Chapter Thirty
FOUR WEEKS LATER
The Sophomore English Agenda is set to go on an end-of-year holiday hiatus just in time for the winter break closure at Mia’s preschool.
Ravi puts a pause on all his freelance projects until the new year, too, so the only thing left for him to do is edit the December Patreon bonus episode.
He gets the rough cut of “Elle Takes an Edible and Tries to Explain to Her Roommate Why She Hates The Great Gatsby So Much” the Monday of his last week of work and opens it immediately.
The moment he presses play, he knows it’s a mistake. All the time since he said goodbye to Yael, he’s lamented the fact that he only got this sanitized fraction.
But hearing this is much, much worse.
She speeds up when she’s making the points she’s most excited about, laughs at her own jokes, laughs harder at Charlie’s. Her pitch climbs occasionally in a way that would give SEA’s most obnoxious reviewers an aneurysm. Sometimes she drags out the ends of her sentences, her vocal fry prominent.
This Elle sounds exactly like Yael, and Christ, does he miss her.
He listens to it straight through, not clicking a single button in his editing software.
Not even making notes to himself of what he needs to change.
And then he turns his computer off, downloads the file onto his phone, and brings it downstairs to listen again in his room.
When Ravi’s staring up at the ceiling with glassy eyes and debating a third listen, Suresh gets home.
“What are you listening to?” he asks.
Ravi sits up, trying to look less pathetic.
He must take too long to respond, though, because Suresh continues, “Is it the librarian?”
Ravi nods. “A bonus episode that I’m supposed to edit.”
Suresh stands in the doorway still and quiet, as if carefully considering his next move.
“You asked me how dating someone would be different for me than for you,” he says, “and I didn’t know how to answer you.
But I thought a lot about it, and the difference is that for me, it’s not just about you and Mia.
It’s about Margot.” He pauses then, clearing his throat.
“That’s true,” Ravi says slowly.
“The difference is that I don’t think I could fall in love right now, even if I wanted to.
I was so in love with her. I still love her.
So even if I did meet a woman that I had feelings for, it wouldn’t be fair to her, because I only just turned in the divorce papers and I’m too broken up to give my love to anybody else.
You doh have that, Ravi. You could make room for one more person. ”
Ravi swallows against the lump in his throat. “What if she decided it was too much for her?” he blurts. “What if she got to know Mia and then she left?”
Suresh’s face changes, surprised. “Is that what this is about?” he asks. Ravi shrugs. “Doesn’t she work with kids?”
“Teenagers,” Ravi says.
“I hear they’re more difficult.” When Ravi doesn’t respond, Suresh says, “She could leave. Of course, she could. But you haven’t even given her the chance to show you she wouldn’t. You like her owah?”
Ravi blinks back tears, still not sure what to say.
“If you don’t want to be with her, that’s a different story. But right now, it just seems like you’re torturing yourself, and you should stop,” Suresh says.
He slips out of the room, closing the door behind him.
EVENTUALLY, THE DAYS start to go by faster, and the episodes begin to ebb. Sanaa has left Portland with the promise to return as soon as the semester ends. She and Yael and Charlie will go to the coast for New Year’s, just the three of them.
By the last week of classes, the heartbreak is something Yael carries rather than lives in.
She still has to hit send on emails to Ravi with one hand over her eyes, but she enjoys writing her outlines and recording the episodes again.
Over lunch today, she shut-eye sends a rough cut of the bonus episode she recorded on Saturday night with Charlie (stage name: Tan; etymology: charlatan).
It’s messy and casual and Charlie talks too loudly into the microphone on several occasions, but she laughs out loud listening back.
It feels like good bonus content, the kind she herself subscribes to her favorite podcasts for.
Most of all, when she listens to it, she can tell she finally sounds like she’s doing okay.
During the last period of the day, Principal Harrison stops by the library, and Yael has to fight the instinct to exit out of every window on her computer screen, even though she’s doing work. Four years in this job, and she’s still like this.
“Hi, Lauren,” she says.
“Happy Monday, Yael!” Principal Harrison replies, faux-cheery. “Could you stop by my office after school?”
“Um,” Yael says, her cheeks heating. She wishes, for the zillionth time, that a comparable job at a high school she hadn’t attended as a student had opened within months of her finishing graduate school. “Yeah, of course.”
