The Anatomy of a Worrier

The teacher’s left strap was crooked.

Peter’s eyes were fixed on the anomaly. It was off her shoulder. He didn’t fancy himself an expert in women’s clothing, but he had seen his fair share of off-shoulder sleeves. When they were intended to be asymmetrical, they had an acceptable weirdness to them, like a synthetic diamond – fake, but good enough for a child’s tiara, so not entirely useless. It was different when they were unintentionally lopsided. With Miss Jones’s every movement, the sagging sleeve twisted, with such growing persistence that it began to look to Peter like a teasing leech on her pale skin, sucking the wide neckline and the rest of her dress off-centre. 

He swallowed, but all the moisture had left his mouth at some point during the class – he suspected it was when he first noticed the sleeve. Peter’s right hand convulsed shut, and he leaned slightly further back in his chair, hoping there was a way to tell her about the wayward sleeve.

He couldn’t catch her attention. He didn’t try. It was hard to raise his hand when it had started trembling. She droned on about something – his guess was Organic Chemistry; it was what she’d scribbled on the green chalkboard when she walked into class about a half-hour earlier. That was exactly two seconds before Peter had caught sight of her wardrobe malfunction, and the exact time all her words, and the background noises of Rudy and Kevin in the back passing snide comments, had faded into the background like a forgettable movie sound score.

But how could she not feel it? Peter’s left hand, which, thankfully, had its act together, unlike the quivering mess that his other hand was now, reached up to knead the cotton fabric over his chest, beneath which his heart rate had started to shoot up. The strap had not stopped folding within itself yet, and in another instant Peter knew it would be digging into her skin enough to cut the blood circulation to her arm and hand. What was it about Organic Chemistry that was worth getting paralyzed in the left arm for?

His teeth began to chatter. In the classroom of thirty-two, with ventilation provided by only a couple of windows, a chill was spreading through Peter’s bones. Steady breaths made way for thinner, shorter ones. Dread spread out over him like the old, familiar, prickly blanket that it was. A scream started in his throat and ended just as fast. Peter clamped his shaking hands over his face, the pads of his fingers leaving tiny depressions on his freckled skin. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

‘Peter?’

He jumped when he felt the hand on his left shoulder, his eyes flying open. Around him, the classroom had a rare, ghostly silence, everyone’s attention on him. A wave of heat churned in his midsection and saw out the cold in his body. He looked first at the hand, then up at the person who stood next to his desk.

Miss Jones.

And her offensive sleeve.

‘Are you okay?’

More than hear her speak, he read her lips; her voice was a faint echo calling him back to life. Of its own will, his gaze drifted to the mauve strap of her dress. It leered down at Peter, daring him. A bead of perspiration slithered down his nape. He could fix it. All he had to do was raise his hand and uncurl it, then slide it quickly back up to her shoulder, where it belonged. Save her dignity. End his torture.

But what would she think? He was already known as the weird one – he knew it; he was the one who didn’t talk much, the one who stayed away from any gathering that wasn’t mandatory and promised more than two people and the chance of booze. That he could live with. What would they call him if he fixed her dress? Would they think that was what he was doing, fixing her dress? Or would they read more into it? Because, even though he wasn’t someone who particularly cared for another person’s looks, Miss Jones, clothing errors aside, had…a nice face. And a nice body, according to Rudy and Kevin’s hormone-inspired, painfully loud conversation two minutes before the woman stepped in. If Peter, with all the good intentions in the world, touched her, in a manner that some would consider personal, would she think he was damning their age difference and making a pass at her, maybe to save his sub-par Science grade?

Rivulets of sweat formed on his back and soaked through his shirt. The pounding in his chest was like bass drums in his ears. Peter sniffed. His left forefinger slid into the neckline of his shirt, as if holding it open to let in more air. He pursed his lips, shook his head, nodded. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, his voice a breathy whisper.

Behind her glasses, her eyes widened in concern. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded again. ‘Yeah.’

She smiled, squeezed his shoulder, and turned around. ‘Let’s continue,’ she said, and went on to rattle a string of words that mingled with the sound of activity returning to the room. Some students picked up their pens. Some continued private conversations. Peter noticed none of that, because as she walked to the front Miss Jones’s right hand went up to straighten her fallen sleeve.

When he clapped his hand over his mouth this time, it was to stifle the triumphant squeal that threatened to erupt. The frenzied drummer that had taken up residence inside Peter’s chest laid down his drumsticks. His breathing evened out. The sleeve was fixed. There was justice in the world again.

She picked up the eraser. ‘I want you to write these questions down,’ she said, while she wiped the chalkboard clean. ‘We’ll discuss them as the class goes along…’

The rest of her words were drowned by the rising din in Peter’s ears. It wasn’t because her sleeve had fallen again. She’d missed a spot. It wasn’t large, but there was an area of the board her eraser missed, a triangle of letters and accompanying numbers. They mocked him.

‘Stop it.’

The hiss came from his right. Peter whisked his head in that direction. Andrew, the closest thing to a friend Peter had in this high school, sat at the next desk. ‘What?’

‘That.’ Andrew’s stare flicked to Peter’s right hand. Now clutching a pen, his hand was hitting the ballpoint tip incessantly against the table, producing an irritable tapping sound. ‘It’s distracting me!’

Peter winced. ‘Sorry,’ he said, balling his restless hand.

Someone sneezed from the front of the class. Miss Jones. ‘Bless your beautiful soul, Miss J,’ Kevin called, with uncharacteristic refinement. His lackeys laughed. Peter shook his head.

‘Okay,’ the teacher said, sniffing into a handkerchief. ‘Let’s start with the first question, shall we?’

Her glasses were askew.

Peter tried to ignore it, he really did. But the rimless glasses, out of kilter on her nose, the right oval dipping, while the one over the left eye climbed beyond her eyebrow.

It existed solely to provoke a reaction out of him. 

His eyes twitched. His lungs were emptying. His throat was tightening. Thick cords met and coiled into tight knots within his chest. He felt as much comfort as one wedged between the ground and a speedily lowering roof.

He opened his mouth.

*

‘I don’t get it!’ His mother rounded the bend, her attention switching between the road and the teenaged boy in her passenger seat. ‘What kind of stunt was that? Was she a substitute teacher? Why would you scream in the middle of her class?’

Peter sighed. Arms crossed, he kept his eyes on the buildings whizzing by. ‘It…happens.’

‘Or is this all part of your plan, huh?’ She blew an angry breath out her mouth, and a curl that had fallen over her face flew for cover. ‘This…episode? It’s because you still want to be home-schooled, isn’t it? Answer me!’

He pursed his lips. ‘What were you doing when the Principal’s call came through?’

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. ‘Your point?’

‘If I was home-schooled you wouldn’t get called by a principal in the middle of a meeting.’ He shrugged. ‘Just saying.’

The blessed silence that followed was the best thing to happen to him all day.