Page 4 of The Teacher
Ouch.
She has deliberately left approximately four inches for me to attempt to squeeze through. I could go around the other way, but that would involve walking down all the stairs I just walked up and climbing another set of stairs, which feels a little bit ridiculous considering I’m almost at the top. And it’s not like there’s apersonsitting there. It’s just a freaking backpack. So while Kenzie is talking to her friends, I attempt to squeeze past her leather bag.
“Excuse me!”
Kenzie’s voice shuts me down midstep. She’s looking up at me with her big blue eyes fringed with long, dark eyelashes. I first met Kenzie in middle school, when she was in my history class, and I couldn’t help but think she was the most perfect-looking human being I had ever seen in real life. Like, I saw pretty girls before, but Kenzie is on a whole other level. She’s tall, with a lithe figure and silky long golden-blond hair. Every single feature of hers is more attractive than every single one of mine. Kenzie is living proof that life is not fair.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I was just trying to get through.”
Kenzie’s long eyelashes flutter. “Do you think you could not step on my backpack?”
Kenzie’s friends are watching our interaction and giggling. Kenzie could shift her backpack or take it off the steps altogether so that I could get through. But she’s not going to do it, and that is somehow justsofreaking amusing to all of them. For a second, my eyesmake contact with Hudson’s, and he quickly looks down at his dirty sneakers. He’s been doing that for the last six months. Avoiding me. Pretending like he didn’t used to be my best friend in the entire universe since we were in grade school.
For a second, I fantasize about a universe in which I could take on a girl like Kenzie Montgomery. Where I could step on her stupid backpack with the little pink furry puff hanging off it and spit at her,What are you going to do about it?
Nobodyeverstands up to Kenzie. I could do it. It’s not like I have anything to lose.
But instead I mumble an apology and go back down the steps to find another way into the school. Like everyone else, I give in to Kenzie. Because the truth is, as bad as it is now, it could always be worse.
Chapter Three
EVE
I didn’t even realizehow much my head was throbbing until I take my first sip of coffee.
I’ve got about ten minutes before I have to get to my classroom, and I take that time in the teachers’ lounge to sit with my closest friend, Shelby, and decompress. Nate has already gone to his classroom. He took his coffee to go, then he gave me the first of my three pecks on the cheek.
“So how was your summer?” Shelby asks me, as if we haven’t been texting nonstop since the Fourth of July.
“Not bad.” I spent most of it teaching summer school. I imagined that when I became a teacher, it would be great to have the summers off, but it hasn’t worked out that way. “How about you?”
“Amazing.” Shelby sighs as she crosses her legs. She’s wearing the same Nine West gray pumps that she wore on the last day of school. I already know that she spent most of the summer on Cape Cod with her tech geniushusband and three-year-old son. Her perfectly bronzed skin is a dead giveaway. “I’m so sad to be back. Connor wouldn’t stop crying when I dropped him off at preschool this morning.”
“It’s good for him,” I say, except what do I know?
Shelby takes a long sip from her Styrofoam cup of coffee, leaving behind an imprint of her red lipstick. “Nate looksgood. Has he been working out all summer or something?”
“Probably.” This summer, Nate was teaching a drama program for kids at the high school. He doesn’t have a degree in drama, but he’s taken classes in college, and moreover, he’s a natural. In another life, Nate could have been the next Brad Pitt. But on the days he wasn’t working, he went down to the basement to lift weights. I suppose he doesn’t want anything to jeopardize his chance to be the hottest teacher at Caseham High for the second year running. “He’s very into fitness.”
“I wish Justin felt the same,” she laughs. “He’s only thirty-six, and he’s getting a gut already!”
I wonder how many times a day Justin kisses Shelby. If they have sex more than once a month. I wonder if she lies awake next to him in bed at night and wishes she could be married to anyone else or even nobody at all. I wish I could ask her. I’ve only ever been married to Nate—maybe these feelings are part of every marriage. Maybe it’s normal.
“Have you seen Art?” I ask instead.
The smile drops off Shelby’s face. “No. He resigned, obviously. And I’ve heard he hasn’t been able to find another teaching job.”
Up until the spring, Arthur Tuttle was a math teacherat Caseham High and also one of the most beloved teachers in the school. When I first started working here fresh out of my master’s program, he took me under his wing. But that was the sort of thing Art would do. He was genuinely the nicest person I had ever met, always ready with a comforting word or one of his wife’s famous brownies. And every year at the staff Christmas party, Art would dress up as Santa Claus, because even without the red suit, he was a dead ringer.
And now he’s ruined.
“I wonder how he and Marsha are doing,” I murmur.
“And the kids,” she adds. “Two in college now, right?”
I wince, thinking of Art’s boys. Part of me wants to try to help him with some money, but he’ll never accept it, and anyway, we don’t have much to give after our hefty mortgage payments are done. Plus Nate wants to save for the baby we’ll never have.
“It’s so unfair,” I murmur. “He didn’t do anything wrong and she…”
