Unlovely (9 page)

So what should she do with these notes?
Throw them out? Certainly not. They weren't hers to throw away. Should Claudia
try to get the notes back into
Fulko's
drawer?
Perhaps. It probably wouldn't be that hard to do.
Fulko
likely hadn't even missed them. They could be returned and no one would be the
wiser. That was an option.

But what if he had noticed? What if
Fulko
already realized the letters were missing? What then?
He would wonder who had them. He would realize it couldn't be Melanie, because
she'd have no reason to take them. If they had been plucked by someone from the
administration or a do-gooder on the faculty who had heard rumors of unethical
behavior, the whole pile would be gone, right? Not just two.

No.
Fulko
would be going nuts, tearing up his drawer, going through piles of homework
trying to find them. Then he would realize they were really gone. He would
wonder if they were just lost, and then worry that someone had them. And then
he would wonder, if he suspected someone had them, what that someone was
waiting for. What was that mysterious person going to do with them?

Claudia was that mysterious person, and
she had no idea.

Days passed and Claudia didn't act on the notes. The
first week found her consumed with the knowledge that Melanie had a life
Claudia knew nothing about, filled with secrets that she didn't share with her
very best friend. It still stung and it was difficult to come to terms with.
Claudia didn't want to believe Melanie had deceived her, but what else could
she think?

She looked for any sign of remorse from
Melanie – a guilty glance, anything – but saw nothing, and this perplexed her.
It wasn't like Melanie to be deceitful. As the weeks went by, it became clear
to Claudia that the primary agent in all of this was
Fulko
.
It must have been his advice that Melanie had heeded, his instruction to keep
everything a secret. Melanie was needy and insecure. She would do anything
Fulko
told her to retain his affection. The more Claudia
thought about it, the more sense it made. It was Jim
Fulko's
fault, and she came to hate him.

He was the root of everything currently
unpleasant in her life. For the most part, other things were going reasonably
well. Her parents had resumed a reserved friendship with one another, so the
threat of divorce no longer loomed. She was doing fine in her classes,
especially German; if all continued on course, she would probably graduate as
one of the top five students in her class. She wasn't about to be voted prom
queen, but her skin was clearing up and she was emerging from the ravages of
adolescence. Most days went well. At least, until she got to her physics class.

She hated going in to that room every
afternoon and seeing
Fulko's
face. It was a herculean
struggle to participate politely in class, to answer questions posed by that
sweater-vest-wearing-morally-bankrupt bastard, but she had to.
Fulko
knew she was Melanie's friend. He would certainly
tell "
Mellie
" if he thought anything were
awry, and Claudia did not want Melanie to wonder what was up.

The material they were learning in
physics was actually kind of fun and challenging, and under normal
circumstances Claudia would have enjoyed it. But because Jim
Fulko
was her instructor, she found herself resenting the
amount of time and mental energy she had to apply to the course. It wasn't
difficult, it was just enormously annoying. She hated his handwriting on the
board, his stupid joke of the day. She hated receiving her exams back with his
insipid encouragement scrawled across the top, "Great work,
Claudia!!"

One day, toward the end of March,
Fulko
walked over to her seat to hand back a homework
assignment and actually patted her on the shoulder.

"Well done, Madame!" he said
with jocular condescension.

His touching her was just too, too much.
Putting up with the man was torture, and it was only early spring. How was
Claudia supposed to endure this for three more months? She couldn't.

Sitting there, still feeling the warmth
of his hand on her shoulder, she decided something had to be done. She loved
Melanie, but she despised
Fulko
. She didn't want to
hurt Melanie and had no desire to confront her, but she wanted to hurt
Fulko
and make him squirm. She would have to deal with
Fulko
, the true guilty party, directly. He was violating
school policy as well as the basic rules decent people live by. Claudia could
make him as miserable as he deserved to be. She had all the evidence she needed
to do it tucked into her drawer.

The last day of school before spring break was a
Tuesday. Almost everyone cleared out of the building as soon as possible, but
Claudia asked Mr.
Fulko
if he had time to meet with
her after classes for a few minutes. He readily agreed. Mr.
Fulko
was very good about helping students out on his own time. That was one of the
reasons he was so well-liked.

Fulko
looked up at
3:30 to find Claudia standing at the door. Poor Claudia. She was such a plain
girl. No, she was more than plain: she was ugly. The perpetual sour grimace on
her face, the supercilious attitude . . . it was a good thing she was
intelligent. Perhaps she could count on a satisfying career. He couldn't
imagine that she would ever have much of a personal life.

"May I shut the door?" she
asked.

"I generally like to keep the door
open when I'm meeting with my students. I like to avoid the appearance of
impropriety."

"As you like it," Claudia answered
primly, leaving the door open and crossing to sit at the chair next to Mr.
Fulko's
desk.

Fulko
watched her
walk over and sit down, and once again was shocked at how different she was
from Melanie. Melanie had the body and walk of a young woman, a college-aged
woman. She had a sense of herself far beyond other girls her age. That was what
initially attracted him to her. Claudia had the body and walk of a crone. Maybe
it was her clothes? No, others dressed in a similarly cheap-preppy style. It
was the way she wore her clothes. Beneath her button-down blouse her breasts
looked as if they'd developed and then shrunken again. Her jeans looked like
she'd bought them when she was robust and healthy, and that perhaps they'd fit
once, but now she was continuing to wear them despite suffering the effects of
some wasting disease. The whole impression was so completely unattractive. And
that expression on her face didn't help matters.

