Page 6 of Again, In Autumn

I clasp a hand to my heart and spin around. “Shit, you scared me.”

“Why are you still here?” she asks, closing the door behind her. She hoists a bag up to her elbow, jacket folded over her arm, keys in hand. Her bun remains intact, her Thankful For Pie shirt immaculate and her shiny new engagement ring confronting. She has a speck of red glitter on her elbow.

I glance at the clock. “It’s 3:02.”

“That’s two minutes longer than we need to be in this building.”

If it weren’t for Noelle, I wouldn’t know how to leave my classroom at a decent hour. There’s always more that I can do, that I dread doing, that I’ve been conditioned to feel like I should do without pay.

We started our first year of teaching together. When year two began, she grabbed my wrist and said, “We get paid little more than minimum wage for forty hours of work, Vienna. Put the dry-erase marker down.”

I grab my purse, water bottle, coffee tumbler, phone, gifted cookies and empty teacher bag. I squeal, “I feel like my soul is singing.”

She snorts. “Calm down, girl. It’s only a week. They do expect us to come back.”

I struggle to get around my desk. “I know. Today, a week feels like a month, but by next Sunday it will feel like an eye blink.”

“Don’t talk about the end, it doesn’t exist. All I see is Darryl and I on the beach in Miami, not a damn leaf in sight.” She smiles. “Our hotel is so expensive that if I even so much as hear a child, we get to move rooms. And you better believe I’m going to expect an upgrade.”

As we make our way to the back door, I pick up a pencil from the floor and put it in the art corner. I notice a journal on the writing desk instead of in the appropriate basket. I forgot to turn off the lamp in the reading nook. As I do that, I grumble, “I should erase the board.”

“Leave it, Vienna!” Noelle demands, her hand on the door. “There’s no time! If we don’t get out of here, someone’s going to remind me that I agreed to tutor or ask us to make copies of a Santa Claus worksheet.”

“Okay, okay, leaving it.”

However it pains me, I close and lock my back door, shaking off what I left behind. The crunchy leaves and cool breeze do a lot to shift my mood. It’s rarely chilly in Atlanta this time of year. Last Thanksgiving, I wore shorts.

She holds her hand in front of my body. “Stop. Do you feel that?”

“No, what?”

Her eyes flash. “Adulting. We’re about to go adulting.”

I laugh and groan, “Speak for yourself.”

We head for the parking lot after a fifth-grade teacher who is practically running.

Noelle sighs. “Oh, let me guess your plans for the week: Real Housewives, endless baking, online shopping for clothes you can’t afford, a good bottle of cabernet and two cheap bottles of cabernet. Crying at dog adoption videos.”

“Hey!” I laugh, only offended by the last one. “You send those videos to me.”

“I don’t like to cry alone.” She shrugs. “But all of that is kind of adulting. Like sad, single, soon-to-be middle-aged –”

“Hey!” I snap again as she bowls over in laughter. “I am going to track down Mrs. Whatsherface from the PTA and tell her you want to volunteer for the Winter event.”

Noelle stands upright, suddenly sober. “Dear God, don’t you dare.”

I open the back door to my blue Jeep Cherokee and drop my items on the floor. Resting my hand on the open car door, I say, “Actually, for your information, my lack of adulting this week can be attributed to my sister’s request that I join her family at the lake.”

“Huh?” She looks up from her phone.

“I decided to go to the lake house.”

Noelle shuts the passenger door of the truck beside me. “Oh good!”

“I hope so.” I close my door and lean against it.

She cranes her neck past our cars and says, “I DoorDashed a coffee, by the way, so if you see a confused Nissan Altima circling, let me know.”

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