Past Tents (Teachers’ Lounge #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

ALLY

“ A nother one down.” John Witty’s voice hung in the teachers’ lounge like a cloud of perfume. Witty always spoke in a scandalized stage whisper, even if he was just commenting on the weather. Always with his round wire glasses slipped down his nose, so his fierce blue eyes made direct contact.

I just wanted to eat my salad in peace, but instead, the lettuce and cherry tomato hung suspended just outside my mouth while I waited to hear what had Witty’s boxer briefs so utterly twisted.

Rubbing a hand over his dark beard Sherlock Holmes–style, Witty shook his head like the end of planet Earth might be near.

I wasn’t worried. Yet.

Witty had a flair for the dramatic, appropriate since he was the drama teacher, but he sounded like the town crier warning that the sky was falling. Last week, the cafeteria substituted brownies for layer cake, and he made it sound like nuclear winter.

“Another one? Another what?”

“Diamond’s home with the stomach bug.” Witty tilted in his stiff-backed chair, patted his rounded stomach, and adjusted his bowtie. He wore a neat little clip-on every day, and today’s featured tiny rubber ducks on a blue background. The wispy brown hair on top of his head blew gently with the overhead air-conditioning.

Meanwhile, I felt sorry for Loretta Diamond, who’d worked as the school nurse for almost two decades. After a few years on the job, most teachers develop a hardy resistance to any and all vermin that students hurl our way. I hadn’t been sick in two years, despite having one-on-one sessions with several kids who didn’t tell me they had budding colds and flus.

Loretta, however, was the opposite. Anything that even hinted at infecting a student at Green Valley High ended up felling Loretta like a beetle-infested tree.

Unfortunately, a spate of stomach bugs had been sweeping through the school ever since we all enjoyed a faculty lunch a couple days ago. There were rumors—and there were always rumors at Green Valley High—that patient zero wasn’t actually a patient, but instead, a tainted batch of chicken salad.

“Oh, no. Poor thing.” I cast a futile look around the teachers’ lounge. Clara and Nick were the only other teachers there. Sitting in stiff-backed chairs, they chatted away at one end of the table and shared a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. It would have been way more comfortable for them to sit on the couch, but no one sat on the green couch against the wall.

Not ever.

Not since it was rumored that two faculty members had sex on it. One was further rumored to be our principal, and that was too much information for me.

Clara and Nick were so besotted, they didn’t seem to register Witty’s dire news. I could see Nick’s index finger curled around Clara’s underneath the table, and it gave me a warm feeling to think about those early days of budding love. The early days that were nothing but rainbow skies and cartoon hearts floating all around. Steamy late nights that plastered a satisfied grin on a girl’s face for days.

I’d had days like those. Or hours . . . or . . . moments?

The point was that I’d had my cartoon hearts—however brief—and however clouded by revisionist history, dreams, and embellishment. And however ripped off from whatever Regency romance novel I was reading. If my friends accused me of confusing my life with those in my books, they were most certainly...probably correct.

It didn’t mean I’d lost touch with reality. It just meant I had healthy romantic dreams that would most certainly...not become reality.

Sigh. Yeah, who needed reality?

I mean, it’s not like I spent a lot of time worrying about turning my life into a novel. That was impossible. Obviously. I knew Mr. Darcy wasn’t going to rock up to Green Valley on his horse and declare his undying love for me. Still, I could fantasize about the kind of swoony, possessive men whose words dripped with passion and masculinity: “I won’t allow another man to kiss you. You belong to me. You have since the day we met.”

These men had locks of hair that fell roguishly over their foreheads, abs visible through winter-weight cotton shirts, and jawlines that could carve facets into diamonds. Their voices came out in growly rumbles that sent a thrill of awareness right down to my...

“I didn’t see if Diamond ate the chicken salad, but I really hope not because I had two helpings,” Witty whispered loudly, sending a spray of pineapple Fanta in my direction.

The record scratch that brought me back to reality was men like Witty—kind, dependable co-workers who’d married good women and made the happily ever after look easy. Witty served as a father figure to me, doling out hopeful advice from time to time when he sensed I was giving up on romance. “There’s a lid for every pot,” he was fond of saying.

What he didn’t understand was that the men who I fantasized about in my novels did not exist. I knew this. It had been drilled into me by my mother, and then I’d learned it the hard way. Twice. Two budding relationships, two cases of heartbreak I should have seen coming.

Now I relied on myself. I was happy teaching high school art and yearbook design and going home to a small, spotless house. Happy and single.

