Chapter 11
Hot N Cold – Katy Perry
Cassidy
As I walked back to my classroom after the meeting, Gunner’s casual kindness troubled me. The way he’d sauntered in to help Ruth without any fanfare or expectation. It wasn’t the actions of the man I thought I knew. The man who pissed me off royally that night three years ago.
Standing at my desk, packing my stuff away, the memory hit me with unexpected force.
Three Years Earlier
“You really don’t understand what these kids need, do you?”
The words sliced into me like a knife, changing the atmosphere of what had been a surprisingly great first date into something else entirely. Something sharp-edged and tense.
I set my glass down, taking a breath to calm my anger, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. “I think I understand exactly what they need. That’s why I became a teacher.”
Gunner’s jaw clenched tight. “A teacher who wants to change everything about how we do things here.” He leaned back in his chair, the easy charm of earlier replaced by something harder.
The patio lights of Downtown cast shadows across his face, making him look like a stranger.
“These kids don’t need your fancy city ideas.
They need to understand the land, their heritage. ”
“Who said that I was trying to change everything?” I gripped the arms of the chair, afraid if I didn’t I might throw my drink in his face.
“You’re not teaching them about their heritage.”
“Bringing in new teaching techniques and organizing a few trips to the City isn’t going to change them. And that isn’t all I’d like to do, I’d like to—”
He cut me off with a dismissive wave. “You can’t change everything that makes this place special.” He scoffed. “But then you wouldn’t know that would you, being an out of towner.”
He had no idea because I’d grown up much like these kids - early mornings helping with chores, learning to drive a tractor before a car, understanding that the rhythms of farm life waited for no one.
But he hadn’t bothered to ask about my background.
I guess he’d just assumed when I said I’d lived in Bloomington that was where I was brought up.
It wasn’t, it was where I went to college.
I’d lived on a farm in a small town nine miles from Durango with a close community. Well, I wasn’t going to tell him.
My veins heated with anger. “Not that you’d care, but I was trying to tell you that I want to blend traditional knowledge with modern opportunities,” I’d said, my voice tight. “Give these kids every possible advantage while honoring their way of life.”
“By teaching them that your big city vision is better and that they need to change?” His laugh was cold. “That what they know, what their parents know, isn’t good enough anymore?”
“That’s not what I—”
“Listen, I’m sure your ideas work great in the city.” He threw enough cash on the table to cover both our meals. “But out here? We don’t need fixing.”
I watched him walk away, my half-eaten dessert growing warm in the summer heat. It wasn’t just his dismissal of my ideas that stung, it was his complete refusal to even hear them. To see me as anything more than some city teacher with grand plans to ‘fix’ his world.
Present Day
The janitor’s footsteps in the hallway brought me back to the present and the fact that three years later he was championing a program that wasn’t so different from what I’d suggested that night. The same man who’d dismissed my ‘city ideas’ was offering jobs and opportunities to help local kids.
Closing up my purse, my gaze caught on the artwork my students had made.
The pictures were all about what they loved about their present and what they wanted for the future.
Every single one, bar none, had illustrated Silver Peaks in some way alongside pictures of veterinarians, teachers, ranchers, astronauts.
It was proof that the kids didn’t see any contradiction in loving where they came from and wanting more.
They understood something Gunner hadn’t that night.
Maybe he did now and that was what made it and him all so confusing.