Meant to Be (6 page)

Wait a minute
. This is a teacher,
well, almost a teacher but still, to be sitting here daydreaming
about touching his skin and running my fingers through his hair?
What was wrong with me? I have never looked at another guy like
this, and here I was fantasizing about my teacher. Except that, he
didn’t look like a typical teacher. He looked only slightly older
than the students sitting in his class. I knew that was no excuse,
but I was desperately trying to justify my strange reaction to
him.

I looked down at my desk to regain my
dignity, and then glanced over at Sam, who gave me a puzzled look.
She seemed to sense that something was going on. I looked away so
Sam could not read my face.

I heard the scratching of chalk and looked up
as he wrote his name on the board. Mark Russo.
A regular name
for a regular guy
, I thought. “Just a regular guy, regular guy,
regular guy,” I chanted to myself. If he’s a regular guy, why is my
heart racing like I ran a marathon? It was true; my heart felt like
it was going to beat right out of my chest. My mom had encouraged
me to give others a chance, but this was ridiculous and surely not
what she had in mind.

“I’m going to write a few things about myself
on the board and while I do that, I want you to answer the
questions I’ve written down on the worksheet. This will help us get
to know each other while I am here,” he told the class.

I was still staring at his name on the board
when he turned around. I meant to look down, but it was too late.
The moment his eyes met mine, it was worse than the first time. I
felt like someone had sucked all of the air out of me, and had to
fight to catch my breath. The strange thing was that it seemed to
affect him the same way. I could see that his knuckles had turned
white where he gripped the desk. Fortunately, no one but Sam seemed
to be aware that anything was going on.

He finally broke eye contact with me and
began to pass out the papers. He passed them out individually
instead of just handing a stack to each row to pass back.

My heart raced faster when I realized that in
a moment he would be standing right beside me.

My palms began to sweat as he approached, and
my breath came out in shallow gasps. I had no idea what was
happening to me. I felt like a star struck celebrity watcher who
was drunk off his presence.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity,
he was standing beside me. I willed myself not to look up, but I
had no control. It was like some invisible force was governing my
every action.

Our hands touched as he handed me the paper,
and suddenly I was assaulted by a flood of unexplainable feelings
of familiarity, almost as if we had already met before.

I felt myself fading away to where nothing
else mattered except holding his hand and never letting go. The
draw of his touch was magnetic. I didn’t know who he was, but I no
longer cared.

Someone snickered behind me. “Guess she’s not
the goody two-shoes she was trying to portray earlier,” said a
snide voice that I recognized as one of the trio’s.

He stepped back, breaking our connection. I
had to bite back a cry of distress as I felt his hand pull away. My
hand suddenly felt incomplete away from his and I could see by the
look on his face that he felt it also.

He walked down the rest of the aisles and
made quick work of passing out the rest of the papers. I watched
his retreating back, wondering what all of this could mean.

He wrote examples on the chalkboard of what
kind of information we should include on the sheet that was handed
out. He was currently a student at UC of Santa Cruz, and had gotten
his masters degree the year before in physics, and was finishing up
his PH.D. The next item he added was that he was interning at the
school for his thesis, but it was the last bit of information that
created a buzz among the students, his date of birth. It didn’t
take a math genius to figure out that he was only eighteen.

The rest of the class passed in a blur for me
as I tried to come to terms with what it all meant.

I had never even looked at another guy, let
alone fantasized like this. He was practically an adult for
goodness sake, although he was, only a year older. Still, I wasn’t
the type of girl to chase after some guy, especially a teacher. I
was ashamed with the way I was acting. There must be a simple
explanation for my reaction to him.

The bell rang.

I looked at the empty paper in front of me
and crumpled it into a ball.

Sam and I stood up together and filed toward
the front of the room. Sam dropped her paper off on his desk while
I threw my blank one away. We were the last two in the room, and as
we passed him on our way out, I vowed to ignore him and kept my
eyes firmly on the ground as I shuffled out of the room.

I felt a slight pressure in my hand as I
passed by him. I looked and was surprised to see a folded up paper
in the palm of my hand. He had passed me a note taking care to not
to touch my skin. I looked at him one last time as I left the room,
and was surprised at the expression on his face.

He seemed pleased, like he knew something I
didn’t.

Sam looked intrigued as we walked down the
hall.

“What was that all about?” She asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, slightly
embarrassed. “I felt a connection like when you and I met, but a
hundred times stronger. I was drawn to him like I have never been
drawn to anyone else. Strange, isn’t it?” I asked, not sure what
Sam would think.

Sam looked thoughtful, like she was trying to
figure something out. “Yeah, it is strange,” she said at long
last.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I went
through the motions, but my mind was lost, wrapped up in thoughts
about
him
.

I had always thought the idea of love at
first sight was silly, but there was definitely something
irresistible about him, and not just because of his strikingly good
looks. This was something kindred, my hand still tingled from his
touch, and I had an odd warm sensation throughout my whole
body.

This is crazy
, I thought to myself.
It would never work
. First of all, my mom would freak if I
came home and told her I wanted to date an intern teacher from my
school, and second, the school would obviously not allow it.

“Krista, are you there? Hello, anyone in
there?” Sam asked, snapping her fingers in front of my face.

I shook my head to clear away his image. The
last bell for the day must have rung, because only Sam and I
remained in the classroom. Even the teacher had left the room.

“What a wasted day of school that was,” I
muttered to Sam, as we gathered our books and headed out the
door.

“Missed homeroom, neglected to do the
assignment in fifth period, and then proceeded to sit through the
rest of the day like a zombie. My mom would be real pleased if she
heard how my day had gone,” I said with disgust ringing in my
voice.

“Hey give yourself a break, first days are
always tough. Take it from me; I’ve had plenty of first days.” Sam
said, even though she seemed to sense there was more to it than
first day jitters.

