Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
SHELLY STARTED WITH, “Can I make an anonymous report about one of your students?”
She’d asked to be put through to the vice principal rather than the guidance office because guidance had never been the best experience in her own school. To become a school guidance officer, apparently, you needed a Master’s degree and certification, but Shelly had always wondered whether the ones in her high school had found a bunch of credentialing papers in a recycling bin and realized they had a ticket to a new career.
If Hartwell held true to type, then the principal was soft-spoken and level-headed, whereas the vice principal would be viewed as the hard-nosed disciplinarian who let nothing through the cracks. Given the two, Shelly knew which one she’d prefer to look out for her interests.
She was making the call from one of the soundproof study rooms in the collegiate library. No one would overhear, plus if she started glowering, no one would fear for their lives.
The vice principal said, “If it’s a police matter, then we might need to take your name.”
“Sounds good. Let me tell you the matter, and then you can decide if you need my name.” After which, she broke every promise she’d made to Rowan because she might be involving the police after all. But not against Rowan. Against whoever was neglecting Rowan. The police ought to be involved in that.
The vice principal gave a lot of mm-hmms, but Shelly had everything bullet-pointed in front of her. “Rowan was dumpster-diving to find food,” she began, and from there, she listed every other point of concern. The ill-fitting clothing. The fact that school was the only place Rowan was getting regular meals. The other middle schoolers who said Rowan smelled bad. The way Rowan seemed to have no friends. (She was making that up, but based on Greg’s report, it wasn’t a far leap.) She ended with, “The school needs to make sure your student isn’t in an unsafe home situation.”
Those last three words, Shelly had overheard from a social worker who’d used them in the opposite direction: her family wasn’t an unsafe home situation. Well, not at that moment. And yes, they’d all grown up and no one had gotten grievously harmed so far. But come on.
The vice principal said, “That does sound concerning. I’m going to have our school guidance counselor talk to Rowan to do an assessment.”
Shelly fought a groan. Hartwell’s had better be more on the ball than her own was. “Can you check in with Rowan yourself?” she prompted.
The vice principal said, “Yes, but you do understand that I can’t tell you anything I discover due to student privacy concerns.”
Oh. No, that hadn’t occurred to Shelly.
The vice principal continued, “I promise you we’ll take it seriously, but part of taking it seriously is protecting the student’s information, not to mention their dignity.”
Shelly said, “But I’d want to help.”
The vice principal said, “Rest assured, you already have.”
“No.” Shelly paced the Loveless kitchen while Greg assembled a pizza order. “No, I didn’t already help him. All I did was kick the problem over to someone else, and who even knows if they’ll look into the problem and what’s going to happen if they do?”
Greg had an annoying, low tone. “I think you need to relax. You don’t even know if something is wrong.”
“We most certainly do know something is wrong!” She reached a wall and paced back to the other side, unable to keep still. “I don’t trust that they’re going to really listen. Or if Rowan lies to them and says everything is fine—”
Greg looked up. “Did you lie and say everything was fine?”
Shelly pivoted again and kept pacing.
Greg said, “Why would you do that?”
“It’s not hard to convince a social worker that you’re fine at home, or something was a one-off.” Shelly shook her head. “Mom told us if they took us, we’d all get separated and put in terrible homes, and—”
Greg raised his hands. “It’s okay. But we don’t know Rowan is going to lie. We don’t know it’s even a terrible situation.”
Shelly kept pacing.
Greg finally said, “Hey, what’s your favorite pizza topping?”
Shelly huffed. “Are you going to make me feel better with a personal sized pizza that we don’t make?”
He made sad puppy eyes. “You’re worth a full sized pizza to me.”
She snickered. “I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He wrinkled his nose as he pulled up the pizza peel to send these pies into the oven. “Or the cheesiest?”
“Plenty of cheese on that one.” Shelly stepped around the counter so she could watch Greg slide three pies into the oven one after the next. “Or am I just saucy?”
