Chapter 2 Gabe
Chapter 2: Gabe
Monday August 25, 8:00 AM
The classroom door shut behind Gabe, the clicking sound hitting his brain, signaling he needed to focus on the classroom around him. Meaning he was supposed to be working. Except his brain was elsewhere, thinking about something.
Or some one . Avery’s smile flashed in his mind, her dark hair framing her soft features.
“Are you the sub today?” A student with glasses on the front row asked.
“Is your name Mr. Manwaring?”
“You subbed in my science class last week.”
“Aren’t you the sub who thinks he’s Indiana Jones?”
In classic teenager fashion, the high schoolers rapid-fired questions at Gabe, who stood in a brain fog holding the sub binder. A fog entirely attributable to Avery. Miss Williams. Emphasis on Miss .
“Who was the other sub?” one student asked.
Who indeed? Gabe secretly wondered. He had been a substitute teacher for a while now but she was the first sub not old enough to be his mother.
Not that he minded the older women. All the older ladies who worked at Desert Scorpion High School were happy to see him. Honestly, he flashed a smile and they became putty in his hands. But they also treated him like a son, or a potential blind date for their daughter or niece. Doreen, the office lady, had always given him treats, but not today. The rumbling in his stomach cursed him for running late and not getting his regular muffin.
He looked down at the binder. Avery was definitely cute. Stressed, but cute. Substitute teaching was not an easy job for most people. Gabe loved subbing. He could show up, make the kids laugh, then go home. Almost like getting paid to be the class clown.
Maybe he could help Avery get through the first-day jitters so she’d keep coming back. Because the school needed substitutes. He was only interested in helping her as a co-worker. NOT because he was interested in her. Yeah, totally not that one.
The bell rang, but Gabe continued staring at the binder in front of him, totally zoned out.
“Uh, Mr. Manwaring? Are you okay?”
He glanced up to find a few students staring quizzically at him; the rest were lost in their own conversations. Right. Teaching.
“Yeah. Let’s get rolling on the roll ,” he said as he pulled out the roster. A few kids snickered.
Gabe was only getting warmed up. He’d been a sub for what, a few years now? After getting a degree in archeology, he’d bounced around a few internships, all the while hoping to get the opportunity to get his hands dirty on a real grown-up archeology project. Instead he got a job at a museum in Phoenix that didn’t pay enough, so he started subbing and never stopped.
“You float through life,” his dad always told him. “When are you going to get a real job?”
Gabe shook the memory out of his head and tried to focus. Which wasn’t too hard because honestly he was more like a kid anyway. Being a kid was more fun. Plus, he got attention for being a class clown growing up. Way more attention than he got at home.
“Question of the day is: what is your favorite breakfast food? When I call your name you have ten seconds to give me your answer to let me know you’re present. Levi Adams, go!”
“Scrambled eggs.”
“Sophia Anderson.”
“Protein shake.”
“Aiden Bingham.”
“Cereal.”
“Ethan Byers.”
“Fruit.”
“Branson Clark.”
“Pop Tart.”
“Lily Chavez.”
“Nothing.”
“Justin Daynes.”
“Bacon.”
Gabe could practically guess their answers before they even opened their mouths. He couldn’t exactly say why, he hadn’t subbed for this particular class before, he was just good at reading people. Maybe he was born with the skill, maybe it came from moving a lot, probably developed from being in drama club, or it could even be from anthropology in college.
Okay, correction, he could read most people. Not women his age. But everybody else was easy to read.
“What’s your favorite breakfast, Mr. Manwaring?” one student asked.
“Poppy seed muffins from Doreen, the front office lady. Could you take the class roll to her please and see if she brought any for me today? And don’t you dare take a bite.”
The students laughed. He smiled at their reaction. Gabe had already won this class over. Felt light as air. But making them laugh was the easy part. Now to keep them from burning the school down for the next hour. Surprisingly harder than it sounded. Thank goodness this wasn’t chemistry class.
A quick glance at the lesson plans and Gabe knew the drill. Hand out the math worksheet stacked on a table at the front of the class. He picked up a pile.
“Let’s see what you’re working on today. Oh yay, geometry.” He handed a piece of paper to each student as he said, “Points, lines, and planes, logic and reasoning, angles, slopes, triangles, polygons, circles, volume, area. Anyone want to know if you’ll use this after high school?” Groans from the students.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” With all sheets passed out, Gabe headed to the whiteboard. The lesson plans told him to have the students work silently on their own, but that was the last thing he did at any sub job. Why do the boring thing when you could do the fun thing?
The student who had taken the roster to the office returned, holding a muffin on a napkin in his hand.
