Most Likely To
By Phebe Jewell
When I was voted Most Likely to Go to Prison my senior year of high school, I was more surprised than angry. My deviant behavior was tame, private. As far as I knew, no one tracked the times I lifted candy and gum, asked creepy men to buy me a six pack, or drove my dad’s truck high. I worked hard to insulate myself from trouble or attention, turning in schoolwork good enough to earn a passing grade. Maybe the other kids read my solitary mediocrity as a sign of an inner turmoil that had yet to surface.
At college I sat in lecture halls with three hundred students, pretending to take notes as professor after professor clicked an endless parade of Powerpoint slides. The other students seemed eager to choose careers promising the most money and status. When people asked me my major, I alternated between Sociology and Comparative Religion, subjects that shut down any further conversation. As in high school, I was unremarkable, invisible, except to my Ethics professor, who told me I had a “keen sense of right and wrong” the night we fucked in his house.
“You’ll go far with that gift,” he said, pouring me another glass of wine. “You could change the world.”
“Do you really think so?” Playing the ingenue, I surprised myself with the hunger in my voice. Nodding as he set the bottle down, he added, “I really mean it,” and I hated myself for believing him even for an instant.
The Ethics professor had been an experiment, a game of Who’s On First? in seduction. He made the first move, pressing his knee into mine during office hours, and I raised the ante, running my fingers up his thigh, only to curl them on his lap like a sleeping kitty. I wasn’t dumb enough to believe it would lead to anything longterm. I was the most recent in a long line of students, he the first of my conquests.
But slipping out of his house early the next morning, I hesitated before zipping up my jacket. Did he really see something that no one else had? I wandered home, hands in my pockets, eyes on my feet, not sure what I wanted.
When he called a few weeks later I told him I had to study for a midterm and packed my old Honda. I drove west all night, stopping every three or four hours for snickers and gas station coffee.
Just after sunrise I reached the coast. Climbing over the scrub grass and dunes, I rested on a driftwood log. The tide was going out, revealing a beach littered with sand dollars and empty crab shells. Slimy jellyfish and shards of green and blue sea glass reflecting morning light. A secret underwater world momentarily visible. I kicked off my shoes and rolled up my jeans before wading into the cold water. A sign to my left reminded me to never turn my back on the ocean.
Facing the dunes, I let the tide suck beneath my toes, the water push against my shins. I stood in the ocean until my legs were ice and a woman and her dog appeared on the far curve of the beach. She waved and I waved back. Splashing up to higher ground, I turned to face the sea. The tide was so far out now it seemed I could walk for miles, filling my pockets with as many shells as I liked, not caring if they were broken or whole.
THE END