Chapter 4
CHARLIE
I’m taking it as a good sign that the primary feeling buzzing through me as I flip through the teacher’s edition of the science textbook left on my desk is new-teacher nervousness. Because ohmigod there are going to be actual kids in this room. The day after tomorrow.
And why exactly is this a good sign?
Well, if my stomach is all knotted up with (for me) first day jitters and my head is crowded with every possible what if and ohmigod, can I really do this?
there’s no room left for pining over the fact that the first thing that struck me when I walked into the classroom that is to be mine for the rest of the school year was the memory of thirteen year old Myles and me sitting at side-by-side desks in the back center of the room.
Or for me to dwell on my pang of disappointment that none of the desks have the faint outline of the kingfisher Myles once sketched in a pen that didn’t wipe away from the surface as well as he’d thought it would.
(No comment about how hard I checked the top of each desk as soon as Mr. Garland, the principal, showed himself out after handing over my classroom keys.)
Apart from looking through the curriculum and some lesson planning, there’s honestly not all that much I need to do before Wednesday.
Because it’s the start of the new semester, this week starts off with two teacher work days—student-free days for the teachers to catch up on grades and get ready for any class changes.
Mrs. Greene, the teacher whose maternity leave I’m covering, must have been a planner though, or at least she didn’t want to leave me with a mess, because she’s got all her grades entered, and there’s not an unscored homework assignment or test in the classroom.
She’s even left sticky notes detailing exactly where the classes are in each of their textbooks that she’d left conveniently stacked on the desk for me.
The lack of necessary work is definitely a good thing, considering how many people have trekked through my classroom already today to say hello.
A couple of them I remember from when I was a student here, like the front office secretary who looks literally exactly the same as she did the day my parents registered me as a Riverside student—down to what I think I recognize as one of the shirts she frequently wore for the four years I knew her, and the high school art teacher, who I never had, but who’s been teaching here for over thirty years.
Mostly though, the parade of teachers and staff have been new faces. Riverside has a reputation as the sort of school where pretty much no one sticks around for long.
Even though that’s going to be me too, I can’t help personalizing the classroom, just a bit.
In addition to the fact that she’s a planner, the other thing I’ve learned about Mrs. Greene today is that she doesn’t seem to be a fan of color.
I’m not about to go crazy and start bedazzling the room or anything like that, but color is fun.
It makes a space feel friendlier, and, even if it’s not mine long-term, I want this room to feel like a friendly space for the students.
Since I don’t have time (or the budget) to go on a classroom decorating shopping spree, I spent the first hour or so I was here this morning scouring the closets and drawers in the classroom for anything to brighten things up.
I’m up on a stool, swapping out a black and white classroom rules chart with a brightly colored one I found tucked in the back of a closet when, over the background noise of the Chicago soundtrack I have playing at a low volume, I hear my door opening for what feels like the hundredth time.
“Knock, knock!” A woman’s voice singsongs, and ugh, something about that voice tells me that this is not going to be a quick ‘nice to meet you’ but a drawn-out affair.
After pushing in the final tack to secure the poster, I hop down from the stool I’d been standing on, ready for the inevitable handshake with the tallish, rather disheveled, white-haired woman now surveying my room.
“Hello,” I smile as I head over toward her—it only takes a tiny bit more effort than usual, after all the many, many strangers I’ve smiled at and shaken hands with today.
“Janice Dawson?” She gestures at herself, smiling in a way that manages to look simultaneously pitying and mildly offended. “You don’t look like you remember me from your interview.”
“Right! Yes. Hi.”
She tuts, shaking her head as she surveys the classroom. “Poor thing. You must be so stressed. So much to do getting ready to jump into teaching, mid-year, when you have no experience.”
And she’s off, going on and on and on, all about how I must be just scrambling to figure myself out, and oh dear, do I even know how terrible some of the students are at this school?
It’s the kind of conversation that never ends. And even when it finally does and she disappears out my classroom door with what I’m guessing was meant as a sympathetic sigh, I can still feel the last ten minutes weighing down on me.
Ugh.
Even though I totally don’t believe like ninety percent of what she had to say, that conversation took all the anticipation out of me and left me with just plain nervousness. Exhausted, so ready to go home nervousness.
And ugh. The woman is my neighbor. She’d told me that like four or five times.
“I’m just over there,” she’d point at the back wall of my classroom. “You just pop over if you need anything. If it’s all just too much for you.”
Ugghh.
The sound of a knock—at least it’s a real, knuckles on wood knock this time—echoes through the room. Whoever’s knocking is doing it at a totally normal volume, but right now, it’s magnified in my head.
Loud and ominous, like some kind of cheesy horror movie premonition.
Something is going to happen.
That’s totally ridiculous. Obviously. I am, most definitely, dramatizing.
Still, it takes everything I have not to just faceplant down onto my desk and pretend I’m not here.
I do let myself give in for half a moment, letting my forehead fall heavily into my palm as I use the other hand to shut the drawer I’ve just spent the last ten minutes staring into like I’ve been hoping it will organize itself, since the simple task now feels way beyond me.
And that’s as far as I get before I hear the sound of footsteps crossing the room toward my desk.
MYLES
My first thought as I step through the classroom door is that now the shiny little blue Prius I’d seen in the parking lot, squished in between the usual cast of trucks and the odd minivan, makes complete sense.
No question, it’s got to belong to the man sitting slumped over the teacher’s desk of what used to be my middle school math classroom.
And whatever I’d overheard about how Mrs. Greene’s sub was someone who went to school here has got to be all wrong. Because this guy? No way is he from here.
First of all, unless there’s a wedding or a funeral, no man in Riverside wears anything fancier than a new flannel. It’s just an unwritten sort of law. A law that this guy, in his pale pink cotton button up, apparently has not read.
And I’d be willing to bet anyone that he’s not wearing jeans under that desk his legs are hidden behind.
Because city boy’s got to be wearing khakis. Maybe even slacks.
As for his shoes, no way is he following the universal dress code of hikers or beat-up old sneakers.
Add in how, under his thick, shiny, light golden-brown waves of hair, I can tell he’s got a soft sort of baby face? Oh yeah, this place is going to eat this guy alive.
And not only that, but judging by the slump of his shoulders and the way he’s got the whole top half of that baby face hidden in the palm of one of his hands, it seems like it’s taken a good-sized bite out of him already.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I just—” wanted to introduce myself. Except those words, along with every other thought I’ve ever had, are gone the moment city boy lifts his head.
It doesn’t matter that the last time I saw those big, bright green eyes, it was from behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses, or that that was ten and a half years ago.
And this time, unlike when I hallucinated his face onto the face of the blue haired woman whose SUV I’d nearly ploughed through, I’m not imagining things because—
“M-Myles?”
I’ve had this dream. For ten and a half years, depending on what comes next, it’s traded off between being my worst nightmare and the kind of dream that sticks with you all day, making you wish you hadn’t had to wake up. It’s just never felt so real before.
Because life is a bitch and because I deserve it, it seems like this is going to be one of the nightmare versions of the dream, because next second, he’s on his feet, launching himself up from behind the desk.
It doesn’t even cross my mind for a moment that he’s barreling toward me, because his eyes are fixed on the door, and before I even have time to wonder whether I should reach out and try to stop him, he’s pushing past me, out and into the hallway.
This isn’t a dream though, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do, because somehow—god only knows how—Charlie Lancaster is back in Riverside, and clearly, he hates me every bit as much as I deserve to be hated.