liked freshmen. They laughed at my corny jokes.

  I gave Annie pointers on drawing hands. She listened with rapt interest. This was why I had wanted to become a teacher. I had thought every moment of teaching would be like this: sharing my passion for art and making connections with the kids. When I experienced little moments of sunshine like this, I told myself it was enough to sustain me through the rest of the year.

  You’ll get summers off, they said. It will be rewarding and meaningful work, they said. It won’t be that hard to find a job as an art teacher, they said. They were my college guidance counselors. They had never taught before.

  Already I was learning how wrong they were.

  I had to cut the art lesson with Annie and Imani to a premature end when the sharp odor of a paint pen caught my attention. Some guy in a studded jacket and a mini Mohawk was drawing penises on his desk. They weren’t even anatomically correct. Not that I had a lot of experience with penises, but I did know they weren’t shaped like rocket ships.

  The heat in my neck crept down my chest. My stomach didn’t feel right. I was not aroused by rocket ship penises, I told myself. I liked Star Trek and Star Wars, but I was more of a Tolkien kind of girl. It wasn’t like he’d drawn Legolas naked or anything, right? I could handle this.

  I pointed to the paint pen. “Put that away. Get out your classwork.”

  The student crossed his arms in defiance. “Why? I don’t have anything better to do.”

  I tried to ignore the sensations swelling inside me. Was it my sex-deprived thirst or was it nervousness? I couldn’t tell. I waved a hand over the paper at his desk. “You have a crossword.”

  The teen held it up to show me he had completed both sides. As I glanced around, I realized he wasn’t the only one finished.

  The activity was supposed to take fifty minutes. Then there would be banana contraception practice for fifteen minutes before their exit activity. As I circulated, I could see the teacher had underestimated the time. Fifteen minutes into the activity, half the students had finished the crossword puzzle.

  Oh, God, what would I do with these kids once they were done? I had an hour more of blastocysts, amenorrhea, and menarche.

  These ninety-minute block periods were torture.

  More than anything I wanted to run out of class, but if I did, how would I get hired as an art teacher at this school if I couldn’t demonstrate effective classroom management? I couldn’t afford to mess this up when art teacher jobs were so hard to come by.

  Forty minutes into class, studen
ts were so bored and unruly, I decided it was time to move on to the next activity. Maybe if they were good, I could bribe them with a game like Heads Up, Seven Up. Or Hangman. Then again, maybe not. My stomach felt even queasier at the idea of having to slowly spell out e-r-e-c-t-i-o-n.

  The lights flickered again. I tried to clear my mind, to not think of the sexy things that would cause me stress. This wasn’t going to be like those other times.

  I waved my hand at the class, trying to be heard over the chaos. It was a blessing ten of them were absent. “Everyone, back to your seats for our banana contraception lesson.”

  “Yes! Finally!” said one girl in the front row.

  It was so loud I had to shout two more times before the rest of the class heard me. Students sluggishly trudged back to their seats, glaring at me the entire time, like it was my fault they had to learn. It took a total of four minutes to get them seated again.

  I tore the bananas from bunches and passed them out. I felt bad for the students in the back who didn’t get the green ones and had to settle for the brown, mushy ones. Navigating the aisles and passing them out took another five minutes. Yes! Only forty minutes of class time left.

  I held up a finger in warning. “Now, be careful with these. I only have enough for one per person, and the bananas need to last for the class after this.” No sooner had I said that than one of the boys squeezed his banana hard enough in the middle that it squished out from the skin. It was one of the brown, mushy ones.

  He howled in amusement. “Can I have another?”

  I counted to five before answering. “You can share with one of your neighbors.”

  He turned to one of his friends. “Bro, that is sick! It’s a ménage à tres!”

  I didn’t know if he purposely was mixing Spanish and French, or he thought that was how to say the phrase.

  I handed out the packs of condoms. “Wait until I’m done passing these out and give instructions before putting them on the bananas.”

  “I’ve got this,” one boy said, tearing the pack open with his teeth.

  Another student had unpeeled her banana and was licking it suggestively. The students around her cheered her on.

  Imani and her friends followed directions at least. I could see where I had gone wrong. I should have given them the demo first, then passed out the supplies. There was always next period to get it right.

  One boy with a buzz cut wearing a letterman jacket in the third row unzipped his fly and shoved the banana inside his pants so that it hung out like a penis. His friends laughed and pointed.

  At least he’d gotten the condom on without any problem.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I need you to put the banana on your desk.”

  “Whoa, how tall are you?” he asked.

  Why had I wanted to become a teacher? This wasn’t any different than suffering through the humiliations of high school.

  He slapped his desk. “I mean, you can’t even be five foot. Am I right?”

  “Remove the banana from your pants,” I said through clenched teeth.

  He pretended to tug on it. “Sorry, dude, it’s stuck.”

  I couldn’t imagine my day getting any worse than this.

  The little creep winked at me. “Hey, maybe later, you’ll tutor me a little more on this subject.”

  The teen next to him, who had written his vocab words in Sharpie across his arms, grabbed the banana and tried to yank it out of his friend’s pants. “What the fuck—”

  “Watch your language,” I said.

  Mr. Buzzcut punched Sharpie-arm in the shoulder. “Knock it off. That hurts.”

  They both let go of the banana. It remained sticking out of his pants.

