6. Poppy
six
Poppy
Some things never change, including the school that was mine twenty-odd years ago. I turn into the parking lot of Aster Springs Elementary, pull my car into an empty space, and cut the engine. It’s weird to be here again after so long, and memories hang thick in the cool January air. I wasn’t a great student as a kid and rarely well-behaved, and the combination made me a pain in the ass for every teacher I ever had, but time has made me wonder how much of that was my fault. I squint at the brown-brick buildings as a weird sensation of missed opportunity settles over me. What might my life look like today if someone had noticed way back then that learning was harder for me than it was for nearly everyone else?
According to Dylan’s notes, Izzy’s class exits on the west side of the school. As promised, I’m here fifteen minutes before dismissal to make sure I’m up close where she can see me, leaning against the side of my car and monitoring the closed school gate with an uncommon level of concentration. Izzy might know to look for me instead of her Uncle Finn today, but I don’t want there to be a mix-up or a moment of panic or any other reason that might make Dylan cancel this whole nanny arrangement.
Just a couple of minutes after the dismissal bell, Izzy appears at the gate. Her thumbs are stuck behind the straps of her pink backpack, her puffy parka making her look like a giant marshmallow with legs, and her dark head turning as she stretches up on her toes to search the crowd of faces for mine.
“Izzy!” I wave an arm over my head and hurry over to her. “I’m here!”
“Poppy!” Her face lights up as she picks up speed, and we meet each other as kids and parents move around us. Her dark brown eyes are bright until she notes my empty hands, and her face falls. “Do you have my trumpet?”
“Yep. It’s in the car.” I take her bag from her back and swing it over my shoulder. “Your dad gave me a monster list of things to do today, and I spent hours getting you all set for music and ballet and soccer and Spanish and ceramics. Your trumpet is in my trunk.”
She pumps her little arm and makes a fist. “Yes!”
“We have to hurry to make it to your first lesson, so let’s get moving.”
“Okay. Oh.” Izzy turns around to wave at a little blonde girl as she passes us with her mother. “Bye, Mellie!”
The other girl glances at Izzy, ignores her friendly farewell, and keeps on walking.
Izzy’s chin drops and her shoulders sag, and I watch the other kid disappear into the crowd, knowing it’s wrong to dislike a child but unable to help myself given the disappointed look on Izzy’s face. And this isn’t my first rodeo. I recognize schoolyard drama when I see it.
“Is she a friend of yours?” I ask.
Izzy shakes her head with downcast eyes. “No.”
It takes superhuman control not to ask for more information—and there is more information, I’m sure of it—but outside the school gates with teachers and parents and students everywhere, isn’t the time for a deep and meaningful conversation with a six-year-old girl who, let’s face it, might not know if she can trust me with big feelings yet.
“Let’s go,” I say instead. “I bet you can’t wait to get your hands on your trumpet.”
Izzy’s easily distracted, and by the time I help her into her booster seat, double-check her seat belt, and navigate my way out of the busy parking lot, she’s talking a mile a minute about her new music lessons.
“Why did you choose the trumpet?” I ask as we arrive at the local community college where Izzy’s after-school music tutoring program is held. I follow the signs to the correct department, then pull into an empty space. “Don’t most kids your age learn the piano or guitar or clarinet?”
I glance at her in the rear-view mirror, rolling my lips to stop a smile as her button nose wrinkles with distaste. “Why would I want to be like most kids?”
“You’re my kind of girl, Isobel Davenport.”
Once we’re out of the car, I root around in the trunk for the hard leather case that holds her instrument as well as a music theory textbook, sheet music, and a few other odds and ends the guy at the store said she had to have. The case isn’t particularly heavy, but it’s almost as big as Izzy, and she puffs out her chest as she hoists it up by the handle. The case bangs against her legs as she walks, her body leaning to one side to account for the weight on the other, and I resist the urge to smile as I close the trunk and lock the car.
“Why don’t I carry that for you?” I offer.
As I lead the way into the nearest building, the trumpet case in my left hand and my tote on the right, Izzy twirls and dances beside me in preparation for the ballet lessons she’s starting later in the week.
“I’ve already picked out the tutu I’m going to wear,” she says. “I’ve got twelve of them.”
“That’s impressive. I’d love to see them sometime.”
