Page 15 of Hollow

The Black boy next to me rummages through his bag and pulls out another pencil. He rips out a few pages from his ledger and hands it to me.

I give him an appreciative look, knowing how expensive paper is. “Thank you,” I say softly. Like everyone in this classroom, his face is unfamiliar, a stranger to Sleepy Hollow.

He just nods, his attention rapt on the professor, as if afraid to look away again.

“Well, go on,” the professor prods. “Five things.”

I twirl the pencil in my hand, trying to think. It’s hard. My eyes keep being drawn to my teacher as he paces around his desk, looking deep in thought and then occasionally casting a glance around the room. He meets my eyes, and they flash with frustration, probably because I’m staring at him and not writing anything.

I look down at my paper and scribble down the numbers one to five on the margin, hoping that my brain will start working in the meantime. What do I think of when I think about energy? I should be learning Plato or reading Chaucer or something. Not something that sounds like science.

Professor Crane’s fingers appear in the frame of my vision, pressed against the top of my desk. I stare at them for a moment, his long, slender fingers tapping the wood. He has beautiful hands, I absently think, struck by the sudden impulse to reach out and touch them.

Thankfully, I pull my own hands toward me and look up at him.

His gaze holds me in place, like there’s no one else in the room. What a peculiar man, so singularly focused on me.

I have to remind myself I’m also focused on him.

You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to, he says in such a low voice that I barely hear it. In fact, he’s not even moving his lips. Is he playing tricks on me somehow? Is my mind playing tricks on me?

It’s like you don’t even want to be a witch, he goes on, that voice still so low, as if it’s seeping into my brain like mist. His lips are moving now, but barely, and I twist in my seat to glance to see if anyone else is listening, but they’re all focused on their writing. How strange, coming from a family like the one you do.

His fingers still on the desk, he leans in closer. I am talking to you, Ms. Van Tassel. No one else. I can tell that you don’t want to be here. Perhaps it’s what your family wants, and so you must. But I won’t force you to stay here. You are free to leave.

“I’m not leaving,” I say, and now my classmates stir, shifting in their seats, looking up from their papers at us.

“Then perhaps you’d like to participate,” he says in his normal voice.

I can’t help but glare at him. Doesn’t seem fair that he’s able to throw his voice around like that and speak to me so privately when he chooses, but I can’t do the same to him.

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply through my nose until I feel his presence leave my desk. I exhale, like I can finally breathe and try to think about the task at hand. When I think of energy, I think of the bright, blinding sun on a summer day. Of the creek flowing under the bridge, of the wind bending the tops of the pines in winter. I think of Snowdrop galloping across the pasture, kicking up the grass with her hooves. I think of my heart beating, steady and strong, drawing its own energy from some mysterious place inside of me. I think of love. The love I have for my father still that flows through me in a constant stream with nowhere else to go.

I write down these five things. But then I lift my pencil, tempted to write down one more.

Because there’s energy that I’ve been forgetting. The energy I both created and expended with Brom that night in the barn, the last night that I saw him. There is no energy like love, but there’s also no energy like sex.

It wasn’t just with Brom either. I was intimate with Joshua Meeks last summer, a farmhand who was new in town. He was a true gentleman, kind and soft, and though my heart didn’t flutter like it had for Brom, he did teach me a thing or two. He taught me the power one can derive from sex and in more ways than one. Through him I learned what I wanted from the act, something with a little roughness, with a hint of danger.

The memory of it makes my skin grow hot, and I shift in my seat, immediately pushing those memories and feelings away. I open my eyes and see that I’ve written down the word sex.

I gasp and quickly scribble it out so it’s unreadable, wishing I had a rubber eraser. The last thing I want to do is have the professor see what I’m really thinking about.

“Very good,” Professor Crane says. He’s suddenly beside me, peering over my shoulder. I suck in my breath, automatically sitting straighter. I quickly glance up at him, and he’s frowning at where I had scribbled out the word sex. He cocks a brow and gives me just a hint of a smile before walking on to the next student.

Oh goodness. He couldn’t tell what I wrote, could he? I peer closer at the mess of charcoal, and I can’t make out the word at all. Must be my imagination that he can read it. I pray it’s my imagination.

Twisting in my seat, I watch as the professor looks over everyone in the class. I take the opportunity to nod at the boy across from me. “Thank you for the pencil and paper,” I tell him. He’s cute, maybe a few years older than me, his skin dark and luminous. “I’m Kat, by the way.”

“I know,” he says before giving me a quick bashful smile. Then he sits up as the professor comes walking back between our desks. “I’m Paul.”

“There will be time for everyone to get to know each other later,” Professor Crane says to us as he passes by us. “We’ll know each other very, very well by end of the school year.” He steps onto the platform and claps his hands together. “And let’s start by doing a little practice. I will need a volunteer.”

No one puts up their hand. I’m not surprised. I keep my head down and avoid eye contact, hoping I won’t attract his attention.

“Ms. Van Tassel,” he says with a hint of triumph in his voice.

I sigh. Boy, did I ever get off on the wrong foot with this man.