Chapter 8 Marker-gate
Marker-gate
When the bell rang again, signaling the end of second period, I heaved a sigh of relief mixed with anticipation and began the trek back into Franklin Hall, up the familiar staircase and down the long hall to the last classroom.
The break felt like a purgatory where my nerves had fifty-five minutes to spiral again even worse than before.
All I could think about was Cooper. What was he doing in there?
Was his class going well? Was it going better than mine had?
As much as I had hated killing time before my next section began, I hated even more the imposter syndrome settling into my chest the closer I drew. This class would go better than the first one. It had to.
It wasn’t that the first class had been bad. It just hadn’t been good. And I needed to be better than good. I was sure my parents wouldn’t care if I got the job, but they would sure as hell have something to say if I didn’t get it.
Standing outside the classroom, I waited for the heavy stream of students filing out to ebb so I could slip back in. Quite unlike the students in my own section, this group were all grinning and chattering like a flock of birds.
“Could you believe that explosion,” a boy said.
“Fucking awesome,” his friend agreed.
“Sooo hot,” some girl said, sending two others into peals of giggles.
Were they talking about Cooper? Well, yes, they must be since they were coming out of his class. I struggled to wrap my mind around the general excitement radiating from the students. Surely no one would consider the first Fun Chem lecture to be awesome, let alone Cooper, himself.
A kaleidoscope of butterflies began swirling around my stomach at the prospect of seeing him at the front of my room.
It would be much easier if Cooper weren’t an asshole.
If he were dull and amiable, my life would be so much simpler.
I wouldn’t have to spend mental energy smothering raging butterflies when I needed to focus on my lesson.
I had been especially looking forward to my Advanced Chemistry section. This had been my favorite class in high school, and I was eager to dive back into the gritty details that make chemistry so fun.
The fact that the AP exam could be worth college credit hadn’t been particularly important to me, but I knew some kids—and parents—took it incredibly seriously.
Regardless of my indifference, I had scored a very respectable four out of five, good enough for three college credit hours.
Only two students in my year had scored better than me—a perfect five out of five—and with a shocking jolt of memory, I realized that one of the two students to earn the perfect score was none other than Jackson Cooper.
The cobwebs had finally cleared from that undisturbed corner of my brain.
I saw him in my mind’s eye as he was then, tall and frightfully gangly—absurdly long, skinny limbs that he didn’t know what to do with.
He had been ghostly quiet. I barely remembered him speaking in class, let alone to anyone outside of class.
Though, surely he had friends while he was in school?
Maybe he had just been shy. In my experience, shyness was a fairly common trait of tall people, at least until they grew comfortable with their height.
The last students filtered out, leaving the path into the room clear.
Cooper stood at the front of the room with his back to me, and I studied him with my fresh perspective.
He was just as tall now as he had been then—perhaps six-three or six-four—but he had grown into the height, adding lean mass over his frame.
The muscles in his back flexed and pulled as he waved the eraser in long strokes over the whiteboard.
He set the eraser down and brushed the dry marker dust off his hands before turning to collect his backpack. He spotted me as soon as he turned, and I watched his face transform from placid to irate.
“There she is,” he said, his voice low and sharp. “Are you happy with yourself for that little stunt?”
My smile melted off my face, and I slowed my approach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
He huffed a humorless laugh and put his hands on his hips. “Oh really? You’re seriously going to stand there and tell me that there was only one shitty, yellow marker when you got here this morning?”
“Why didn’t you just use the other one?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and prowled around the desk.
“Perhaps someone took the other marker and left only the one that was illegible?” He stepped forward into my space and plucked the blue marker from the front pocket of my trousers.
He held it up, wiggling it an inch from my nose in a gesture that might have been playful if it hadn’t been so patronizing.
My jaw dropped. I had no memory of putting the marker in my pocket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Save it, Princess. It’s fine if you don’t like my lesson plan, but I really didn’t think you would stoop to obstructing me.”
I gasped. “It was an accident. I would never—”
“A prank, then? If that’s how you want to play things, then fine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. The classroom suddenly felt tight and stifling.