  The condom rolled itself up and flew off the banana without anyone touching it. The latex shot itself at a girl with a nose ring and hit her in the back of the head.

  She turned around. “Fuck you.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, about to correct her potty language.

  My attention was drawn back to the boy with the banana. Mr. Buzzcut held up his hands, but the banana hanging out of his pants flopped around of its own volition. My jaw dropped. The group of teenagers all stared in wide-eyed confusion.

  One of the students started, “How did you do—”

  “Dude, I didn’t—”

  Before my very eyes, the banana unpeeled itself, and there inside the husk was a pale white banana in the shape of a penis. That wasn’t the weirdest part, though.

  A little mouth opened in the side of the banana penis and sang in a tiny, shrill voice. “Yes, we have no penises. We have no penises today. We have vaginas and ovaries and testicles, gonads and cervixes and—”

  I stared in open-mouthed horror. Students screamed. This couldn’t be real. Surely, the doctors would tell me this was all in my head, like they had before. The fluorescent lights buzzed and flashed on and off above me, the flickers following me like a magnet as I backed away from the students. I should have refilled my pills, but I thought I would only need them if I was going to have sex.

  One of the students had actually managed to get a condom on one of the penis-shaped bananas. He high-fived a friend. “This is awesome!” he said. “This is way better than when Mrs. Richardson teaches class.”

  He was the only student in class who appeared to think this was a fun prank.

  Students jumped away from me. Some ran out the door. I thought it was because of the singing banana. Nope. It was because all the bananas were dancing. As I made my way across the room, more bananas came to life. Some unpeeled themselves to reveal penis-shaped fruit within. A young woman held one of the brown mushy bananas away from herself, flopping it around like a flaccid penis. Or maybe it was flopping itself around.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” She panted. “How is this happening?”

  “It’s witchcraft!” a kid in a jersey said, pointing to a Goth girl.

  “It isn’t me.” Her eyes swept over the chaos, me being at its epicenter. “It’s the sub! Look!”

  Horror-stricken faces turned to me.

  The bananas bounced on the desks around me in a dance, following me like the pied piper of penises. More bananas sang along to the song, some of them more muffled than others with the bright blue or neon green condoms covering them. I had to stop this, but I didn’t know how. The rising screams and shouts of students drowned out the song.

  On the plus side, students were all too freaked out to take dick pics of their bananas. They pushed and scrambled for the door. One of them slipped on a banana peel. Two jocks tripped over the fallen student. Someone collided with a garbage can, toppling its contents all over the floor.

  Not real. Not real, I told myself. Magic only existed in those fantasy novels I liked to immerse myself in to escape from the mundane world.

  I would have liked a little more mundane at the moment.

  Imani and her friends scooted to the other side of the room. Her wide eyes said it all. She was seeing this too. Everyone was seeing this. Unless I was hallucinating that too.

  That was the moment the principal marched in with Skinnersville Public School District’s psychologist. The principal’s jaw dropped as he stared at the chaos. I couldn’t tell if they’d seen what I’d seen. The bananas had stopped singing. Smashed bananas and used condoms littered the floor. The overpowering perfume of fruit and latex lingered in the air. A cluster of girls wept against the back wall. The classroom was eerily quiet now that most of the students had vacated.

  The psychologist crossed his arms and frowned at me.

  I’d bumped into the school psychologist on multiple occasions while student teaching. He was tall and lanky, his black hair the long, disheveled hipster style so many others had in Eugene and Skinnersville. At first I’d found him handsome, with his long, aquiline nose, chiseled jaw and deep-set eyes. The snotty sneer that crossed his face when I tried to talk to him changed my mind pretty quickly.

  One
of his dark eyebrows arched as his gaze fell on me. The room was eerily silent.

  The student with the banana sticking out of his pants sobbed. He pointed to me. “She did this to us! It isn’t like this when Mrs. Richardson teaches the sex-ed unit.”

  The school psychologist spoke in a dry British monotone. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He strode forward and pointed to the student. “Remove that banana from your pants and zip up your fly.”

  The student did so with far more compliance than he’d done anything else thus far. On the plus side, it appeared his anatomy was back to normal. I suspected he’d be in therapy for years, though. The two adults in the room rounded on me.

  The principal found his voice. “What the hell happened here?”

  This had to be the weirdest day of my life. Well, now that I thought about it, probably the second weirdest day of my life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Where’s My Damn Letter from Hogwarts?

  The worst day of my life—the weirdest day of my life—had been the day the tornado had whisked away my best friend, Derrick, and dropped a house on my sister. It was the reason I’d been on medications since I’d been fifteen.

  I didn’t remember a whole lot from that night. My childhood in general was a blur, a side effect from the medications. I had gotten in an argument with my sister the night of the tornado before homecoming. Missy’s meltdown at the Olive Garden coincided with pipes exploding—a coincidence—according to my psychiatrist. My sister had been jealous because she’d thought she was adopted. Had my sister and I ended the night on better terms, my heaping of guilt with a side of shame might not have haunted me as deeply.

  As if Missy’s death hadn’t been horrible enough, I’d lost Derrick that night too. For over a year I’d had a crush on him. The night he had told me his feelings for me and we’d gone on our first date, he’d been taken away.

  As a child, I had wanted to have real magic. At the age of twenty-one, I desperately wanted it to go away. Sure, I’d allowed the psychiatrist and my mother to convince me the tornado and freak storm were happenstance.