Page 54 of Please, Sir

“Let’s get this sleepover started,” she says, dancing her eyebrows.

“Whiskey!” Kelly points. “I thought you were getting vodka.”

Miranda twists off the cap and takes a long pull, gagging after, her eyes watering. “This is all I could get,” she chokes out, still recovering from her ambitious pull.

I’ve never drunk whiskey. I’ve tasted my dad’s beer once, and I hated it. Everyone says hard alcohol tastes way worse than beer, and I really don’t want to drink it. But Kelly holds it out to me after taking a drink. “You’re so cool for a freshman,” she says, offering me the bottle.

With great reluctance, I take it, and when I take a sip, they quietly cheer me on, and it finally feels like I belong, even if just a little. Even if I don’t like it.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

School was long today,and because it felt so tedious, I cut practice short. The girls whispered and giggled about a sleepover, so I’d like to think I’m giving them more time for fun. Cadence makes a comment about dedication or something else equally ridiculous, but I’m getting good at ignoring her.

While pushing my shopping cart around the EAT O RAMA, my phone rings. I almost don’t reachfor it, my anxiety rearing its head at just the sound of the digital ring. I don’t want to talk to my parents. I don’t want to silence a call from them, or find out that Michael has a new number or has found a way around being blocked.

No. Thank. You.

But I can’t shut the world out to avoid pain.

And I definitely don’t want to miss a call from Jake.

I reach in my purse with one hand while tugging down a bag of corn chips from the shelf. Bringing it to my ear without checking the caller ID, I answer. “Hello?”

“Sorry about lunch,” Leah says of our cancelled lunch date today. “I had a meeting with Dr. Lawrence, the superintendent.”

“No big deal,” I assure her, then ask, “How was it?” Plucking a box of Wheat Chex from the shelf, I drop it in the cart, directly over the bag of jumbo marshmallows.

“Your name came up,” she says, all casual as if that isn’t a huge deal to a third-year teacher for the superintendent of the district to even know I exist, much less to mention me by name.

“Oh no,” I worry, white-knuckling the bumper on my shopping cart as my knees grow weak. “He read the article?” I pose it as a question, knowing full well that it’s a statement. The superintendent doesn’t give a shit about JV cheerleading, and I’m new. This is definitely about the article.

“He did, he absolutely did,” she says, tone flat and unwavering. Each second that ticks on that she keeps my fate suspended has my heart rate ticking higher and higher.

“Leah!” I shout. “What?”

I can almost hear her smirk, I swear. “You just earned yourself a spot at the next staff development day. Dr. Lawrence wants you to instruct the other district health teachers on how to teach the curriculum.”

I scoop my jaw from the floor. “Did you tell him that the reason I wrote that article in the first place was to speak to the copious amounts of hate mail?” Those emails still haunt me, and not because they were so mean but because of how dumb people are. Of course teenagers know about sex. We may as well teach them how to do it safely.

“I did. And I’m telling you, he enjoyed that.” She takes a pause and I use that time to internally freak a little. “Oh god, everyone already semi-hates me. Doing this will only make it worse.”

“So?” she laughs. “Hate is the lovechild of bitterness and jealousy. Let them hate you. You’re thriving.”

Thriving.

I didn’t come here to thrive, I came here to escape all of the bullshit back in Willowdale. But my JV girls know their routine well. The last few practices have gone so well. The students actually really like me, and I think it’s because I don’t pretend that sex is weird or evil. And based on what Lena said to me in the break room last week, I’m starting to wonder if some of the parents are actually grateful. No one wants to talk about genitals and orgasms with their kids, but if I do it and do it well, everyone wins.

That’s what Leah is telling me.

I’m winning right now.

And yet, things with my family have never, ever, not once in my life for even a split second been this bad.

“You’re doing great, Riley.” Her tone is soft enough to make my eyes warm.

“Thanks.” My phone beeps, and I check the screen to see Jake is calling. I reach for the bottle of Taco Bell hot sauce and place it in my cart. “Leah, I gotta go. Thanks for the good news.”

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