He said, “Are you crustworthy?”
She furrowed her brow. “Are we really doing this? You can’t out-pun me. I’ve been working here about as long as you have.”
Greg said, “Pretty sure I can make cornier jokes than you can.” When Shelly made an exasperated exclamation, he added, “Because you’re thoughtful. I’m the irresponsible one who can’t take anything seriously enough, so I can say I’m a real pizza work or I took this job because I needed the dough, and it’s not out of character.”
Shelly folded her arms. “Here today, gone tomato?”
Greg said, “That’s what I mean. Even joking, you’re serious. Whereas I?” He held up a mushroom. “I am a real fun-guy.” When Shelly gave him a very blank face (she was trying to channel the Easter Island statues) he raised his eyebrows. “You know? Fungi? Fun guy?”
She said, “Yeah, I got it. It’s just… That was terrible.”
Greg laughed. Then he said, “Come over here.” When she hesitated, he said, “I want you to have a peel .”
She groaned, but she did step forward. He handed her the pizza peel. “I want you to slide this under the pizza in front and rotate it toward the back of the oven. Then you’re going to move this one to the opposite side, and you’re going to pull the one in back toward the front.”
Shelly said, “You realize Ezra won’t let me do this.”
“And you realize you can. This isn’t like launching a Mars probe.” Greg let her take it. “If you’re going to make a mistake, I’ll stop you. Just remember what I said about if you’re about to drop a pizza out of the nine hundred degree oven.”
She froze. “Don’t catch it?”
Greg added, “And get your feet out of the way.”
The peel slid under the first pizza, and she moved it toward the back. There was barely enough room to do this. The pizza oven could hold four pies at the same time, even with wood burning along the edges.
The heat was intense, but not so it would burn her. Just enough that she knew how hot it was on the inside, with all those bricks warmed up to temp and focusing the heat back into the center. As hot as it was now, even if all the fire went out at once, it would still be toasty for hours. The bottom of the oven was smooth and gritty with toasted semolina, but the pizza wouldn’t move right. “It’s going to burn,” she said.
Greg reached around her and helped manipulate the peel to get the pizza toward the back. She relaxed her arm, and he pulled back as if she were just an extension of the peel, and the peel came free. She got it under the second pizza, and he said, “Nice and gentle. You want the pizza to come with it, and when you’re ready to get the peel back, you just angle it a bit.”
“This is so unwieldy.” How did he manage to keep the pizza on this thing when he got it out of the oven? Both he and Ezra made it seem natural to shoot in a wooden spatula eighteen inches across, then yank it back holding molten cheese and tomato sauce in the form of lava.
“You’ve got it.” Greg’s voice was low. “It’s awkward at first. Now move the third one.”
This one didn’t want to come forward, but again, he was right behind her, hand on her wrist to get it forward.
Shelly let go and stepped back. He said, “I’ll let it sit another thirty seconds and then pull it.” He turned to her. “Now you can tell everyone you were a-peeling.”
She folded her arms. “Did you go through all that for the pun?”
He arched his eyebrows. “But you enjoyed it?”
Enjoyed…having his hands on her arm and her hip… Enjoyed having him right behind her. Having him reassure her of the good job she was doing.
Yes. Yes, she’d enjoyed that. She said, “Can I try again?”
He checked the pies. “Next time. I’m getting these out now.”
Again, he wielded that thing like a part of his own arm. In. Up. Out. Into the box. Back. Shelly closed the box lids as the pizzas arrived, each one perfect in its own self-contained kingdom.
She checked the orders, then went for her jacket and the thermal bag.
Just before she left, Greg teased, “Are my jokes so bad that you have to evacuate the premises?”
Shelly turned to him, grinning. “Don’t you see?” She hefted the bag. “With pizza jokes…? It’s all in the delivery.”
So help her, he laughed. And it was wonderful.