The Sharp Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bennett’s disgust with me came into sharp focus. Sandinista, I hope you know you just can’t slide by in my class. Sandinista, that dress! Sandinista, I won’t baby you with a B you haven’t earned . And look at her now.
    “Sandinista!”
    When I finally look at her, my body goes numb with what will prove to be a homespun religious revelation, some angel whispering, “Here it comes!” I drop into the black hole of nothingness as Catherine Bennett leans down and screams in my ear, “Are you paying attention?”
    My shoulder pops up to protect my ear and remains there, a tableau of severe scoliosis, and then come some unpleasant little epiphanies:
    I will never effortlessly lift a car to rescue some screaming soul trapped under a tire.
    I will never fall out of a fifth-story window and land, unscathed and sheepish—I’m okay! People, I’m totally fine!—in a bed of pastel tulips.
    Any guy that has sex with me before giving me ye olde “You’re beautiful and smart but this is just not a good time for me” is safe; he will not spontaneously combust as he walks down the street with some shiny new girl. Because I will have my Jesus-y creep-show miracle, the old stone rolling back from the tomb, yes I will.
    I sense someone standing in the door well before I look up and see that the cavalry has arrived in the form of Mr. Hale, the Drivers’ Ed teacher/football coach. He blinks like a hamster in the sun; his nervous smile is partly shrouded by a humongous porn-star mustache. Mrs. Bennett looks over at Mr. Hale. She has been looming over me, her mouth at my ear, her man-hands on my desk, and she stands up too quickly and provides me with a solace I will play over and over in my mind. What she does is jerk upright, and her skirt catches the edge of my desk.
    Her hips are substantial. It is easy to imagine her in the morning working her skirt up to her waist, so you would think that getting the skirt off would involve some work, some breathless tugging, but in this miracle moment, God’s grace grants me a dramatic fuck you .
    Her hem catches on a metal hinge on the corner of my desk and her zipper rips and a button flies off, hitting the floor with a ping! as her skirt slips from her waist to mid-hip.
    But I don’t see any lumpy panty lines beneath her panty hose, because Mrs. Bennett is wearing a paisley slip of valentine pinks and purples and wild navy blues. As soon as I see it, I know my brain will remember the pattern forever: The oblong shapes, sperm shapes, the kidney shapes bordered by minuscule dots …
    The class inhales in unison, a fat, sucking sound.
    Mr. Hale walks over to Mrs. Bennett and stammers, “Can I be of any …? Do you need some …?” He gesticulates madly with his hands, his upper lip a secret beneath his mustache.
    Mrs. Bennett pulls up her skirt and tells Mr. Hale—she whimpers, actually—that she’s not feeling very well. “I had a fever last night, and my head still hurts. I thought it was my sinuses … but I’m afraid it’s the full-fledged flu.” She pinches her skirt closed with her hands and giggles like a deranged coquette. But then, as Mr. Hale leads Mrs. Bennett out of the classroom, she starts to cry: gasping, phlegm-choked. Everyone studiously looks away from me, except for Alecia Hardaway, the slow girl breaking the silence, trying to make it all better by shouting across the classroom: “Hi, Sandinista! You’re a real cool person, Sandinista! You’re a real cool person every day!”
    And then it’s me trying to ignore her delusional salutations, trying to casually leave the classroom as if for a dental appointment, and then running down the hall and out the front doors of Woodrow Wilson High School.
* * *
    Before I head back to work, I cruise the student section, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand flattened to the sore spot on my rib, not wanting to be seen, wanting to be seen, not wanting to be seen, wanting to be seen: the Invisible Man snapping his