After a brief meeting with Izzy’s music teacher—a smiling young woman with a purple-dyed undercut who answers my questions about the classroom’s closed-circuit cameras and introduces Izzy to five other kids learning trumpet this year—I find myself wandering the grounds of the Aster Springs community college. I’ve got forty-five minutes to kill, and I’ve never been on a college campus before, so why not?
The place is alive with students and faculty, and I wonder if it’s obvious that I have no business being here. I barely graduated high school, but I’d be a liar if I said that I hadn’t fantasized once or twice about studying again. Trying harder, figuring out what works for me, and getting it right if only to prove to myself that I can .
I’ve also dreamed about having a brain that works faster and concentrates better and makes easy sense of letters. But, like most things in my life, that’s beyond my control.
I follow without any real destination in mind until, by fate or accident, I wander into the business administration wing. I hesitate outside an open office door where an older guy with a bald head, wire-framed glasses, and a gray mustache sits behind a giant desk, preoccupied with whatever’s on his computer screen, until he notices me hovering like a weirdo at the door.
He offers a polite smile. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, no. Thank you.” I snatch up a brochure that’s stuffed inside a plastic rack attached to the wall outside the door and then hold it up like that’s what I was after all along. “Just came for one of these.”
“Are you interested in business management?” He gestures at the brochure with his glasses. “I’m the head of the program, and my name and number are on the back if you have any questions. There’s also plenty of information on our website.”
I nod and smile like there isn’t a flutter of wishful thinking in my chest or a sinking sense of you’re-not-good-enough in my stomach. “Maybe I will. Thanks.”
I roll up the brochure, stuff it into my tote bag, and immediately forget about it.
Five minutes before the hour, I’m waiting for Izzy in the hallway outside her music room, so I’m there when the door opens and a half-dozen kids file out.
“How was it, little miss?” I ask, taking her instrument case.
“It was fun.” She leaps into the air, throwing her arms above her head like she’s just won first place in the hundred-meter sprint. “I can’t wait to show you later what I can do.”
“And I can’t wait to hear it,” I say with extra enthusiasm. “But first, what do you say we stop by a little place I know that makes really good milkshakes?”
Izzy stops twirling and stares up at me with scandalized eyes. “You want to have milkshakes before dinner?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I offer her my hand, and she slips hers inside it, her palm warm in mine as we walk to the car.
“Daddy never lets me have sugar before meals. He says I don’t need it. I’m already sweet enough.”
I consider our problem with mock severity as I melt inside. I wish Dylan would stop doing and saying things that make me love him more. Always looking out for Izzy. Always strong and disciplined as well as soft and loving. He makes it impossible to get over him.
“Well, your dad is right about that part—you’re the sweetest kid I know—but I’m in the mood for a milkshake, and you wouldn’t let me drink alone, would you?”
A line of concentration mars Izzy’s smooth brow before she gives me a determined nod. “No, I wouldn’t. I’ll have a milkshake with you.”
I give her hand a gentle squeeze. “Thanks, Iz. I appreciate it.”
“ If you tell Daddy that you made me do it.”
My jaw drops, and I stare down at her until I stumble a little and have to right myself.
“I need to work fast to stay ahead of you, don’t I?” I mumble under my breath.
Izzy mishears me and pumps her little legs so she’s moving two paces to my one. “I’m sorry. I’ll walk quicker.”
The drive to my favorite Aster Springs diner takes ten minutes. The place is just as I remember, with its black-and-white checkered linoleum floor, a long counter with chrome single-serve stools, deep red-leather booths lining the walls, and the smell of burgers and onion rings wafting from the kitchen. We order at the counter, then slide into a booth, and when our milkshakes arrive—strawberry for me and chocolate for Izzy—I hold up my palm to stop her from drinking and stick my arm in my tote.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say as I present her with a bright pink curly straw. “But milkshakes taste better when you drink them through these.”
Izzy bounces with impatience as I swap her paper straw for the novelty one, and when she sets her lips to the top, the milk takes a few extra seconds to hit her tongue.
“Oh, that does taste better,” she agrees before her face falls. “But what about you?”
I pluck a twisted orange straw from my bag and drop it into my glass. “I always come prepared.”
Izzy sags forward with a happy sigh. “I love that bag.”
