Page 41 of One Little Problem
* * *
Heartbreak was not an acceptable reason to miss school. According to some people like my father. I disagreed. My dad and I had a long conversation about that. I wasn’t even at my A game because of said stupid heartbreak, so I found myself at school. It’s not like I would have missed much. School was almost over with anyway.
I didn’t have class at the moment, so I went to my favorite teacher’s classroom only to find that I was expected. “This is an odd combo,” I told Mrs. Reynolds and Alicia. My mentor/favorite teacher and my best friend. “Are we going to eat ice cream and talk about how much we hate Luke?” I could get down with that, bashing Luke and dessert.
“We’re going to kick your ass if you don’t go to Chicago,” Mrs. Reynolds said. A+ teachering right there. I would tell her that but she wouldn’t bat an eye. Her professionalism slipped with her favorite students. She was part invested teacher, part supportive mom, part overzealous fangirl. Fanwoman?
“So no,” I guessed. “We’re not going to hate on Luke then.” Was this another freaking intervention? Yay, just what I needed.
“I’m honor bound by the bestie code to bash Luke with you,” Alicia admitted. Knew I could count her. “But we’re not even going to acknowledge that he had a point?” She’s dead to me.
Admitting Luke had a point… Is that what I should have done? Would that have fixed things? The only problem with that… “Luke is a big stupid jerkface,” I told them like a totally mature and adult person. “He doesn’t have any good points.” Not entirely true but whatever.
“You get so lost in your relationship with him,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “We tell you and you get it but then when no one’s there to tell you, it just happens again.”
“No, I.” I sighed. “Yeah, sometimes.” But I didn’t think I was doing that this time. I get it, focus on the future, do the smart thing. But I have to get to the future, don’t I? All I can imagine is me leaving and everything changing and then being back here for senior year and not having Luke and it sucks so much that I hate even thinking about it. Actually having to live through it? Can’t really think of anything worse.
Except for maybe the situation these days.
Alicia seemed to catch onto my dark thoughts. “You don’t know that it wouldn’t work out.”
“I don’t even want to take the chance,” I sighed. “Maybe I am being dumb and getting too caught up in my relationship, it’s just. Not having Luke seems a lot worse to me than not doing this summer thing. And yeah, maybe my priorities are messed up, but knowing that doesn’t change how I feel. If I didn’t go, then things would stay the same.” Or at least—
“That’s what you thought,” Mrs. Reynolds said. Yeah, things had already changed.
“That’s what I thought,” I agreed.
“Okay, forgetting about him,” Alicia said. Man, they were an effective team. “Do you actually want to go?”
“Yeah, of course, but—”
“Even Luke doesn’t think Luke is a strong enough argument against, so I hope that’s not what you were about to go with,” Mrs. Reynolds said. They could be a buddy cop TV show. Didn’t know which one good cop would be and which would be bad cop.
“No.” Yep. “I was about to say this sucks.” I sighed and slumped in my chair.
The ladies fell silent for a moment. I enjoyed it while it lasted.
Also, yes, Mrs. Reynolds classroom was probably the best place to have this conversation at school because no one else was in here now and she could tell anyone to leave, but it was still really weird because it currently looked like we were in the middle of a grade school science fair.
We basically were, so. It made sense, but it was still trippy. Mrs. Reynolds had a lot of things to say about innovation and seeing things in a different light and learning through teaching but mostly I thought her 9th graders were trying her patience. I’m not sure why adding even younger kids sounded like a good idea but… seemed like it worked. She paired them with younger students from the grade school and then they did experiments for their final grades.
Maybe that’s why the 9th graders liked it, because it was fun and easy to make big displays of the planets from Styrofoam balls and paint or to make a big terrarium full of spiders, which sounded both scary and cool; I was keeping my distance from that one just to be safe. The younger kid had to give a presentation and then teachers and overachieving students who wanted extra credit—or the science nerds like me who were doing it for nothing—asked questions and the 9th graders were graded based on how well they taught their kiddie.
A lot of it was run of the mill, like potato alarm clocks and baking soda volcanos, but some were thoughtful and others interesting, like the spider nightmare. It was just strange, being so down while surrounded by colorful models of planets and big volcanoes with jungle landscapes.
I couldn’t tell if this was helping or not. Like my current problems seemed so far away from the days of dinosaurs and Power Rangers lunchboxes and passing notes, and maybe I wanted to go back to that time when everything was simple but that was just dumb nostalgia because my childhood hadn’t really ever been simple. Or, I don’t know, there were good times, but there was also Mom getting sicker and sicker. It wasn’t all rosy and innocent. So, not helpful in that sense.
However, what if my problems now weren’t as bad as they seemed?
Everything seemed important and urgent while it was happening but maybe it was the kind of thing I’d look back on later and chuckle fondly and say, oh, you were so young. At least had to consider it when in a room full of stuff that made me chuckle fondly and say oh, you were so young. Well, there wasn’t any chuckling now. I was chuckling on the inside. Chuckling and angsting, a great combo.
“I figured out the problem,” Mrs. Reynolds said.
“It needs more cowbell?” I offered tiredly.
“See, the situation isn’t so bad that you can’t be a smartass.” Mrs. Reynolds took that as a good sign.
“Ryan can be a smartass in his sleep,” Alicia countered. “That’s not an accurate indicator.” Maybe they were both bad cop. Except Mrs. Reynolds looked all nice and sweet in pastels and had the whole soccer mom thing while Alicia rocked dark colors and looked goth, but she was pretty nice. They were both pretty nice but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get down to business. That could be the title. Down to Business, starring Good Cop and Gooder Cop.