“Did you ever read that note he passed
you?”

So, Sam had seen him pass me the note.

“No, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

“Because, you saw what happened in there,
he’s an intern. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t check out
guys, and I don’t act like he’s the only person in the world in
front of a bunch of people I’ve never met.”

“Well, you may not, but it’s hard to deny
that something happened in there. We may have just met today, but I
could tell you felt something in there. I think you should read the
note, he obviously felt it too. He looked like he had been hit by a
truck when he first saw you.”

I thought about Sam’s words, she was right. I
should at least read his note. It had been burning a hole in my
pocket the whole afternoon.

With shaking fingers, I pulled the note out
of my pocket and stopped walking to read it. Sam stepped discreetly
away, sensing that I needed a moment by myself to read it.

I smoothed out the creases of the note before
I read it, dragging out the procedure while I mentally prepared
myself. My heart skipped a beat at the words written on the
paper.

We need to talk. I know you’re confused, I
can explain everything, meet me at the park after school.

Love always M.R

My heart started racing. What could he
explain? What did he know that I didn’t?

“Are you going meet him after school?” asked
Sam, reading the note over my shoulder.

“I don’t think so.”

“Seriously? Why not?”

“Because I’m confused, I don’t know what to
make of all of this.”

“Can I come over to your house?” Sam asked
suddenly.

“Sure.” I said surprised. “My mom won’t be
home until later, she wanted to drive to some art supply store she
heard about. She left me pizza money; you can eat over if you
want?”

“Sure,” said Sam. “Your mom’s an artist?”

“Well, no, but she’s going to try her hand in
it. She’s taking a year off from work to dabble in it. My dad left
us enough money for her to try new things.”

“That sounds great,” said Sam with just a
tinge of envy in her voice. “It sounds like you two are close.”

“They were there for me when I needed them
the most. Once the judge had officially cut all the red tape after
I was found, and allowed them to adopt me, they were ecstatic. They
officially adopted me the day I turned six, and it was a great
birthday present.”

Sam’s face took on a shocked expression.

“You were abandoned?”

I could have kicked myself, after years of
keeping my abandonment a secret from everyone, I had let it slip
out with someone I had just met. Of course, I felt a kinship with
Sam, but I still couldn’t believe I had let my guard down.

“I was found at a rest stop when I was two,”
I answered uncomfortably.

“I was put in foster care when I was two,”
Sam said in a voice laced with surprise.

“You were?” I asked, not quite believing her.
Was Sam some kind of freak that made things up to make herself seem
more interesting?

I felt myself freaking out. I couldn’t help
feeling like someone was playing some kind of joke on me, first
with Mark and now Sam. I would have believed that this was their
idea of a good way to torment me if Sam didn’t look as surprised as
I felt.

Sam must have felt the same, because she
looked at me to see if I was pulling her leg. “You’re kidding me,
right?”

“No, I wish I was. All of this is wigging me
out,” I replied.

“Well to tell you the truth, I’m relieved. We
can be freaks together,” Sam said, trying to lighten the mood.

I smiled a half smile. It was hard not to
respond to Sam’s positive attitude. I had always been the glass
half empty kind of person, but Sam was obviously a glass half full
person.

We walked the rest of the way to my house in
silence, both of us lost in the thoughts that were circling around
in our heads.

By the time we reached my house, we both were
sweating slightly from the short walk. I pulled open the fridge and
grabbed two waters and two chocolate bars. My mom bought chocolate
candy in bulk for me. I often joked that a candy bar a day, kept
the doctor away. My mom had given up years ago, and as long as I
brushed my teeth twice a day, she kept me stocked with
chocolate.

I handed one of the bars to Sam, who was
studying all the family pictures around our small house.

“My mom loves to take pictures,” I explained.
“She hates photo albums though, so most of our pictures wind up in
a frame, or get thrown into a box.”

“That’s me right after they found me,” I
said, when I noticed Sam studying a picture of me where I was
crying. My mom had told me that all I wanted to do was sleep. I
never had to ask why, I already knew, he had been in my dreams,
even then.

“I’m hungry,” I said, changing the subject.
“Let’s order the pizza now, and listen to music upstairs while we
wait for it.”

After ordering the pizza, we headed upstairs
to my domain, which was more like a loft than a full upstairs. It
was narrower than the space below, and consisted of my room, a
bathroom, and a small sitting room between the bathroom and my
room. The only other door upstairs of course, led to the hall
closet that I kept mistaking as the bathroom.

“This is pretty,” Sam commented, as we
settled into the chairs in the sitting area.

“Thanks. My mom and I wanted to make it a
comfortable, soothing space.”

We had worked hard to create just the right
look. We painted the walls a nice warm taupe that glowed when the
sunlight hit them and placed bookshelves from floor to ceiling
around the room for the many books we had both read over the years.
In between the bookshelves we placed framed posters of some of our
favorite books. The frames were made from the same tasteful wood as
the bookshelves. We searched high and low for the two comfortable
lazy boys that sat in the middle of the room. Both of us could read
for hours, so we wanted to be comfortable. The last touch was a
sturdy table to sit between the two chairs. We liked to snack while
we read, so having a durable table to hold our drinks was a
must.

“I’ll put some music on,” I said. “Do you
have any preference?”

“No. Anything is fine.”

We listened to the music and talked until we
heard the doorbell ring. After paying the delivery guy, I grabbed a
couple sodas, and some paper plates and napkins.

We ate in silence, enjoying the cheesy pizza
with its hearty sauce. Finally after dinner, Sam looked at me with
a serious look on her face. “I’ve been putting off mentioning this,
but I think we should make a list of things we have in common,” she
told me. “That way, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing
with.”