“Great! See you then!” Lauren says, and she leaves, giving Yael fifty-four excruciating minutes to wonder what the hell that was about.
Once the last of her students trickle out after the final bell tolls, Yael makes her way over to Lauren’s office and finds the door shut. Sherine peers at her over her reading glasses. “Ms. Harrison is with a prior appointment.”
“Ah, okay,” Yael says, leaning herself awkwardly against the counter. Sherine gives her a curt nod and returns her focus to her filing.
She waits long enough to consider pulling out her phone, but just as she’s reaching for it, the door opens.
Gina walks out, eyes wide in warning. She stops at Yael, close enough to whisper.
“I didn’t tell her shit, I promise. It’s your call what to do,” she says, and slips away before Lauren can poke her head out of the door.
“Yael!” Lauren says, and the ever-present school principal cheer grates against Yael’s strung-taut nerves. “Come on in!”
Lauren sits at her desk, and Yael is forced to sit opposite her, in the same seat where every kid caught vaping in the bathroom gets threatened with a suspension.
“What did you want to speak to me about?” she asks, clasping her hands together in her lap.
It’s best to curb nervous fidgeting in front of Lauren; she always makes sure you know that she notices, but she never says anything, and that’s somehow worse.
“I came across an interesting podcast recommendation this weekend,” Lauren says, still smiling.
This is how she’s decided to go about it? Indignance rapidly supplants Yael’s anxiety, and she shifts in her seat, smiling right back.
“It was called The Sophomore English Agenda, and when I listened to the episode about Lord of the Flies, some of what the host was saying felt very familiar. It reminded me of a complaint you made at a faculty meeting last year.”
“Hmm,” Yael says, refusing to let her smile falter.
“It was recommended to me by an online magazine called Renegade. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the website’s page for the podcast, and it said that the host worked with books in the Pacific Northwest.”
Imagine my surprise that you frequent Renegade, Yael thinks. She sighs, leaning back in her chair. “Do you have a question, Lauren?”
“I was interested,” she continues, “so I went and listened to a recent episode extended cut. And the host mentioned that she had requested to order a horror novel for an extracurricular program with students but was denied because the author also wrote erotica.”
Yael presses her lips into a flat line. Principal Harrison signed up for a five-dollar-per-month payment just to catch her? She’s tempted to ask whether she remembered to cancel it afterward.
Lauren keeps staring. Yael says nothing.
“It would not be a good look,” Lauren says, “for one of our faculty members to be disparaging our curriculum and administrative decisions.”
“Then it’s a good thing I use a stage name,” Yael says.
Lauren’s face stills, her lips parted, for a half second. Even this tiny moment before she regains her composure is something to relish. “So, you’re confirming that you’re Elle Rex?”
“Yes, I run the podcast. I checked my contract, and this is in no way a violation.”
The smile Lauren gives her is close-lipped. “It could raise concerns with parents.”
Yael’s patience wears thin. “I don’t have my face or name associated with the podcast.”
“I figured it out,” Lauren says.
“From a faculty meeting and a request I submitted directly to you. Neither of which parents are privy to.”
“There’s still a possibility,” she says.
“What concerns would it raise, exactly?”
Lauren purses her lips. “It’s … unseemly. They may also question your devotion to their children’s academic betterment if your time is split.”
Yael’s stomach drops. “You can’t be serious,” she says, all pretense dropping. “Have you had any issues with my performance?”
“No, but—”
“Not only do I do my contracted job, I started a successful book club for queer students that I secured a grant for entirely on my own. I have never once let the podcast affect either of those responsibilities. I hired an editor even before the Renegade deal because it was too much for me to do all on my own outside of work hours.”
Lauren’s eyes turn steely, and she lifts her jaw in defiance.
Or perhaps out of insult at Yael’s defiance.
“Sometimes we have to make tough choices,” she says.
“It’s not a good idea for you to do both, for you or for Kennedy.
These students need you, and you need to decide where your priorities lie. ”
Yael can see exactly what Lauren is doing.
She wants to force her hand, make her quit the podcast. It’s the same thing Lauren did thirteen years ago when Yael asked her to stop trotting her name, photo, and resumé highlights out at every school board meeting.
And again, ten years ago, when Yael found out from Sanaa’s little sister that she was still starring in newsletters even though she’d already graduated.