“I used to come here for burgers and milkshakes with your dad and Aunt Daisy when we were kids,” I tell her as we slurp on our drinks.
“Really?” Izzy sticks out her tongue to collect some of the foam spilling over the top of her frosted glass.
“Yep.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah. Cool.” I take another sip, watching her over the top of my glass. “So, did you have a good day at school? Did you learn anything new or interesting?”
Izzy shrugs and watches her straw as she swirls it around in the glass. “Not really.”
I don’t love the way Izzy was so excited about her music lesson this afternoon but withdraws when I ask her about school. Before I can think of another way to encourage her confidence, the bell above the diner door chimes, and both Izzy and I look up to see who enters. It’s the blonde girl who ignored Izzy outside the school gate, hand in hand with her mom.
Izzy shrinks a little, trying to hide in plain sight.
“That’s the girl we saw at school this afternoon,” I comment, careful to keep my tone neutral as the newcomers slide into a booth on the opposite side of the diner.
Izzy sucks on her straw. “Yes.”
“Her name is Mellie?”
“Yes.”
“But she isn’t your friend?”
“No.”
In all my years as a nanny, I’ve never felt as personally invested as I do with Izzy, nor as desperate to prove myself as I am with Dylan. So, I’m starting to sweat with the pressure to get this right when Izzy throws me a bone. I shift forward to better hear her whisper.
“She used to be my friend until…”
Izzy’s dark eyelashes brush her cheeks as she concentrates on slurping up her milkshake, and when she doesn’t finish her sentence, I crack under the suspense.
“Until…?”
Izzy doesn’t look up. “Until I beat her in Miss Teasley’s math competition.”
I ease back into the booth as things start to make more sense. “Can you tell me about the competition?”
Izzy heaves a sigh that’s too big for someone so small. “Miss Teasley divided the class into teams and had us take turns solving math problems.”
“And what happened to make Mellie mad at you?”
“Nobody could beat me,” Izzy mutters like it’s something to be ashamed of. “So, when nobody on my team could get a turn, Miss Teasley moved everyone to the other team. It was me against the whole class! I beat everyone three times, and then they started teasing me.”
Izzy scrubs at her eyes, and my fists tighten as I quietly rage about a teacher putting her in that position.
“I’m sorry that happened,” I tell her. “And I’m sorry your friends are upset because math is easier for you than it is for them. That’s not fair, and you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Izzy’s body softens with another sigh. “Sometimes it’s easier to pretend not to know things because then other kids like me better. But other times, I don’t want to pretend. It’s more fun to get the answers right than it is to get them wrong on purpose, you know?”
“I think so. It’s fun to be good at something.”
“Yeah, but it’s not always easy to be different.”
“I understand. My brain works differently too.”
“It does?” Izzy perks up like a puppet on a string, her eyebrows high with hope. “Are you smart like me?”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Not exactly, but neither of us learns the way most people do, and that’s okay. It’s just extra important that you’re in the right classes with the right teachers—and the right friends.”
“That’s what Daddy says,” Izzy replies. “Did you know I’m starting at a new school soon?”
“I do know that. How do you feel about it?”
I feel Izzy’s legs swinging under the table, and her eyes slide toward Mellie. “I think maybe it’s a good idea.”
“I think it is too. Are you nervous?”
“A little.”
“That’s normal, but you don’t need to be. Your dad will walk you in on your first day, and you’ll meet your teacher before class so they can answer your questions. I bet your teacher will assign a buddy to show you around, and if you’re still nervous, you can talk to me. We can find ways to make school less scary.”
“Will you come to my first day too?”
“Me? I don’t think so. I mean, your dad hasn’t said anything—”
“Could you ask him?” Izzy’s legs swing faster and her eyes light up as she bounces in her seat. “Please?”
“We’ll see. Now let’s finish our milkshakes so we can go home, and I can explain to your dad why you’re hyped up on sugar and too full to eat your dinner.”
“I like you, Poppy.”
That makes me laugh. “You like the milkshake.”
“No. I like you . You’re fun, and I don’t have to share you. And you’re not too busy all the time. You don’t have to be somewhere else. Just with me.”
“I like you too, Izzy.” I blink fast to ease the sudden sting in my eyes, then stretch my arm across the table and offer her my hand. She takes it without hesitating. “And like always, you’re totally right. You don’t have to share me, and there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be.”