Page 1 of My Orc in Uniform

Chapter One

Marissa

Staff meetings arethe literal worst.

I don’t care if there are donuts involved, none of us want to be there. This could have been an email! Butnooooo, we all have to gather in the school library and listen to the eighth-grade science teacher ask too many questions about shit she should have talked to HR about.

Or better yet, emailed.

I refrained from rolling my eyes and bit into my donut. Stale. Should’ve guessed. Just like this meeting.

I shot a side-eye to my work bestie, Joleen. She was the school nurse and also taught all the health classes, but her office was right next to my desk in the main office, so we’d become pretty good at snarking back and forth. Sometimes even without words.

Sure enough, she sent me A Look, which was almost as good as an eye roll. I knew she was feeling the same thing I was, which made it better somehow.

And then…

And then, as the principal droned on about testing protocols, the library door opened.

I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t already been facing that way, because he was certainly quiet. But once Ididnotice, I couldn’t seem to look away.

And I wasn’t the only one looking.

One of the problems with working in a small-town school system is that a) we all know one another, and b) like ninety percent of us are female. So when a guy joins the team, everyone sort of…notices. Sexist, I know, because, as someone who’s worked in education for almost two decades, and someone with a teenage son, having more male teachers and role models would be ideal.

Point is, even if the newcomer were a scrawny, balding, elderly civics teacher, we’d notices him.

But he wasn’t.

Simbel was…the opposite of that.

He’d joined the staff only recently, at the beginning of the spring semester, as the school’s resource officer. Rumor had it that our mayor, who was an old friend of his, had talked him and his brother into quitting the NYPD and moving down here. Simbel had joined the Eastshore police force and been assigned here to Eastshore Upper School for his first year.

I sayrumor had itbecause, despite the fact he was this month’s hottest new gossip topic, I didn’t know anyone who had actually gotten close enough to him to ask.

Joleen had noticed him, and now turned a wide-eyed, knowing smirk my way. I screwed up my lips, the closest I could come to sticking out my tongue without the eagle-eyed principal, Dr. Johnson, noticing.

Of course, she noticed Simbel’s late arrival.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” she said in that tone that managed to be both snideandprofessional.

“Hi everyone.” He gave a little wave with a claw-tipped, green hand. “Sorry I’m late.”

Because did I fail to mention he was an orc?

A seven-and-a-half-foot-tall, green skinned, completelyjacked—as my son would say—orc, complete with tusks and claws and a killer smile.

Before the principal could answer, the response came from a totally different, and not completely unexpected, direction. “Oh, that’s perfectly okay, Simbel,” simpered Kelly Iverson, our PE teacher and champion cheer coach. “Come stand next to me, I’ll fill you in on what you’ve missed.”

I have to admit, I liked his sheepish little grin as he crossed behind the bookshelves to move beside Kelly. I didnotlike the way she latched onto his arm and stretched up on her toes to murmur into his ear.

I mean, the charitable part of me admitted she was likely bringing him up to speed on thefascinatingworld oftesting protocols, but the petty part of me acknowledged she was 110% flirting.

If you were ever the quiet girl in high school, the one with glasses and braces and too-frizzy hair who liked to read, then I’m sure you understand the visceral reaction I still have to cheerleaders.

Look, Kelly is a perfectly nice person, devoted to her students, maybe a little enthusiastic when it comes to cheer, but everyone has their thing, right?

Well, except me. I don’t have athing. I have work and motherhood and books. Are books athing? Damn, I dunno how other moms my age—late thirties, I’m not getting more specific than that—manage actual hobbies.

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