Ninth grade bored the hell outta me until Mr. Adamski caught me carving my wooden desk with a dull Girl Scout penknife, caught me marking territory with a tool as deliberate as a male bulldog’s piss. I rubbed soft graphite into the cat scratch arroyo until it shone dull black ache.

BJ loves DF

I carved a heart, an arrow, an impossibility. Dean loved cheerleader Cindy with the feathered hair, didn’t notice me and the tarnished saxophone I hauled to school.

“Ms. Jaworski.”

He blew out the Ms. on a long exhale with an accent just west of Boston. My New England town grew teachers like him, second-generation Polish with a deep respect of education. He must have been twenty-eight years old, twenty-nine. His hair hung in oily ringlets around the collar of his Nehru jacket, and he wore tight striped pants over dirty Earth shoes. I stared at those shoes, at the brown crepe soles, didn’t meet his eyes.