Chapter 9 October Lovers
October Lovers
Silvia’s suggestion rolled around my brain for the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Everyone did dorm room pranks when we were students.
I had fond memories of rearranging furniture and TPing my friends’ rooms while they were in class or at practice.
But that was a long time ago. I wasn’t sixteen anymore.
As a teacher, I needed to rise above that kind of immaturity. Didn’t I?
Yes.
Maybe?
Probably…
Obsessing over this was giving me a headache. I shoved all thoughts of Cooper, markers, and revenge roughly out of my brain as I made my way out to the Grove, an area of particularly old and massive trees near Cedar Lake. The October Lovers Club was gathering for their first meeting of the year.
I found the group easily enough. Wearing coordinating sweatshirts in red, orange, and yellow, they looked vaguely like fall foliage.
The words “October Lovers” were emblazoned in large block letters across their chests.
The sweatshirts might have been perfect club attire had it actually been October.
But in the late-summer heat, the students all looked absurdly uncomfortable, even in the shade of an ancient oak with a trunk as wide as a Buick.
I approached with a bright smile. “Hi there. Is this the October Lovers?”
A round-faced boy extended his hand to me. “You must be Ms. Burke. I’m Russel. Pop a squat.”
I shook the very clammy hand before taking a seat between two other students who scooted aside to make room for me.
Once I was comfortable with my legs crossed under me and had discreetly wiped my palm on my jeans, I looked around the circle of curious, sweaty faces, one of which I recognized from my AP Chem class.
What was her name? She didn’t speak much in class and wasn’t speaking now either.
In fact, no one seemed eager to break the silence.
I had inherited a group of shy geeks. Not my specialty, but I could soften anyone.
“So, this is October Lovers,” I started. “What… um… what do we do in this club? If you don’t mind me asking…”
As one, the group turned to look at Russel. The leader. The boy cleared his throat. “Well, October is obviously the best month of the year.” At this, everyone nodded. Obviously. “So we get together and do October stuff.”
“Right,” I said, not understanding in the slightest. “So, do you guys plan the Halloween party? Or the Homecoming dance? I think those are in October.”
The girl to my left shifted in her spot. “Um, no. The Student Senate does that sort of thing.”
Ah, right. I had been on the Student Senate—a glorified party-planning committee with just enough charity work to call itself philanthropic. It was moderately reassuring to know that some things didn’t change.
I looked between her and Russel. “So then, what do you—”
“We have a bonfire and make s’mores,” he said in a rush.
“And every year we go apple picking,” the girl added.
“And we have a pumpkin carving contest, even though Miriam wins every year—she’s really incredible with a knife.” Russel gestured to the girl from AP Chem.
Miriam—I immediately committed the name to memory—wore an orange sweatshirt that clashed horribly with her strawberry-blonde hair, and she was blushing furiously at the attention, though she might have just been hot.
“I think I get it,” I said. “You all—I mean we—like to do fall stuff.”
“October stuff,” another boy corrected me with a significant look.
“October stuff,” I amended. “Right.” That made some kind of sense. I could get behind October stuff. Thank fuck no one had mentioned camping.
“So, what’s your favorite thing about October?” Russel asked. He had the energy of a chocolate lab in the body of a pudgy teenage boy.
I paused to consider for a moment before answering.
Eight sweaty faces peered at me expectantly.
“I used to live in Manhattan, before moving here. And one thing I always missed was walking through the woods and seeing all the fall colors. Sure, I had Central Park, but it’s not really the same as a proper hike through a proper forest, you know? ”
“I love hiking,” a boy in a red sweatshirt said. “Someday, I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail. Do you like camping too?”
I barely managed to restrain my grimace.
“Um, no. I’m not really much of a camper unless there is a memory foam mattress involved somehow. But I do like being outdoors. And the fall—October—is the best time for it.”
They all nodded at me, grinning broadly. I waited for someone to speak, but no one seemed particularly forthcoming.
“This club meets once a week right?” I asked, attempting to keep the conversation flowing. “So, um, what do we usually do?”
“Pretty much just this. We’ll talk about October or anything else, really,” Miriam supplied.
I considered the faces a little more thoughtfully. They did seem to be a collection of odd ducks—likely social outcasts, or at least outcasts from the social circles that I used to run in. This might be the height of their week. Or maybe I was judging them too quickly.
“So, what were you talking about before I got here?” I asked, trying to get the conversation moving again.
Russel cleared his throat. “Well, we were talking about you, actually.”
“And Mr. Cooper,” a brunette girl added in a dreamy voice.
I perked up, eager to gauge the students’ impression. “Oh yeah? What about us?”
Russel shrugged noncommittally and looked down at his shoes. I tried to catch someone else’s eye, and no one would meet mine.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I’m not going to be mad. What are people saying?”
Miriam finally took pity on me. “Well, it is kind of strange, right? Having both of you? Everyone is sort of curious how that’s going to work.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, nodding. “Well, we aren’t both going to stay indefinitely. So either of us might be gone in a couple of months.”
