Page 63 of One More Chapter

“You guys welcomed me with open arms, and reminded me that I have a place in this world. I couldn’t have gotten through the transition into a brand new place without you.”

We all clip on our bracelets, but as the rest of the girls resume Googling and Pinteresting, I slide my finger over those two hearts.

I’ve never been part of someone else’s wedding. Sure, I’ve attended them, but I never let myself get close enough to people in my past to be considered the person they wanted standing next to them on their big day.

I know these girls have my back, and that they’ve been the people around me for a while now. But this bracelet—the matching ones that we all share—feels like more than that.

It feels like something stable.

And it’s a feeling I don’t want to let go of.

twenty-three

anthony

The one thingI’m still getting used to when it comes to being a part-time administrator is the meetings.

Lucy, Nathan, and I are in over our heads with the behaviors. Put together two kind-of-rival schools, and tell them they’re going to have to get along for one calendar year, and I’ve seen more fights in one month of school than I ever did watching wrestling as a kid.

“You know, something I tried to start at Meadow Ridge that never quite got off the ground was behavior management,” I say, opening my file folder. “I got my Master’s in behavior, and we ran a program similar to yours in my old school. I was head of the committee by the time I decided to take the job at Meadow Ridge.”

“Whydidyou switch schools?” Lucy asks as Nate takes the folder and begins flipping through it.

“I wanted to finally build my dream house, and this is the district I grew up in. I wanted my forever home to be close to my family. It made the most sense.”

They don’t need to know that I also gave my ex-girlfriend the apartment when we split.

Lucy nods, then scoots closer to Nathan. With their heads bent together, they start whispering, pointing, eyes widening.

“This is exactly what we were trying to start last year, only like, on steroids,” Lucy says excitedly. “I could pick your brain for hours.”

“You said they didn’t want this implemented at Meadow Ridge?” Nathan continues. “How could theynotwant something that would so clearly benefit the students?”

I tug at my collar.

“It’s not that they didn’t want students to benefit. It was more about teacher buy-in.”

I show them the behavior management system, the way we collected and tracked data—which Lucy says she and Claire started working on in a very novice way last school year.

“So, teachers bucked against having to log behavior incidents?”

“That was just the tip of the iceberg,” I nod. “As soon as I mentioned having monthly data meetings to go over behavior trends, there was an uproar. And, being that I was the new guy, it kind of made me the ‘overachieving outcast.’”

I flush and shove my hands into my pockets. When I was fresh out of college, I joined the behavior committee of my first school, and the entire staff rallied around the initiatives I cooked up during my Master’s program. Over the years, I moved up in the ranks, and found myself in a leadership role that took on behavior plans and worked one-on-one with teachers and students to curb them. Lucy’s mentorship program that started last year is something I spearheaded in my old building.

“So, how do we get people to buy in?” Lucy asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, pacing Nate’s office as I scratch the back of my neck. “They shot me down in one meeting.”

“We could simply implement it from my position,” Nate suggests. “If it comes from administration, they don’t have to like it, but they will have to do it.”

I wince. It’s a thought, but one that will immediately make people resent him. I don’t want that. Especially when he already has so much on his plate.

“What if we show them the data from your old school?” Lucy suggests. “Prove to them that it works, and that it will be beneficial in the long run.”

As I hem and haw on her idea, too afraid to be turned down again, Nate cuts in.

“What do you say about piloting it between the three of us, and inquiring for a few more volunteers?”

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