Rather than answering me, he shook his head and stalked away through the flow of incoming students.
I turned my back to the room, so no one could see my face while I tried to regain my composure. I looked at the blue marker in my hand. It had been an accident. I’d been using that marker for the better part of an hour and must have slipped it into my pocket without thinking.
Cooper didn’t believe me. He thought so little of me that he assumed I would commit sabotage via petty marker theft—and on the first day.
Absolutely ridiculous. Utter bullshit.
I sucked in a deep breath to the count of four and blew it out.
In a few seconds, I would need to turn around and start the lesson. I needed to bring my A-game for the advanced students. They were counting on me. I would give myself two more breaths to get my shit together.
It took five breaths. The man was that exasperating.
But when I finally turned around, my flare of white-hot indignation had dulled to a low-simmering irritation. My signature smile was back in place, and I beamed at the twenty-one new faces. Immediately, I remembered why I was here and shoved all remaining thoughts of Cooper to the back of my mind.
“Welcome to Advanced Chemistry,” I called brightly.
“We have a lot of material to cover over the next sixteen weeks, so we’re going to get started right away reviewing what you learned last year in Fun Chem.
I’m Ms. Burke, and I’ll be your teacher for this term.
A little something about me is that I love chemistry jokes and will be telling them periodically… ”
The words came more easily than they had this morning.
Perhaps it was because they had been studying chemistry longer, but this group of students felt more locked in.
Their posture was straighter, more attentive, and several of them raised their hands when I asked questions.
A few even laughed at my jokes. More and more of the tension in my chest and shoulders loosened as the period progressed.
This was closer to how I thought teaching would be.
My second class still wasn’t as enthusiastic as Cooper’s had been, but that was alright.
Over the next few lessons, I would continue to draw them in, and they would love this subject as much as I did.
I just had to stay on track, follow my lesson plan, and keep from getting derailed by a certain rival teacher.
***
Wednesday, I swung by the admin building after lunch.
Yes, I had a little errand, but mostly I wanted to see a friendly face after the week I’d been having, and my breakfast pep talks from Ashley weren’t cutting it.
Silvia, my usual comfort-human, left me on read this morning, and I was jonesing for a judgment-free interaction while I waited for her reply.
“Melanie! Hello,” TJ sang when I moseyed up to her desk. Her face was lit up by a broad grin, and the knot in my chest began to loosen as we exchanged greetings.
“Did you see what that fool landscaper did to the boxwoods?” she asked.
My brows pulled together. “No?” I replied tentatively.
“Exactly!” she said. “First he cuts back the hydrangeas until they are practically stumps, so I tell him to go easy on the boxwood hedge. And what does the man do?”
“Nothing?” I guessed.
“Nothing! I swear—he’s testing me. If the Headmaster didn’t insist we use him, I’d have sacked him a week ago. But no. He’s some donor’s brother-in-law or something, so I’m stuck with him.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry.”
TJ waved away my apology. “It’s fine. It happens. What brings you in today?” she asked.
I rested my arms on the counter in front of her desk and leaned in. “Well, I was hoping to pick up the copies I emailed you about. And also… you said I should talk to you if I needed classroom supplies.” I had intended to sound matter-of-fact, but the statement sounded more like a question.
“That’s right. What can I get you?”
“Um…” I glanced down at my hands for a second, color rising in my cheeks, before muttering, “markers.”
“Sure thing. We have a whole case in the supply closet. I’ll be right back.”
I was relieved that she didn’t ask why I was already out of markers on the third day. I liked TJ well enough, but I wasn’t ready yet to complain about other faculty members to her. For all I knew, she loved Cooper too, and everything I said might get back to him.
She returned a moment later with a box of twelve black Expo markers and a thick stack of paper, setting it all on the counter between us.
“What are all these?” TJ asked as I gathered the materials into my tote.
“Homework assignments. For the next two weeks,” I explained. “I feel pretty good about them. I wrote most of the questions myself.”
“You’re giving out homework? Jackson mentioned that he wouldn’t be doing homework for his sections.”
Jackson. He had won over TJ too. I was right to keep my thoughts on the abs-hole to myself. Then, my brain processed the rest of what she said.