Mr.
Fulko
smiled at her anyway. "So how can I help you, Claudia? Problems with your
assignment? You seemed to understand today's lecture."

"Oh, no. It has nothing to do with
that," Claudia said. She looked closely at
Fulko
,
trying to see what Melanie found so magnetic about him, and came up empty. The
pores on his nose were very large. His cologne was cloying. His fingernails
were cut too short.

"Oh! Well, how can I help you then?
You've got me curious," he chuckled amiably.

"Well, it's this, Mr.
Fulko
." Claudia pulled a note out of her pocket,
irritated at his attempt to be charming.

Fulko
immediately
recognized it. It was written in blue ink and it belonged somewhere in a pile
that used to be in his desk drawer, a pile that had recently been transferred
to a kitchen drawer at home.

"Where did you get that?" he asked,
his eyes narrowing.

"Out of your desk. You were
distracted, so I opened your drawer and pulled it out."

Shit. All these weeks he'd been hoping
that somehow this note had been lost at the dry cleaner's or something, and
here it had been in Claudia's possession all along. He'd never liked Claudia,
but he hadn't imagined her to be devious.

"Does
Mellie
know you have it?"

"Of course not! I would never have
her know I'd betrayed her trust. I've been very discreet. No worries."

Fulko
thrust his chin
forward as authoritatively as he could manage. "Give it to me."

"Of course. That's what I came for.
To return this with my apologies."

Fulko
took the note
from her hand, glanced at it briefly, folded it and put it in his pocket.

"What an idiot," Claudia
thought. "Even now he's saving it." It served to confirm that she was
doing the right thing. She took a deep breath and began.

"Well, Mr.
Fulko
,
you can imagine how upsetting it is to know that your best friend is sleeping
with your science teacher. Believe me, I have had a lot of sleepless nights
trying to decide if I've been right to keep my mouth shut about it."

Fulko
locked her with
a stare meant to intimidate, but was forced to look away when he realized it
didn't.

"Then I came across this note and
found out that you got her pregnant."
Fulko
started and opened his mouth to protest, but didn't manage to get a word out.
"Come on, Mr.
Fulko
, don't deny it. It's pretty
obvious, isn't it?"

He closed his eyes briefly, the muscles
in his jaw working away, then resumed staring.

"At the same time, I discovered
that she lost the baby: all alone, all by herself without any doctors or nurses
around, no parents to help her. God only knows where you were. She didn't even
have me to rely upon, but of course that wasn't my fault. It was yours. I
didn't know any of this was going on. And she could have relied on me, Mr.
Fulko
, even if she couldn't rely on you. It makes me want
to cry every time I think about it, and I've been thinking about it a
lot."

Fulko
felt his body
get hot all over. A shiver of panic ran up his spine. This was bad.

"Just what do you want?"

"Well, it’s just been preying on my
mind so much lately, that I've been finding it hard to concentrate."

"Cut to the chase, Claudia. I know
you think you're being cute, but you aren't."

Claudia's pale beady eyes widened to
almost normal dimensions. "Oh, I'm sorry. You want me to hurry up? I
didn't realize I was keeping you from something important."

Fulko
glowered.
"So what do you want? Do you want an A in the class?"

"Of course I do, but I don't need
any gifts from you. I've earned an
A in the class. No, I'm here to say
some things to you: I need you to hear that I hate you, and that I think you're
a terrible human being. I think what you've done to Melanie is inexcusable, and
I think you deserve to be fired for being the pervert you are."

The delivery was cool and dispassionate.
Fulko
listened, and the fear hardened into a knot in
his stomach.

"Unfortunately, there's not much I can
do to expose your relationship with Melanie that wouldn't hurt her as well, so
I'm in a bit of a bind."

Fulko
felt the knot
loosen a bit. She was right. What could she really do if she didn't want to
hurt Melanie?

"So, after careful thought, I've
decided this is what I want: I want to get through the rest of the year with as
little actual contact with you as possible. I won't do any more homework. Just
give me the credit for having done it. If you're afraid of how it looks, just
hand back a blank piece of paper with everyone else's assignments. I'll
continue to do well on the tests – you don't have to worry about your
professional integrity. I want to have no interaction with you in class at all
unless I initiate it. Don't even make eye contact with me."

"Is that it?"
Fulko
could hardly believe his luck. This was nothing.

"No, of course that isn't it. I
also want Melanie to cut off all of her hair."

Fulko
wasn't sure
he'd heard that right.

"What? Her hair?"

"Yes. It's beautiful, and she's
very proud of it. Lots of girls rely on their appearance for their self-esteem,
you know, and sadly, Melanie is one of them. She's very smart, and you'd think
she'd be more invested in her intellect . . . but then again, I suppose you
weren't drawn to her intellect, were you? Anyway, if you ask her to, Melanie
will chop it right off."

Fulko
looked
stupefied. "I love her hair."

"She'll look completely different,
won't she?"

"I can't ask her to do that."

"Well, then don't. You don't have
to, but there will be consequences. If you want to avoid the consequences, you
will do it. I don't care what you say to convince her, just make sure it's
short. And I mean really, really short, like they have to use a razor to shave
the back of her neck."

Fulko
looked at
Claudia long and hard, taking stock of his adversary. She sat in her chair with
her shoulders rounded, her face almost expressionless,
her
eyes steady. She was serious.