In the Classroom

Chatpr Three: Sensei

I sat up in bed, the sheets underneath me warm from my own body heat and fear. It took me a moment to regain my consciousness. I looked around and found the dark expanse of my room in the dingy apartment I shared with Anna. I shook my hair back and put a hand to my forehead, surprised to find it slick with sweat. I sighed, putting my head in my hands.

Dammit, I thought to myself. I do remember how that story ends.

Three months had passed since I had slept with my own brother at the age of eleven. I never heard from Emily again, but I heard she moved to China to start a new life. Adam and I slept together only once, but for me, my dreams were fraught with the experience night after night. Adam seemed to take the whole ordeal as nothing but a passing interest. I, however, was plagued with the knowledge of my sin for the rest of our time together. Our incestuous relationship was a secret that I dwelled on for a long time, but I did my best not to think about it too much. It was all too confusing for me to process. Did Adam love me? Did he love me as more than a brother? Would fate eventually get back at us for doing it together? I had known that it wasn't a good idea in the first place. Time went on, and I slipped farther and farther away from Adam's embrace. I guarded myself from him and I kept myself as cold towards him as I could. I couldn't look at him in the face. I couldn't talk to him without my voice shaking. In the end, I avoided him as much as possible. I skipped dinner and always made an excuse not to hang out with him. Eventually, Adam stopped asking to be with me, and let me run away from him. Still, things don't stay the same forever. At the end of the three months, Adam finally contacted me. A call had come for me during school hours, and I was skipping class so I was able to answer it.

"Hello?" I had asked into my cell phone behind the school building.

"Joshua? It's me," Adam had said slowly. I remember I had felt my heartbeat quicken. Yet I kept my emotions in check.

"What do you want?" I had asked him. I then heard his sharp intake of breath, and I knew something big had happened.

"Mother and Father are dead," he had said to me. I remember stiffening. I remember sadness rise up inside of me. I remember wanting to cry and scream at the world. My parents were everything to me. Yet they had died...and I was left alone with Adam—my greatest nightmare. I wanted to run as far away from where I was. I couldn't though. I had obligations. I had to finish school like my mother wanted. As much as I wanted to crawl into a hole and die, I was at school, and I hated crying in public.

"So? What the hell do you want me to do about it?" I had asked him. Adam was silent for a second. My coldness had surprised him. Yet I ignored his reaction.

"Nothing, I just thought you should know that you'll be living on your own from now on," he had told me. I had felt the shock hit me like a rock would hit your face.

"Where are you?" I had asked him suspiciously.

"At the airport," he had informed me. I remember that my heart had sunk deep in my chest that day.

"Where are you going?" I remember asking him. Adam sighed.

"I'm going to China," he had told me. I also remember paling drastically.

"Why?" I had whispered to him. After a long pause Adam finally answered me.

"China has a large amount of experience in medicine. I got in on a scholarship at school that is going to let me go study under a doctor over there," Adam had told me. I opened my mouth to object but Adam had cut me off then.

"I'm doing this because I'm a coward, Joshua," he had admitted to me. "Please...forget about me and—and forget about what we did three months ago."