“He… what?” I couldn’t have been more surprised if TJ had told me that Richmond had an affair with Phyllis. “No homework? He can’t do that. Homework is teaching 101.”
TJ shrugged and made a non-committal hum. “Maybe I misheard them, but I don’t think so.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times like a fish out of water. How could he get away without homework? It was essential for reinforcing technical concepts—not to mention how we had both been taught by Mr. Stephens. Cooper was doing his students a disservice—under-preparing them for their exams.
Their exams.
The AP students were counting on those college credits. The knots in my stomach twisted harder, and I was suddenly irate on behalf of the AP students.
“Them?” I asked. “Richmond knows? He can’t possibly be okay with it.”
TJ nodded. “Yeah, he knows. Jackson was in there for over an hour the day after you all arrived. I don’t know what exactly they talked about, but when they came out, the Headmaster said ‘I believe in you’ or something like that.”
I stared at the woman, my jaw practically on the desk after that pronouncement.
None of what she said made sense. Then again, I had seen Cooper’s lesson plan.
It was like nothing I had ever seen before.
Maybe the “no homework” thing was part of his strategy?
It must be. And apparently Richmond had signed off on it.
The real question was whether or not it would work better than traditional methods. Only time would tell. I didn’t like it, but worrying even more wasn’t going to help me.
“They’re his sections. He can teach them however he wants,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
Just then my phone buzzed with an incoming call. It was Silvia. I could have cried with relief.
“I need to take this,” I said to TJ, holding up my ringing phone. “Thanks for the copies!”
TJ waved me away with a smile, and I hustled outside, clicking the green accept button. Silvia’s voice rang through the earpiece the second the call connected.
“Tell. Me. Everything,” she demanded. “No detail is too small.”
“It’s stupid,” I started, picking a path at random. All of the students and most of the faculty were still in class, so the grounds were deserted. “There weren’t any whiteboard markers in my classroom this morning.”
“Again?” Silvia shrieked. “Two days in a row?”
“Yep,” I confirmed, popping the p.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You accidentally leave him with a shitty marker one time—”
“Accidentally,” I agreed.
“And then you immediately apologized—”
“Right—”
“And then he, not once, but twice—two days in a row!—steals all of the markers at the end of the day so that you don’t have any left in the morning.”
“That about sums it up,” I said with a grimace.
“Petty man-child,” she muttered.
Vindication swelled in my chest at her acknowledgment, and my irritation over the whole situation eased. “Seriously, though! Where does he get off?”
“Probably in the shower,” Silvia replied, without missing a beat.
I stifled a laugh. “Ew! Don’t joke about Cooper…
masturbating,” I squeaked. Though, now that the thought was in my head, I could easily picture him stroking himself while water cascaded down his body and steam billowed around him.
I would have to bleach my brain before I would be able to look at him tomorrow.
“So, how are you going to get him back?” Silvia asked. I could practically see the mischievous look in her eye through the phone.
“I can’t do that,” I snickered.
“Why not? If he wants to play stupid games, let him have some stupid prizes.”
It was bad advice. Horrible, really. But also… the woman did have some kind of a point—first, the crazy lesson plan, and next, the markers. Cooper was playing games, and I was getting fed up. I hated to sink to his level, but it was getting more tempting by the hour.
“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about revenge,” I said, “but it’s too risky. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Her tone became dismissive. “Don’t break any rules. Just do some harmless shit to get under his skin. Let’s see… he hid the markers, so maybe you could hide something of his? Or better yet—do the opposite!”
I snorted. “You want me to what—show him his markers?”
“No, no, no,” she said. “I mean leave a whole bunch of shit all over the desk for him to deal with. Weird shit—like a box of tampons. Or voodoo doll with dark hair and washboard abs. Get creative.”
I was laughing in earnest now, deep belly laughs shaking my body and scaring nearby birds. Everyone on campus was perfectly nice, but I missed the easy, casual, and judgment-free conversations with my best friend.
“Where might one procure a voodoo doll?” I asked once my laughter was back under control.
“You can find literally anything on the internet. Here—let me send you some links.”