“MJ!” I said upon seeing him. As enthusiastic as a First Missionary Crew! high five.

His response crushed my delight like a hydraulic press. “Del, have a seat, please.”

His voice was flat, emotionless. Very un-MJ-like. It was worse than if he’d yelled, “Del, you snitch.”

I folded into my seat, as did my other classmates, and spent the rest of the lecture measuring MJ’s every word, every movement. His energy was low, the lecture had a going-through-the-motions feel. At the end, I toyed with the idea of slipping out quietly. Probably would’ve been for the best. Instead, I lingered. When the class was empty, I said, “MJ?”

“Del, I have to tell you, if you have more questions like the kinds we’ve discussed over the past few weeks, I can no longer entertain them.” It sounded rehearsed, and robotic.

“I—” I almost apologized, before recognizing that would be an admission of guilt. I didn’t know this had anything to do with me. So, I said, “Is something wrong?”

He answered too fast. “No. There have been some directives passed along to me about what is and isn’t appropriate subject matter on school grounds.”

“Is that why Healthy Living was postponed?” It felt like a safe question to ask. Everyone saw that note.

“Healthy Living is canceled, Del.”

That landed like a blindside slap. “For . . . good?”

He looked past me to the open classroom door, checking for spies. Waved me closer, and I moved to him reluctantly, halfway expecting a punch.

“Del, you haven’t told anyone about me answering those questions for you outside of class, have you?”

“No. I didn’t tell anyone about that.”

“What about the Q and As at the end of Healthy Living?”

I swallowed hard. “Nope.”

“Well, someone has.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, there are people in town who are dead set against any discussion of sex, biology, really anything even close to human reproduction—despite all of the real-world examples we’ve seen lately. I got called into a meeting yesterday morning about some of those parties being outraged over a strict curriculum being altered on the fly. Or something. I’m still not clear on what the exact issue is. It was enough for an already reluctant council to pull the plug on Healthy Living, so we can ‘revisit the focus of the course.’”

There was a question I dreaded, but needed to ask. “Are you in trouble?”

“Naw. Not for real. A lot of people talked at me yesterday, but it’s nothing that’s going to cause me problems. I’m worried about you.”

“Me?” Had he seen through my guilt? My lies?

“You students. The information from Healthy Living was super basic, I’ll admit. But it was better than nothing. This whole community has seen what ignorance gets. Yet, year after year, the adults who are supposed to know better think that if we hide all the sex talk from you, you’re not going to do it. It’s something about getting old, particularly around here, that makes people forget they were teens once too.”