Page 5 of Just Our Secret

One minute late, I ran into the wing of the social sciences building where my psych class was being held, panting like I’d never run a day in my life. To be fair, I only run when being chased. Which was never. Unless you counted all the times Liam chased me around the kitchen with green olives on all ten of his fingers, calling himself the Frog-Finger Man.

When I reached the classroom, other students stood huddled on the threshold, reading a sign posted to the door. I walked up and tried to peek around them to see what was up, but I couldn’t make it out from where I was standing.

I nodded at the girl next to me. “Hey, do you know what it says? Is class canceled?”

“I guess the instructor had some kind of family emergency and had to cancel the class for the whole semester. We’re all being split into other lecture times.”

I frowned. This was the one that fit best with the rest of my classes. What if they’d moved me to one that was already occupied with another lecture? Biting my lip, I waited until it was my turn to check out the paper. There were three classes listed, the names of the students assigned to them printed underneath each one.

I scanned the list under the first class, coming up empty. Then I looked at the second, also not finding my name. Swearing under my breath, I moved on to the third one, which started at the exact same time we needed to leave the house to get Liam to school. They didn’t have any room in the before-school care program, so there was no way I could take a class that started before I even dropped him off at school.

And yet, sure enough, my name was smack-dab in the middle of the list for that class. The one freaking class that I absolutely couldn’t move anything around in order to make it to.

With a heavy sigh, I wove through the rest of the students milling around in the hallway of our canceled class and headed for the administration building. All I could do was hope they’d help me find a solution. We were only a week into the semester, so hopefully it would be okay as long as the other two classes weren’t full. But honestly, how did they expect to just assign people to new classes before finding out if that worked with their schedules? It was ridiculous.

I used the brisk, ten-minute walk through our small campus to chill out. It wasn’t their fault I had a conflict at that time. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that our professor had a family emergency, and I sincerely hoped whatever it was would be okay. And those two things meant I should be able to nicely tell them my situation and politely ask them to change me to a different lecture time. Easy peasy, as Liam would say.

By the time I made it into the registrar’s office, I was a lot less panicky and a lot more confident that everything would work out. I stood in line and waited my turn, happy that if this ended quickly enough, I’d have time to grab a coffee and read over my notes for the next class now that I had something of an unexpected free period.

“Can I help you?” a woman with a stern face asked when it was my turn.

I stepped forward and gave her a warm smile. “Hi, I was switched into a different lecture time because my professor had a family emergency—”

“Student ID number?” she interrupted.

“Uh, um, 679… hold on.” I swung my backpack off and stooped down to rifle through it for my student ID. I hadn’t memorized the number yet, since I’d only just gotten it, and with everything going on with the move and the five thousand things I’d had to do to get Liam ready for his first year going to a full-day, five-day-a-week school, it just hadn’t been a priority. Finding the ID, I stood and met her impatient glare with an embarrassed sigh. “Sorry, it’s 676899.”

She typed it into her computer without replying, and I waited to speak until I was spoken to. She didn’t seem like she had any time, patience, or interest in anything I had to say, anyway.

After a moment, she looked over at me. “You’re with Dr. Pressman now, Tuesday and Thursday morning from seven to eight fifteen.”

“Right, that’s why I’m here. You see, I can’t get here that early.”

Her lips tightened into a thin line of disapproval as she clicked around on her screen. “You have other classes during the other two available options for that lecture.”

My ears grew hot even as a chilly sense of unease swirled through my belly. “Okay, well, I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’ll need to move another class in order to switch to one of the others, then.”

“I’m sorry, what? You want to rearrange your entire schedule because you don’t want to have to come to class that early?”

“Uh, no, that’s not what I’m saying.” Why did she assume it was because I didn’t want to have to come to school early? Was that really a thing?

“I hear it all the time. No one wants to be in these early morning lectures. Too busy with their extracurriculars late at night.”

“That’s not why,” I said through gritted teeth.

She blinked at me, not budging. “You’ve been assigned to Dr. Pressman’s lecture. If you can’t make that time, I suggest you drop the class and take it next semester.”

I had no idea how that would work with my financial aid, and besides, I was really looking forward to that class and didn’t want to mess with the schedule that I’d outlined for myself. I needed to take the class this semester because it was a prerequisite for the one I wanted to take next semester.

But I was sure this lady didn’t care about any of that, so I bit it back and tried again with kindness. “Ma’am, again, I’m sorry to trouble you with this. But I leave the house at seven to take my son to school, so I won’t be able to make that lecture time. Will you please help me switch my schedule around so I can take that class?”

At this, a current of surprise went through her and she seemed to be assessing me with new eyes. We were only a week into school, and I’d already gotten this look a few times. I’d meet someone, we’d have a good little chat—obviously the opposite of this little chat—and then I’d mention Liam. And suddenly their faces would change while their brains worked through what that would mean.

If I had a school-aged kid, I must have been a teenager when I had him. And if I’d been a teenager when I’d had him, I must have been in high school at the time. And if I’d been in high school at the time, surely that meant it was either some lovesick, pimply-faced boyfriend and we were now the cutest little family or an accident with the older guy I lost my virginity to, and he’d totally bailed, leaving me as a teenage single mom.

Yes, those really were the most common assumptions. And yes, people were ballsy enough to express them to me. And yes, the latter one was spot-on. Because I was a walking cliché, and there was no escaping it.

The woman—Karen, according to her name tagandthe bitchy voice in my head—nodded once with a slight smirk on her plump face. “Looks like if I move the class you currently have in your Tuesday-Thursday afternoon spot to Mondays-Wednesdays, I can switch you into the lecture this afternoon, which is also with Dr. Pressman. It gets out at two fifteen. Will that be okay, or will that interfere withpicking upyour son from school?”

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