Page 6 of The Friend Game

“Well, I’m happy to hear you like your substitute so much, Maren. You think your older sister will like having her later today?”

“Oh yeah!” Maren shouts. “Nikki will love her!”

Wait? Later today? I’m not staying. Am I? I can’t stay. I have to call Channel 3. Plus, I still haven’t given Ellie her lunch, and she’ll be leaving for her field trip soon. And oh yeah:I’m not actually a substitute teacher!

“Actually—” I start to say, but the rest of my sentence dies on my lips as Mr. French Roast turnsback to me. Words I hadn’t planned on saying slip out instead. “Are you staying too?”

He cocks his head in confusion, and I shake my head as I realize how stupid that sounded. Why would we both stay?

“I meant, uh, that is…will you be around the school today too…you know…if I have any questions.” Yikes. I need a lobotomy. Someone just cut my head open and take away the part of my brain that just produced that sentence.

He looks at his watch. “Uh, actually, no. Not today. Since I’m no longer needed in here, that frees me up to head to the hospital, but Mrs. Weston in the room next door can help you with any questions or issues that come up.”

“The hospital?” He’s a doctor. A doctor who’s good with kids. I bite back another dreamy sigh.

“Yeah, I’m going to go pray with Mrs. Williams and her dad.” Oh. Not a doctor. Duh. Why would a doctor be moonlighting as a substitute teacher?

“Oh, that’s so nice,” I put my hand to my heart. He’s a Christian. That’s actually better than the doctor thing. Mr. French Roast looks amused again.

“Yeah, I guess.”

It occurs to me then, that maybe he’s giving me such a funny look because he’s not Mr. French Roast. He’s Mr. Williams! Oh no. He must be. Andthat’s why the school called him to come in. They couldn’t find a sub for her, so they called her husband to stand in for her while she went to be with her dad. But now that I’m here, he can go be with her.

I just have the worst luck with men.

He’s still looking at me, so I resist the urge to peek at his left hand for a ring that would confirm my suspicions.

“It was nice meeting you, Miss Garza.” He smiles and waves his hand. His right hand. How unhelpful.

He starts towards the door. I wish I could call after him and tell him I’ve changed my mind, but how would that look? He’s racing to the hospital to be by his wife’s side, but now that he might no longer be single I’m going to bail on him? No, I guess I’ll just have to stick this one out. Although—

“Wait, before you go,” I call out to him, and he turns. I hurry over to my desk and grab Ellie’s lunch. “Any chance you could make sure Ellie Bernard gets this? Her, uh, mom dropped it by. Said she needed a sack lunch for the second grade field trip.”

“Sure thing,” Mr. French Roast, I mean Williams takes the lunch bag. His gaze lingers on my face for a beat longer than acceptable, and against my will my heart picks up speed. Maybe I jumped to conclusions. Maybe he’s not married andhas just now decided he can’t leave this room without getting my phone number first.

“Uh,” he looks suddenly uncomfortable, as he reaches up and touches his left eye, “not sure if you know, but, uh, I think maybe you only have eyeshadow on one eye.”

Chapter 4

“WHAT HAPPENED?” JILL meets me at my door that afternoon, hands on her hips, a disapproving slant to her lips. I’m not surprised to find her here, given the quantity of missed calls and voicemails I have from her today (none of which I’ve listened to yet), but it doesn’t make facing her any easier. “You never showed up to the interview,” she enumerates in response to my silence. “My contact there called to tell me you were a no show, so they gave the job to somebody else.”

“They already found somebody else?”

“Yup.”She taps an impatient finger on her hip. “Crazily enough they offered the job to someone who actually showed up to their interview.”

I repress a sigh. The infantile part of me wants to lash out at Jill and tell her that me missing the interview was all her fault in the first place. She’s the one who needed me to take Ellie her lunch. But if I said that, then I’d have to explain the whole substitute teacher thing, and Jill definitely wouldn’t understand how I allowed myself to get caught up in that situation. I’m not that clear on the details myself.

I mean, I was a substitute teacher today. Like I just walked off the street and into the school, and they let me teach their students.

Since the make-up artist thing didn’t pan out, maybe I should consider a career in journalism. I feel like my day as an unsanctioned substitute teacher is just an exposé waiting to be written.

Then again, Jill would kill me if I wrote an exposé on her kids’ school. Or worse, kick me out of her guest house, and then I might actually have to reach out to Marty from Scoop the Poop Express about employment opportunities.

“So what do you have to say for yourself?” Jill demands.

“I’m sorry?” It comes out as a question. Probably because I’m wondering if those two words will be enough to get her off my back.

Jill’s nostrils flare. Nope, not enough. “Are you at least going to tell me what was so important today that you threw away this opportunity? Notonly that, but you made me look bad.” Her voice gets louder with each sentence. “I went out on a limb for you, Hannah, and now my contact at Channel 3 thinks I’m a flake. A flake!” She’s shouting now, and I cringe. Jill is generally a very even-keeled person, more prone to fits of silence than yelling. The last time I saw her this worked up was when Liam gave Ellie crooked, half-inch bangs. She carried on with him for probably twenty minutes, then took away his dessert for a month. Initially she took it away for a year, but Max talked her down to a month.

---