A Million Little Things (Mischief Bay, #3)

*

Zoe parked in the Mischief Bay Elementary School parking lot and told herself everything was fine. She was doing great—the lack of sleep meant nothing. She would get by on grit. Maybe if she could have gulped down a couple of cups of coffee, she would have felt better, but that wasn’t possible. She was going to have to will her way to alertness. At least her caffeine headache had gone away the previous day. That was something.

She collected the tote that held her purse, her lunch and some ideas for what she could do with her class, told her stomach to calm down, and got out to face her first day of substitute teaching.

Even as she walked purposefully, she felt the nerves running up and down her body. There was a slight tremor she was going to ignore and a pressing need to burst into tears. She didn’t know how much the latter was because of hormones and how much was about terror, and she wasn’t sure it really mattered. Later, when she had her sense of humor back, she would think about the really sucky timing of all this—getting her first teaching gig literally the day after she found out she was pregnant with her ex-boyfriend’s baby—and laugh. But today was not that day.

She made her way to the administration office, signed in and was escorted to her class. On the way, the office secretary told her about lunch, where the teacher’s break room was, the teacher’s bathroom and a bunch of other information that simply flowed in one ear and out the other.

“Sandy Russell, across the hall, also teaches fifth grade. Ask her anything.”

They stopped in front of an open classroom door. This was it, Zoe thought in disbelief. She’d really done it. She was expected to be a substitute teacher for the whole day. To a room full of fifth graders she’d never met.

What had she been thinking? She knew nothing about the primary grades. That was Jen’s department. Zoe had always taught middle school. She knew what to do with a snarky thirteen-year-old girl. How different were they at ten? She hadn’t been ten in a really long time. Things had probably changed. She doubted a single girl in her class had a Spice Girls doll in her closet.

The secretary was still talking. Zoe did her best to tune in, then gave up and just smiled until there was silence.

“That’s a lot to take in,” she murmured, hoping it was a somewhat appropriate comment.

The other woman laughed. “You’ll get it. I’m in the office if things get really bad. Have fun.”

Uh-huh. Because that was so very likely.

Zoe stepped into the room. It was big with windows along one wall. There were—she counted—twenty-eight desks. That wasn’t so bad. She had a list for roll call, a schedule for the day and somewhere in this room was the mythical sub tub. The place where she would find lesson plans and ideas, notes on what to expect and how to control the class.

She located the tub in a back closet, but when she opened it, there was nothing inside except for three DVDs. Sky High, Escape to Witch Mountain and Mulan.

Zoe went cold. No, no, no. There had to more than that. Everything she’d read online said that the regular teacher always left a tub filled with information and ideas and things to do and...

She looked back in the closet, but there wasn’t a second tub. Or a box. Or anything. She searched the desk up front. It was mostly empty. She had an entire day with kids she didn’t know and nothing but three movies? They were kids’ movies. They weren’t even two hours long!

She was just about to bolt when the first of her students arrived. Three boys walked in together. They took one look at her and grinned, but not in a happy way. More as a challenge. Or a promise. She swallowed.

“Hi. I’m Miss Saldivar.”

“That’s a stupid name,” one of the boys said.

His friends laughed.

Zoe felt herself flush. She looked away so they couldn’t see, and told herself they were testing her. Testing her and winning.

She greeted the rest of the students, wrote her name on the blackboard, and then called roll. She stumbled through more than one pronunciation before that task was finally done, then glanced at the clock. It was eight-forty. She had the students until three. Even with lunch and two recesses, that was still nearly six hours.

“I don’t have a lesson plan,” she said with what she hoped was a friendly smile. “Who wants to tell me what you were studying? And if you could say your name, too, that would be great.”

One of the first boys to arrive waved his hand. As no one else did the same, she was forced to point at him.

“Math,” he said with a wicked grin. “I’m Cameron.”

How incredibly helpful. “What kind of math?”

“The one with numbers.”

Several students laughed. A couple of the girls rolled their eyes. One of the girls raised her hand.

“I’m Meagan. We’re working on fractions. Adding fractions with unlike denominators.”

“No, we’re not,” Cameron said. “No one needs to know that.”

“We can learn it now or learn it later. It’s not like they’re going to change what we need to know to graduate out of fifth grade just because we have a substitute.”

“You don’t know that,” Cameron told her.

“Of course I do. Everyone does.”

Cameron’s friends started yelling. Meagan’s friends joined in and soon the whole class was arguing about whether or not the material was necessary.

Zoe called for attention and was ignored by all of them. She walked to the front of the room and started counting. When she reached twenty, someone asked what she was doing.

“Figuring out how long you’re going to have to wait after the bell rings for recess until you can leave,” she said sweetly. “Bad behavior adds time. Good behavior subtracts it.”

The room went silent.