“Perfect timing.” Gabe grabbed the muffin and practically shoved the whole thing in his mouth.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” the student said, and Gabe waved him to return to his seat.
“I’m hungry!” several students in the back row chimed in.
“Why don’t we all get muffins?” a girl in the front row asked.
“What?” Gabe’s voice muffled from the muffin. He shrugged. “You gotta make friends with Doreen.” Making friends with the grown-ups at school was something he started way back in the day. He always knew which teachers had food to share. Not like he didn’t have food at home, just not parents to eat meals with. Of course he loved to eat, but it was the interactions he craved.
“Now, let’s get down to business .” Gabe sang the line from Mulan , then took a final swallow and rubbed his belly. “Mmm. Scrumptious. My favorite.” He threw the napkin away, and grabbed a black dry erase marker.
“Give me a shape. Any shape,” he asked the students, who yelled out replies.
“Circle.”
“Triangle.”
“Rectangle.”
“Square.”
“Rectangle.” Gabe drew one on the board. “How do we get the area?” While math wasn’t Gabe’s favorite subject, he had excelled in the required math courses for his archeology major.
A student blurted out, “Length times width. Obviously.” The other students giggled.
Gabe wrote Area = L x W on the board. “Right. So why do we care?” He turned around and faced the students.
“We don’t care!” a boy in the back said, and again everyone laughed.
“You don’t care right now ,” Gabe added. “But what if you get a job to pay for college tiling people’s kitchens and bathrooms? The last thing you want to do is have a bunch of leftover tile when you’re done. I’m telling you now so you don’t have to learn the hard way like me.”
Paying his way through college had been hard, but he was proud he finished. It seemed he had to do everything himself. Only child with busy parents type of life. Which was lonely. But at least he could live on his own terms.
“Now give me another shape. Any shape.”
“Heart!” yelled an overly exuberant girl in the front row who blushed and slumped in her seat.
“Oooh. She’s in love,” one of the boys said.
Everyone laughed hysterically. The girl looked mortified, so Gabe tried to redirect the attention to himself. “Let’s do it. Heart.” He switched to a red dry erase marker and drew a humongous heart on the board. “Anyone know how to calculate the area?”
“Uh, measure length and width?” a student said.
Gabe considered the student’s comment. “Not quite. But keep thinking. Anyone else?”
“So, do you, like, need to cut it up into pieces or something?” one girl said.
“Like a serial killer?” a boy said, which earned him a shove and plenty of snickering.
“Yes. I mean, yes to the cutting into pieces part.” Unexpectedly, his voice cracked with the memory of having his own heart cut to pieces not so long ago. “Serial killers are something you’ll learn about in forensics class.” The students snickered, which helped distract him.
“If you cut the heart here,” he drew a line from top middle curve of the heart straight to the left, “and here,” he drew another line from the top middle curve to the right side of the heart. “Then… then you get…”
“Dumped,” one of the boys said, causing a ripple effect of laughter and a fist bump. Gabe pretended to laugh along with them, but inside was a different story.
To be honest, his heart hurt thinking about how literally every relationship in his life went bad. Why was he thinking about his love life now? Gabe didn’t usually think about that sort kind of stuff when he was in the classroom. What was different about today?
Oh yeah. The lovely Avery, er, Miss Williams.
“What do you get?” a student blurted, reminding Gabe to continue his lesson.
“Uh, okay. You get two halves of a circle. See?” he said, recovering with a cough.
“Ohhhhh!”
At least math worked out. His love life, not so much. More like a failed math equation.
Gabe must have done a good job hiding his sad memories, because the students didn’t seem to notice.
“So then,” he continued, “you have one whole circle, plus you’re left with a square.” He colored in the square. “Find the area of the circle and the square, and you’ll have your area of the whole heart. Easy peasy.”
Totally not easy, if you’re talking about a real heart.
He’d met his ex in early June. They had hit it off immediately. Her bubbly personality kept him coming back. It was the best summer of his life. Until it wasn’t.
Like he always did, Gabe went overboard—texting constantly, bringing flowers, physicality. He always went too fast. He couldn’t help it—he craved one-on-one connection. This time had been different, at least he thought at first.
They’d had so much fun, and she had seemed as interested in him as he was in her. Spontaneous lunches. Visits to the rock climbing gym and other physical places like that. All the energy made him think she was energetic about him .
Until Gabe realized how one-sided their relationship really was. Her feelings? Flirty and fake. His feelings? So over the top invested. Again. She had led him on and left him for some guy. Then she had played him off like he meant nothing.
As Gabe stared at the heart on the whiteboard, he made a promise to himself he would never let anyone else break his heart ever again.