Page 85 of Mad Mabel

He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking everywhere but at me. I wanted him to look at me, to communicate something with his eyes. Something that said that this woman was no one and that he would explain it all later. Why didn’t he communicate that? It made me hate him a little.

From the way the woman was looking at him, I suspected she hated him too.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll just make my way home myself then.”

I expected Mr. Loukas to come after me, to offer to drive me home. His car was parked in the driveway. Surely that would have been the right thing to do, given the darkness and the late hour? In the car he’d explain himself and I’d pretend I wasn’t going to accept his explanation, but after he groveled I probably would. But none of that happened. Instead, I made my way back down his front path.

“Wait!”

I stopped. But it wasn’t Mr. Loukas coming after me, it was the woman. She charged down the path and grabbed my arm. “What’s going on between you and my fiancé?”

Her French manicured nails dug into the flesh of my arm. It hurt a lot, but I didn’t cry out. It gave me a noble feeling to endure it stoically.

“Tessa!” Mr. Loukas started, but she lifted her other hand, palm toward him, even as she dug her nails farther into me.

“Well?”

I wanted to respond, if only to get her to let go of my arm, but the word “fiancé” had short-circuited my brain.

“Right,” she said finally. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

She exhaled, rolled her eyes. “Not his youngest, at least. Though the last girl was much prettier than you.”

She let go of my arm and waited for the hurt and shock to appear on my face before continuing.

“He said he was in love with her. That he couldn’t help himself. He left the school in Adelaide and moved here, and like a fool, I followed. But clearly it wasn’t a one-off. And if he went for someone like you, he isn’t picky. I guess it’s an illness. A fetish.”

She turned and walked back to the house. The door slammed. And I remained there in the darkness.

I needed to leave; Cess would be worried. But…

He had a fiancée.

He had had a relationship with another student. One who was much prettier than me.

He wasn’t my Gilbert. I wasn’t Anne.

He was my teacher. I was an illness. A fetish.

I hated him, I realized. Or maybe… maybe it was something worse than hate. Something darker. Something heavier.

I walked past his Datsun, canary yellow, in the driveway, and found myself giving it an almighty kick. The impact of my shoe against the rubber was wonderfully soundless, so I did it again. Andagain. Unfortunately, as well as being soundless, it was ineffective at causing damage. So I retrieved my compass from my bag and stuck the needle deep into the tire until I heard the hiss of the air releasing. It felt good. I wanted to puncture something else. I pulled out the needle and looked for a moment at its sharp end.

She may have been prettier. But I was Mad Mabel.

I ran all the way home. When I got there, Cess was not happy.

“Where in heaven’s name have you been, child?” she cried. “Look at the state of you! What have you been doing, crawling in the dirt?”

She hugged me roughly, as if she couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or angry. Ostensibly, she was both.

“I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

“Doing what?”

She’d forgotten herself. Normally Cess was at pains not to comment on the fact that I was socially inept, not the kind of child who got caught up with the neighborhood children, but this comment revealed her true understanding.