Page 10 of Between the Lines

“I mean, you have every right to refuse to do your work. Buteveryone else is essentially getting class time to start on what will be homework. The way I see it, if you finish in class, you have no homework. If you want to sit at your desk and do absolutely nothing, be my guest. But then, the entire chapter assignment goes home as homework. And, just as a reminder,Iam not at your house. But I am here, so that if you get to a question you don’t understand, I can be of help. Unless your adults have readThe Outsidersand they can help you analyze a theme, Imightget started on that assignment now. You know. Just in case.”

I paint on the smirk he was just wearing as we trade faces, and he grumbles some more expletives under his breath. I sigh, returning to my desk, where Rocco pretends to read the chapter, mashes his pencil into the worksheet for a solid five minutes, and then makes paper airplanes out of his notebook pages.

The bell rings for lunch, and I exhale until I am a deflated balloon. I very well could sink from my chair onto the floor if I wanted to, but I catch myself on my elbows at the knock on my door.

“Benson! Lunch! Let’s go!”

Penelope’s curtain of red hair precedes her booming voice as she all but pulls me from my desk with her words alone.

“Huh?”

“You’re having lunch with us.”

She says it with,Duh, loser, catch up,twined subconsciously around it, and I follow orders, quickly collecting my things.

“You don’t have to pity invite me to lunch, you know,” I say with a nervous laugh.

“Girl, I will tie you to a chair andforceyou to eat lunch with us if you insinuate that this is a pity invite. Wewantyou here. You’re the furthest thing from a burden.”

Never have I heard the wordsyou’re the furthest thing from…linking myself with the wordburden. It’s something I’ve always just assumed, living in a place where I don’t quite seem to belong unlessI’m giving something of myself. But being bulliedintojoining a group of people? Hell, I’ll take it.

Today, the group is Penelope, Lucy, and me. Despite the fact that they’re a decade older than I am, they have been nothing but welcoming.

“When are you and Aaron finally going to tie the knot?” Penelope starts.

“We both agreed we’re ready. But we don’t want a long engagement, and we both have a lot coming up soon—I’m finishing my Master’s, his sister just had a baby,andwe planned a vacation for Christmas break, so we don’t want to stress ourselves out with wedding planning on top of it. Maybe this summer?”

“I love weddings,” I confess. “But I loveother people’sweddings.”

“You don’t want to get married?” Lucy asks. I sigh.

“It’s not that. I just feel like weddings themselves are so stressful, and if I was the person getting married, I wouldn’t want that day to cause me more anxiety than it did happiness. Hell, I’d be totally content getting married in a courthouse and then throwing a party afterwards.” I fiddle with the empty wrapper from my string cheese. “Maybe I could be a wedding planner one day, though.”

“Is that on your list of things to try once you’re free from middle school? What’s your plan when you’re done subbing for us?” Penelope asks.

I hate this question, because I’ve never had an answer to it before. How do you choose what you want to be when you’re already grown up? When you’re a little girl, your dreams look like fairy tales. I guess my “fairy tale” has always been what most people see as a normal life.

College was my father’s way of entertaining my desire for freedom, with an end goal of working for his company one day. I’d earned so many scholarships that I hadn’t needed to apply forcollege—instead, I’d had to apply for Daddy’spermission. After the age of eight, I stopped wondering what it would be like to have friends that I saw outside of school, what being part of a club or a sport or a unitoutside of my family life might look like, because my role was now “caretaker.”

I hate this question because I was never allowed to see its potential.

“Aww, buddy. It’s okay not to know,” Penelope says, cutting the dissonant chord ringing in my ears.

“I switched my career a few times before I finally settled on being a counselor,” Lucy says. “I wanted to act for a while.”

“I wanted to be a paleontologist,” Penelope shrugs. “Then an astronaut. And then a police officer.”

“And you settled on math teacher?”

“Less risk of being lost in space. Then again, ask Tommy Nielsen about being lost in space during any given math lesson…”

Penelope’s phone buzzes, and she becomes absorbed in her notification, while Lucy sidles up next to me.

“It’s perfectly okay not to know what you want to do with your life, Claire.”

I sigh and rest my chin in my hand.

“I know that. But… what if it never comes to me?”

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