I stood up to reheat my coffee and noticed the assortment of ceramic coffee mugs with sayings like “Don’t make me use my teacher voice” and “Teaching is a work of heart.” No one ever washed those mugs, so there they sat, week after week, growing ten colors of mold.

I popped my lukewarm coffee into the microwave, watched the inner carousel spin slowly, and wondered for not the first time how microwaves work.

“It’s all about moving the molecules. Exciting them.” I didn’t need to turn to identify the voice over my shoulder. Just like I didn’t have to ask my question out loud for Clay Meadows to know I was wondering about the microwave.

Reading my mind was just something he did. Quietly, unobtrusively. Always serious and stoic, always leaning in to say things just to me, as though he and I shared a secret, and leaning away just as quickly to go about his business.

The problem was that he moved my molecules all over the place when he spoke and he excited them just by walking into the room.

I willed the chills that prickled across the back of my neck to abate along with the flush I felt creeping across my cheeks. I hated that my body reacted to Clay, heart rate speeding to a faster clip, even as my brain gave it firm instructions to chill.

Clay was standing close enough that I could smell the woodsy, fresh scent of whatever soap or aftershave he used. I swallowed hard and popped the door on the microwave open, even though my coffee still had twelve seconds to go. “All yours,” I said, taking a generous step aside.

He slid a tray of something into the microwave and started it with the quiet press of a button. I tried not to notice every small movement Clay Meadows made, but it was impossible. Not when his six feet, three inches of muscle took up residence in a room.

Today, Clay wore a tan blazer over a gray tee and a pair of dark jeans which hugged his runner’s thighs. His hair had the rumpled perfection of a mad scientist mixed with a sexy surf-wear model.

He shoved a hand through it whenever he was thinking, which was often. Add the tortoiseshell reading glasses, and he ticked every box on the how-to-look-hot-and-nerdy checklist.

He and I had known each other since we were teenagers. He was—and still is—my older brother Jefferson’s closest friend. During our teen years, Clay spent half his waking hours at our house, but he was always on the go, moving in and out of our kitchen, upstairs and back down again, into the hallway and out the door. Never stopped long enough for a conversation with me, which was just as well since I was fifteen, two years younger, and tongue-tied around guys other than my brother. I was awkward and shy, he was tall and handsome, and his constant proximity made him the object of all my fantasies.

A lot had changed in nearly two decades. Now, I was confident and outgoing, and my teenage dreams of Clay Meadows had long since faded, replaced by dreams of fictional men. We’d worked together for going on ten years, and other than conversations that involved Green Valley High, we rarely talked outside of the teachers’ lounge.

Clay was still fast moving, stoic, and evasive, brow always furrowed with a permanent crease, hazel eyes always darting around as though his mind was elsewhere. Students loved him. He taught a senior honors seminar and a Shakespeare elective, and he coached the track team.

He kept his circle of friends small, and as one of Green Valley’s most notorious bachelors, he didn’t let in many women either. Not that they didn’t try. Not that every match-making auntie countywide hadn’t given it a go as well.

But according to the rumor mill, first dates with Clay Meadows rarely led to second ones. Ever discerning, he always explained, “It’s not you, it’s me,” and moved on. Clay was as commitment-phobic as Mr. Darcy was swoony. And as my mother would warn, “Leopards don’t change their spots.”

I inhaled deeply as a melted cheese aroma filled the room. At least it distracted me from the soap smell and the man emitting it.

“Wow, that smells amazing.”

Glancing at my wilting salad, Clay nodded. “Mac and cheese. Leftovers.”

“Even better. Where are they left over from? Restaurant or did you work your magic on some Kraft noodles at home?”

Clay tipped his head toward the microwave and inhaled a whiff of a smell that made me want to throw my salad in the trash. Or at him. “It’s from that new place outside of Knoxville. They Know What to Do with Pasta.”

“Smells like it.”

“No, that’s the name of the place. Guess that’s the point, to make people talk about it. Now you won’t forget the name, right?”

“True. But I’ll birth a platypus before I drive to Knoxville for mac and cheese.”

I heard what sounded like a grunt or possibly a laugh, but when I looked, Clay’s face had regained composure. I didn’t ask why he’d driven so far. Clay never discussed his personal life, which required nothing short of a papal oath of silence, at work, but if Clay had taken a date to a pasta place, I’d hear about it from six different people by fifth period. The faculty around here were more up in each other’s business than a fat hive of bees.

