Teaching Mr. Graham

Chapter One

    "Which class did you end up choosing?" Tatiana Wallace asked her friend, flipping down the visor and adjusting the brightness of the lights framing the small, rectangular mirror. She sat in the passenger seat of her best friend's Nissan Maxima with a colorful Coach purse sitting in her lap. Low R&B music served to be background music for their conversation.

    "I went with Introduction to Photography," Kenya Addison declared, while steering the car through scenic Chicago suburbs. She was an adorable girl with chocolate brown skin and pretty, naturally light-brown eyes. She wore her hair in long braids, and while she was a little thick in the middle, that did nothing to heed her enviable fashion sense. She wore a beautiful, bold-colored maxi dress and stylish, heeled sandals.

    Tatiana's outfit paled in comparison to Kenya's. She'd thrown on two tank tops, dark jeans, and a pair of pink flip flops. The tank she wore on top was black, and the longer one beneath was pink, to match her flip flops. She arched a slender brow at her friend. "Photography? What interest in photography have you shown, other than the millions of selfies you post on Instagram?" She pulled her hair back from her face and gathered it up with both hands. Holding her hair with one hand, she dug inside of her purse and withdrew a tortoise shell-patterned hair clip.

    "I'll have you know, that I know the best lighting tricks to make for the ultimate selfie," Kenya said, steering the car with one hand so she could lift an index finger into the air. "With the tricks I know, I should be inducted into the Photographers' Hall of Fame...if one exists."

    Tatiana laughed and shook her head while clipping her hair back. She studied her reflection in the visor mirror. A pretty face with a medium brown complexion stared back at her: slanted brown eyes, thin eyebrows with a natural arch, cute, proportional nose, and full lips that little boys used to make fun of her for in grade school, but tripped over themselves for now. A few wisps of hair escaped the clip, but she flipped the visor back up and turned to her friend. "Do you really think photography is something you could get into?"

    Kenya shrugged. "I think I'd be good at it. You know?"

    "You're lucky that you can just...freely choose your classes like that," Tatiana said, wishing that her own parents were as understanding as Kenya's. Unfortunately, she'd been born into a family of doctors and lawyers who wanted to see her carry on that tradition. Her parents were giving her one year to decide between pre-law and pre-med. Neither subject appealed to her, but one of the hardest things for her to do, in this world, was to say "No," to either of her parents.

    "Marcus and Rasheeda just want what's best for you," Kenya voiced wisely, referencing Tatiana's parents by first name. She'd practically grown up in the Wallace household, so she knew the Wallaces just as well as anyone.

    "They smothered me throughout my entire childhood," Tatiana muttered. "Pretty much ever since I was out of the womb, they were grooming me to become a lawyer or doctor."

    "There are a lot of people who would kill for the chance to be either," Kenya said after a moment of thought.

    "Yeah, but I'm not one of them," Tatiana said, turning and staring out of the passenger window.

    Kenya sighed. "Well...at least you'll get some freedom from them. We're going off to college. College, Tatiana. We get to live on campus, without any parents in our hair. No one over our shoulders, micro-managing every little move we make."

    Except...my parents don't need to be close to be in order to micro-manage me, Tatiana thought miserably. They'd combed over her class selections before she registered. She'd attempted to sign up for a writing class, and her father rejected the idea. "Writing classes are for dreamers," he told her while crossing a line through the name of the writing class. "We don't raise dreamers in this family." It had broken her heart; writing was her first true love, had been ever since she'd learned to write.

    "Your mother used to read to you, while she was pregnant with you," her father had told her years ago. "Book after book, she would just read to you, day and night. If she forgot to read to you at a certain time, she said you would get antsy, as if you were expecting to get read to. That could be why you have it in your head to be a writer, but the odds of being successful at writing are against you. The market is completely oversaturated as it is. It's not easy to stand out."

    Tatiana hadn't wasted time in explaining to her father that he or her mother could use their connections - after all, her mother wrote for medical publications all the time, and her father had written reviews of legal cases. Her parents weren't strangers to the art of writing, and yet...they refused to give her any form of encouragement whatsoever. Thankfully, she had junior high school and high school teachers who were more than supportive of both her poetry and prose. Those amazing teachers were some of the only people who kept her going through dark times when she hated her life.

    "Earth to Tati," Kenya said, waving a hand in front of her.

    "Will you...pay attention to the road?" Tatiana asked irritably, swatting her friend's hand out of her face.

    "Geez, what got into you?" Kenya turned up the car radio.

    Tatiana didn't respond.

    An old Drake song, "Hold On, We're Going Home," started playing.

    "I still can't believe he doesn't make music anymore," Kenya said with a shake of her head. "He was at the top of his game, you know? Dominating everything and then just...pfft...out of the middle of nowhere, he decides to back out completely. Stops rapping altogether, no reason. No explanation."

    "The last interview he did, he mentioned that he was considering teaching," Tatiana said, smiling. There were no longer any traces of her bad mood.

    "Drake. Teaching. Right." Kenya started cracking up. "There's no school on the face of the earth that could afford having Drake on their teaching roster."

    Tatiana shrugged her shoulders. "Still a cool thought, though. Drake as your teacher? One of the most talented writers of our time?"

    Kenya angled a look at her. "Is your head so wrapped around writing, that that's the first thing that occurs to you at the thought of him being your teacher? I'm thinking about how insanely hot he is, and how insanely hot he would be, being a teacher. Bossing me around and telling me what to do?" She shivered. "Child, please. I'd wind up getting expelled for the things I would do to that man."

    Twenty minutes later, they were pulling up to a large, brick building surrounded by a courtyard. The building and courtyard were nestled amongst a collection of buildings, large and small. Northwestern University, located in the beautiful Chicago suburb of Evanston, with sparkling Lake Michigan as its stunning backdrop.

    Tatiana's mouth fell open, and she fumbled with the door handle as soon as the car pulled to a complete stop.

    Northwestern University's campus was expansive and intimidating - especially to a girl who was raised in Elm Grove, a Wisconsin suburb with less than ten thousand residents. She slid her purse strap over one shoulder, staring up at the towering residence hall.

    She heard the car door open and close, and a minute later, Kenya was standing beside her, squinting up at the building with a hand shaded over her eyes.

    "This is where we're going to be living?" Tatiana asked, finding it hard to believe.

    Kenya consulted with her cell phone, and then nodded. "Yup, this is us."

    "Wow," Tatiana breathed out. She was overwhelmed with happiness and excitement.

    Her hometown of Elm Grove was a beautiful little suburb of Milwaukee. There were a lot of things about the town that she loved, adored, and would miss. Ultimately, though, Elm Grove had felt like a prison to her. That was largely in part due to her parents. Her parents rarely ever let her go out with her friends. They wanted her to study, study, study, and study some more. Early on in Tatiana's education, if she ever earned a B, her recreational activities were restricted. B's were unacceptable in the Wallace household. Only A's were acceptable. Despite the town being friendly, and despite it being close enough to Milwaukee to be a short drive away, Tatiana rarely got to enjoy all that the suburb or its neighboring city had to offer. In Elm Grove, she'd felt like a bird with clipped wings. But here?

    Here...here, it already feels like anything is possible, Tatiana thought while staring up at her new home.