The brunette girl gasped. “He won’t be leaving, will he? Mr. Cooper is wonderful! I would be so sad.”
I had to really work to keep the frown off my face. I could not wrap my head around why so many people liked Cooper. It stung to be confronted with this predicament so directly.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, genuinely curious about the man that had come to take up so many of my thoughts.
“Well,” the girl started, oblivious to my distress.
“He’s the best teacher. I had Stephens last year, and he would just drone on and on, and the lessons felt like an eternity.
But Mr. Cooper? I don’t know… I could listen to him talk forever.
It feels like it’s just him and me, you know?
But then there are the pop bottles, too, and those are really fun. ”
“Pop bottles?” I parroted. I couldn’t stop my brows from pulling together. Was he bribing the students with soft drinks?
“They’re really cool,” the boy in red added—I seriously needed to get these kids’ names. “He has these empty twenty-ounce bottles, or at least they look empty. But then, when he opens them in front of a Bunsen burner, they pop. It scared the shit out of me the first time he did it.”
My eyes bounced between the pair of them. “Pops?”
“It sounds more like a gunshot, or a car backfire,” the brunette girl added. “It’s a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. He does it to keep us on our toes when it looks like the class is drifting off during a lecture.”
“It’s pretty funny—watching everyone jump out of their skin.”
“Yeah, he’s amazing. I hope he stays.”
A roller coaster of emotions roared through me as I mulled over their words.
I hadn’t anticipated this little wrinkle—that the students might find Cooper less unpleasant than I did.
They seemed to genuinely like him and his unorthodox methods.
I’d never heard of anyone using pop bottles before, but I had to admit it was a clever application of the exothermic reaction.
I fought to hide my unease and hold the smile on my face. I couldn’t have my new club thinking I was bitter and jealous, even if I kind of was.
What were my students saying about me to their friends?
I had a feeling they weren’t saying that I was an amazing, wonderful teacher too.
Or that my lessons were that fun and engaging.
I tried to be funny. I tried to relate the lessons to things the students would be familiar with from real life.
Hopefully, they liked me. I would want my students to like me even if the student assessments weren’t part of my evaluation for the job.
“He sounds great,” I said, finally. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the class.”
“It doesn’t hurt that he’s gorgeous,” the girl added.
“Janelle!” Russel whined.
“What?” she said. “You can’t tell me he doesn’t look like he stepped out of a hockey romance?”
I chuckled. “What kind of novels are you reading?”
Janelle sighed dramatically. “The best kind.”
I thought about the copious smut in the romance bestsellers I liked to read and mentally cringed at the idea a teenager might be reading the same ones.
“And you should see him run in the mornings,” she continued. “He wears these short shorts, and his thighs—”
“Janelle!” Russel and I scolded in unison.
“—are like tree trunks,” she finished, completely unrepentant about causing our distress.
I rubbed my temple where a headache was beginning to form. How had we gone from apple picking to Cooper’s thighs in less than five minutes? “He’s a teacher,” I said. “And an adult. Not appropriate.”
She shrugged. “There’s no rule against looking. You’re not going to sit there and tell me you never had a hot teacher?”
Every pair of eyes turned to me.
“No!” I insisted. “All of my teachers were old enough to be my parents. Or grandparents.”
Miriam leaned in. “Not even in college?”
“Well,” I said and rubbed my palms, sweaty on their own accord, on my jeans again. “That was different. I was a non-traditional student—a lot older than everyone else. But I still didn’t thirst after my professors.”
“Nobody says ‘thirst’ anymore,” muttered another boy, and I flinched. So much for being cool and relatable.
“I guess we’re just lucky.” Janelle had the misty countenance of a girl crushing hard. “I hope he stays.”
The group dissolved into side chatter around me. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. If I didn’t get this job because of horny teenagers, I was going to lose my mind.
The most frustrating part about all of this was that I couldn’t even argue with them.
He was attractive as hell, physically at least. It was unfortunate that he had a personality equivalent to a porcupine.
Though, the students seemed to like him quite a bit, not to mention TJ and the hens.
This conversation was just further evidence that his prickly, marker-stealing, abs-holiness was reserved solely for me…
It was bullshit. I had been nothing but nice to him, plus spent hours improving his lesson plan. But, marker-gate aside (and that had been an accident), being nice wasn’t working. The man still hated me, and it was really starting to bother me.
Albert Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over expecting different results was the definition of insanity.
I definitely felt like I was going insane…
What I needed was a new strategy. Maybe I should reconsider Silvia’s suggestion.
I didn’t love the idea of bringing tampons and voodoo dolls to class, but I could probably come up with something a little more me to send a new message.
I needed to think about this. I needed to research. Later. Now, surrounded by sweaty, eager students, was not the time to be plotting retaliation against Jack Cooper.
“Okay, let’s get back on track,” I said. “Who can tell me more about this bonfire? Also—where do I get one of those sweatshirts?”