As soon as the buzzer sounded on his mac and cheese, Clay whisked it out of the microwave, gave me a fist bump, and left the teachers’ lounge. “Catch y’all later.”

“Bye,” I called, turning to watch him go. Which meant I was looking right at our principal, Curt Pindich, when he came into the teachers’ lounge.

“Oh good. Ally. I need a favor.” He tapped a long yellow pencil against his lip. It looked freshly sharpened. Like a weapon.

Pindich and I didn’t have the best relationship, mainly because he was always one poorly worded sentence away from sexual harassment. He always hinted at the two of us spending time together outside of work, which gave me the ick big-time.

Spray-tanned and perfectly coiffed, Pindich looked like he’d just gotten back from vacation. He was charming enough around the female parents to make them giggle and sporty enough around the men to seem like a bro.

Only the teachers saw his evil side. If he didn’t get his way, punitive busywork and budget cuts came our way. I’d long ago learned that where he was concerned, the best strategy was to keep it brief. “Principal Pin Dick, what’s up?”

“It’s Pindeech,” he enunciated, as he always did when other teachers were in the room. And I always somehow forgot how to pronounce his name. Just like the rest of the faculty did. Behind his back.

With the spreading chicken salad bug, I figured he needed me to substitute for a class this week. I did a quick inventory in my mind of the teachers I hadn’t seen today, but since I’d rushed in late, it didn’t tell me much.

“Sure. How can I help?” I got to work finishing my salad.

“I’d like you to go on the senior English class retreat to the Smoky Mountains. Green Valley Outfitters has made all the arrangements for gear and there will be a ranger at the campsite. We just need another teacher’s eyes and ears on the kids.”

“Yeah, that’s funny,” I said through a bite, not bothering to look up from my salad. It didn’t matter that growing up in Green Valley gave me an appreciation for the changing color of the fall leaves and the dampness of the evening air. I loved the purpling of the lakes right before dusk, when the last rays of sun hung in the air. But I enjoyed those things from afar.

I preferred a down comforter on my bed and a soft rug under my feet. I didn’t even care for the fancy pre-pitched tents, barbecue grills, and bedding that went along with glamor camping—glamping. And anyone who knew me—and that included Principal Pindich—understood that the great outdoors and I were hardly on good terms.

This discussion would end as soon as Principal Pindich delivered the punch line, weird as his sense of humor may have been.

“Funny how?”

My topknot mess of a bun left my face feeling exposed. I’d inherited my pale blue eyes from my dad, and I’d long ago learned that people mistook their gentle color for innocence. Principal Pindich had the steely gaze of a puma sizing up a meal, and I willed my eyes to fight back.

“Um, me and wilderness activities don’t mix.” It was a joke, right? For the good of the student body, I would not—could not—chaperone.

“Loretta Diamond was supposed to go, but sadly, she’s in no shape to consider it. I can’t chance that she’ll be healthy by the time of the retreat.”

“It’s more than two weeks from now.”

If Pindich had a mustache, he’d have been twirling it. That was how pleased he looked as he leveled the blow. “You’re the backup nurse. You took the first aid course. We need someone with your considerable skills. There’s extra pay involved. I’m doing you a solid here. You should be thanking me.” He had the nerve to wink.

I felt the color drain from my cheeks. Of course he thought I made sense in the wilderness—I’d completed an extensive first aid and medical training course over the summer and had the poor judgment to announce that I could put anyone’s leg in traction using only the limb of a tree.

We’d been at a party before the start of school. A margarita had been involved.

Several margaritas. Witty’s doing. He was no good as a mixologist because he never measured—he chatted while he poured, and that led to very strong drinks.

“So...there’s no one else who can do it?” I asked hopefully.

Pindich shook his head. “You’re a team player, Ally. I’ll have Clay get you the details. He’s the lead on the trip. Or if you’d prefer, I’ll buy you lunch one day and catch you up.” His smarmy smile left no question about what I’d do.

“Clay knows about this?” My voice was a defeated squeak.

“Not yet. I just decided on it when I saw you in here. Would you mind letting him know?”

Of course Clay had been born to bound happily from river rock to fallen log in pounding rain without a jacket. He was always off climbing rocks or hiking in the forest. Or running like a greyhound. He earned rave reviews every year after chaperoning the small group of seniors who attended.

And now he’d get the results of Witty’s margaritas. A glampfire girl as his co-chaperone.

I could only imagine how fast that greyhound would run away when he heard the news.