I smiled, leaning back in my chair and stretching my back for a moment. “Hey, Jill. Excited for the break?”
Her long skirt swished against the floor as she approached my desk with papers in her hand. “So much. This past week has been crazy getting everything lined up for next semester. I had so many kids wanting to switch out of classes at the last second, which makes for one tired and annoyed counselor.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t envy her job in the slightest. And that was with me having just survived two and a half weeks of teaching in December—that magical month where all of the students get high on some sort of Christmas crack they must filter through the hallways, leaving the teenagers overly hyper with zero attention spans. The Christmas music the secretary insisted on blasting through the intercom in between classes didn’t help. Students somehow struggled to concentrate on the poignant words of William Shakespeare with “Jingle Bell Rock” stuck in their heads after their walk from Spanish class.
“It’s all over now, thank goodness,” she said, handing me a small stack of papers. “I emailed all the teachers their classes for next semester a week ago, but with all the last-minute changes, I decided to print everyone off a fresh copy.”
I glanced through the papers, about to toss them onto the corner of my desk, when something made me pause. My brows furrowed as I flipped to the next paper.
“My British Lit class is so small. Only fifteen?” I looked up to meet Jill’s sympathetic gaze, then shuffled through another page. “Seventeen in Basic English?” I was used to nearly twenty-five in each class. A sudden thud hit my stomach. Were my classes the ones kids were transferring out of?
“Apparently, there was a spike of interest in creative writing for next semester.”
I rifled through the papers again. Attendance was down in all my classes, not just the electives. Embarrassment heated my face as I tried to make sense of the numbers in front of me.
Jill spoke again, her voice soft and kind, which made my face burn even hotter. “I think Miles is having his class study Harry Potter this year.”
I held back the snort, desperately wanting to scoff at that. Harry Potter? What was he going to teach the kids about Harry Potter that they wouldn’t already know? I loved the books as much as any other Potterhead, but for an English class? What kid hadn’t already read it? Or at least seen the movies? How about broadening their literary horizons just a tad? Miles was stealing my students through nostalgia. My kids had to work for their grades while learning the classics—the OLD classics.
Jill cleared her throat and began to edge toward the door. “Well, things are always crazy the first week of school. I’m sure you’ll have a few more join your classes than are listed here.”
I took a deep breath through my nose and gave Jill a smile. “I’m sure.” Laughing lightly, I added, “Fewer kids, fewer problems, right?”
Her eyes lit up, relieved at my acceptance. She made a beeline for the door. “Right. Well, I’d better go deliver the rest of these lists. Have a great Christmas!”
I sat in stiff silence after Jill left, trying to rein in the mountain of feelings threatening to escape from inside of me. Over the past few years, I’d had ample opportunity to really fine-tune my skill of suppressing all emotion. I knew from painful experience that the key was to act quickly when you felt that first rush of overcharged, hot-blooded energy. You had to tamp it down with some fierce self-talk. Be firm and resolute. It generally went something like this:
“You’ll be fine.”
“Just smile.”
“It’s not worth the drama.”
“You’re a grown woman. This shouldn’t matter to you.”
“Suck it up, buttercup.”
“Do. Not. Cry.”
“Life is pain, Highness.” (Princess Bride quotes worked, too.)
I’d become rather an expert at smiling even when it hurt, which certainly helped reduce the level of unnecessary drama in my life. Like when I started my first job teaching English four years ago and, in my naiveté, began dating another teacher. He broke up with me months later and got hot and heavy with the PE teacher a week after that, but I still smiled at them in the hallway like everything was just fine. Unrelated, I happened to discover a job opening at Stanton High the next year. Two hours away. A happy coincidence that I accepted gratefully. Life goes on.
Even when my dad lost his battle with cancer a year ago, my chin was always up—helping, writing the obituary, picking the headstone and the flowers, organizing the funeral, and being the solid rock for my mom to lean on. Oh, I did my share of crying, too–he was my dad, after all. But it was always in the quiet of the night, alone.
This past year, I’d dedicated my energy to being fine—in all aspects of my life. It was so much easier to just smile and nod instead of putting up a big fuss over everything. Getting things done and keeping my head down was the key to life. The world was full of people making a lot of noise over things and not enough willing to put in the work to make things right. I was determined to be the latter.
I smoothed my skirt down my knees as I sat in my desk chair and held my breath when I heard the door across from mine open and close. Only when I heard footsteps going down the hallway, away from me, did I relax.
Of course, as all great literature can attest, every good plan has a few obstacles.
I had two.
No matter how hard I tried to smile and put the world to right, these two annoying barriers used every tactic in the book to foil my attempt at stoicism.
The first was Miles Taylor.
With Stanton being such a small school in upstate New York, there was only room for two English teachers. Miles had recently taken the place of, the beloved Mr. Grady, whose health complications, unfortunately, necessitated an early retirement. At first, I’d been just as excited as everyone else about the handsome new addition to Stanton High’s staff. But when this complete stranger had the nerve to come into my school and steal half my students with his cool guy persona and maple bars, all while publicly critiquing my life choices, a girl could only be pushed so far before she broke. I put up a good fight, attempting to smile through it all, but my lip had started doing this weird quiver thing anytime Miles smirked at me in a faculty meeting. It was impossible to ignore him completely or smile him away when his classroom was directly across from mine and when I was convinced, he spent most of his free time trying to find new ways to tick me off. Thus, obstacle number one.
The second obstacle was my mom’s new husband.
Yes, you heard that right. My dad was not even a year in the ground, and my mom had been remarried for four months. There were no words or smiles to make that all right in my head, no matter how much I tried.
“Olive.”