“Well, you know, we all call each other by our last names,” he says. “But Jankowski? That’s a mouthful. So they just call me J for short. I kind of like it.”
That’s fine, but he’ll always be Hudson to me.
“All right,” he says, “we better go. My shift at the shoe store starts at five, so we’ve only got one hour for milkshakes.”
Hudson really does work harder than anyone else. Aside from school, he works at Simon’s Shoes several days a week, and he also babysits his one-year-old brother all the time. But even with all that going on, he always makes time for me.
We pull up into the lot near the diner that has the best milkshakes in the entire town. I wonder if we’ll share a single milkshake, and if we do, what will that mean? I like Hudson. A lot. Is he my soulmate? I don’t know. I kind of think that’s a stupid question.
Just after he parks, Hudson’s phone buzzes, and he pulls it out of his pocket. He reads a text message, and a smile touches his lips.
“What?” I say.
He shoves the phone back in his pocket. “Nothing. Just this old friend of mine.”
“Girlfriend?”
His smile becomes sheepish as he rubs the scar he got on his forehead back when we were stupid kids worming under the fence surrounding his house. “You could say that. She…uh…she really liked shoes and used to come to the shoe store all the time, and, um, yeah.”
Hudson’s pale skin turns bright pink, which makes me think this customer at the shoe store was a whole lot more than just a customer, but for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to admit it. Of course, that makes me wonder even more who she was. And if he had fallen for her the way I’m starting to fall for him.
“Does she go to our school?” I ask.
For a moment, he looks like he’s not sure how to answer the question. “She used to,” he finally says.
Maybe she was a year ahead of us. I would have known if he was dating someone in our own class.
“Anyway,” he says, “she…uh…she was having a hard time for a while and was pretty messed up, but she’s doing a lot better now. I’ve known her for a while, and she seems happy for the first time ever, so that’s nice, you know? I want her to be happy. She deserves it.”
Definitely a girlfriend—I can see it all over his face. I wonder if this is the same girlfriend he had at the beginning of the year, but I’m afraid to ask. Anyway, it’s none of my business. He’s not with her anymore.
We both get out of the car, and Hudson reaches for my hand. He laces his fingers into mine, and when he smiles at me, I smile back. As we walk to the diner together, I decide that I am going to get a vanilla milkshake with a lot of whipped cream and a cherry on top, because I deserve a treat.
THE END
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Acknowledgments
When I was writing The Teacher, I said to my teenager, “Do you think you could write me a poem that a teenager would think is really deep, but it’s actually painfully bad?”
In response, she sat down beside me, snatched the laptop from my lap, and said, “Give me two minutes.” I then watched her create the greatest bad poem I had ever seen. I was blown away. “It’s so perfect,” I told her before I obviously changed a bunch of things.
With the publication of The Teacher on the horizon, I reminded her of that poem she wrote for me. I told her how much I loved it, and that I was going to give her credit for the poem in the acknowledgments. And she said, “Ugh, please don’t.”
Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have told that story.
Well, she’s not going to read this book anyway because she would rather die. Someday when she’s all grown up, she’ll have this to look back on and feel mildly embarrassed and/or nostalgic.
Thank you also to Jenna Jankowski (who Hudson absolutely was not named after, but it just proves some things are truly kismet) for your amazing feedback and help with shaping this book into the story it became, as well as to the entire Sourcebooks team for an incredible job. Thank you to my mother, who always is the first one to read my books and never, ever understands the twist at the ending. Thank you to my beta readers, Pam, Kate, and Emily. Thank you to Daniel and Val for excellent proofreading. And a huge thank you to my agent, Christina Hogrebe, and the JRA team for your support!
Last but definitely not least, thank you thank you thank you to all my readers! I am genuinely just so grateful to all the readers out there who have supported me on my journey. I hope my books have brought you even a tiny bit as much joy as it has given me to see so many people reading them!
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Afterword
Did you enjoy reading The Teacher?
If so, please consider leaving a review on Amazon! Also, check out my website, where you can sign up for my newsletter and get updates on my books: http://www.freidamcfadden.com/
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And now please enjoy a short excerpt of my book, Never Lie…
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Never Lie
We’re hopelessly lost and my husband won’t admit it.
I can’t say this is atypical behavior for Ethan. We’ve been married for six months—still newlyweds—and ninety percent of the time, he’s the perfect husband. He knows all the most romantic restaurants in town, he still surprises me with flowers, and when he asks me about my day, he actually listens to my answer and asks appropriate follow-up questions.
But the other ten percent of the time, he is so stubborn, I could scream.
“You missed the turn for Cedar Lane,” I tell him. “We passed it like half a mile down the road.”
“No.” A scary-looking vein bulges in Ethan’s neck. “It’s up ahead. We didn’t pass it.”
I let out a frustrated huff as I clutch the printed directions to the house in Westchester, courtesy of our real estate agent, Judy. Yes, we do have GPS. But that signal went out about ten minutes ago. Now all we’ve got to rely on are these written directions. It’s like living in the Stone Age.
Well, Ethan wanted something out of the way. He’s getting his wish.
The worst part is that it’s snowing. It started a few hours ago, back when we were leaving Manhattan. When we left, they were cute little white flakes that evaporated on contact with the ground. Over the last hour, the flakes have quadrupled in size. They’re not cute anymore.
Now that we have turned off the highway, this more deserted, narrow road is slick with snow. And it’s not like Ethan drives a truck. His BMW has gorgeous hand-stitched leather seats, but only front-wheel drive, and he’s not incredibly skilled at driving in the snow either. If we skidded, he probably wouldn’t even know whether to turn into the skid or out of the skid. (Into the skid, right?)
As if on cue, the BMW skids on a patch of slushy ice. Ethan’s fingers are bloodless on the steering wheel. He rights the vehicle, but my heart is pounding. The snow is getting really bad. He pulls over to the side of the road and holds out his hand to me.
“Let me see those directions.”
Dutifully, I hand over the slightly crumpled piece of paper. I wish he had let me drive. Ethan would never admit I’m better at navigating than he is. “I think we passed the turn, Ethan.”
He looks down at a sheet of typed directions. Then he squints out the windshield. Even with the wipers going full speed and our high beams on, the visibility is horrible. Now that the sun has dropped in the sky, we can only see about ten feet ahead of us. Everything past that is pure white. “No. I see how to get there.”
“Are you sure?”
Instead of answering my question, he grumbles, “You should have checked the weather before we got on the road.”