But Yael loves this podcast she’s built, she’s good at it, and as of this month, she’s pulling in considerably more than her librarian salary. Her heart slows its pumping, no longer thudding against her rib cage.
I haven’t wanted to be here for the past year, she realizes. Years, maybe.
And she doesn’t have to be. She isn’t stuck anymore. Maybe she never truly was.
“Well,” she says coolly. “I’ll be sad to leave Kennedy, but I understand if it’s what’s best for the students.”
Lauren treats her to an honest-to-goodness jaw drop, and it takes everything in Yael not to smile.
“I’m happy to stay on through the end of the school year while you find a replacement, and I’d also love to stay on with the book club as a community volunteer,” she continues.
“You love being a librarian,” Lauren sputters.
“I love reading and thinking and talking about books,” Yael says.
“I still get to do that in my other job. And if I miss being a librarian enough, I’ll look for another position eventually, maybe one where the potential for concerned parents would pose less of an issue.
Would you like me to submit my resignation now, or wait until spring? ”
The look on Lauren’s face is one she’s never seen before. She searches for the words to describe it to Sanaa and Charlie later, and the best she can do is angry muppet. It’s cartoonish, Lauren’s fury. Lauren clears her throat. “Why don’t we wait until spring,” she says.
Yael grins. “Feel free to direct any interviewees my way for questions when the time comes. Is there anything else?”
“That’s all,” Lauren says, her voice tight.
Yael stands, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Have a good night, Lauren,” she says, and walks out the door.
She nods at Sherine on her way out, breathing like she’s run a marathon, her body catching up to the reality of what she’s just done. Gina’s waiting for her, tucked out of view from the front office’s window.
“Library office?” she asks.
It’s on this floor, but the thought of locking herself in there with anybody else is still too much for Yael, so she shakes her head. “Your classroom,” she says, and follows Gina up the stairs against the flow of traffic. They both take them two at a time.
“Are you okay?” Gina asks once they’re safe in the far corner of the classroom.
“I think so,” Yael answers honestly. “Lauren likes Renegade, apparently.”
Gina squints, tilting her head as if she thinks she hasn’t heard Yael quite right. “Isn’t she way too old to be in their demographic?”
A laugh bursts from Yael’s chest. “Right?”
“I mean, like, that makes me question my own sense of humor.”
“Well, I think Renegade is funny, too.”
“I’ve listened to your podcast,” Gina says, giving her a playfully skeptical look. “Not all of your jokes are winners.”
“And you wonder why I thought we were only work friends,” Yael says.
Gina brings her hand over the cross pendant on her chest, a show of mock offense, which gets another laugh out of Yael. “So what happened? I told you I didn’t snitch, and I meant it.”
“I know you didn’t,” Yael says. “But I admitted it freely. Lauren was pissed, mostly about the way it could look if it got out. I think also a little pissed that I’d managed to hide it from her until it got this big.”
“Poor Yael, suffering from success,” Gina jokes.
“She heavily implied that she could fire me for doing both, even though legally she can’t.
I had an employment lawyer read my contract before I even made a Patreon.
So, she couldn’t outright say it, and instead tried to pressure me into quitting the podcast ‘so my attention wouldn’t be divided’ or whatever. ”
“But you didn’t.”
Yael shakes her head. “No, I, um … quit my job here instead.”
“What?”
“I know.” Yael closes her eyes slowly, still unable to make eye contact with Gina when she opens them again.
“I know, but I’m making enough money from the podcast now.
And I gave her until the end of the school year to find a replacement.
There’s no reason the book club couldn’t be volunteer-run.
I have plenty of time to get my shit together. ”
Gina blinks at her.
“I got this job right out of graduate school, and it’s at the high school I went to. Lauren was my principal! And you’re the first lasting friend I’ve made since college. Honestly, it would probably be good for me to try something new.”
Slowly, Gina nods, working her jaw. “If Lauren folded tomorrow and asked you to stay, podcast be damned, would you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Having only one job for a while would be a lot easier on me, mentally.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“You quit your job, Yael.”
“I quit my job.”
“You’re a full-time podcaster now.”
“In five months,” Yael corrects.
“Congratulations,” Gina says. “I’m proud of you.”
And then, for the first time ever, she wraps up Yael in a hug.