Feisty

by Julia Kent

  “Mattie cried and cried and refused to come this morning,” Candi whispers. “We explained that his dad is in jail and can't come back here. But he wanted to give you the locksmith kit, so that was the first sign he might be willing to try. Fletch came over when I called him and Mattie said he'd come to school only if Uncle Chris was there to guard everyone.” Finger quotes punctuate the word guard.

  “Fletch is going to sit in his car all day?”

  A light laugh, the first sign of anything not traumatic, comes out of her. “Yeah. My brother's a good guy.” More sniffling, more tears. “Why couldn't I pick someone like him? But nooo. I have to pick an abusive fu–”

  Bzzz

  Her phone startles us.

  “Shit. That's my first client. I must be late already.” Candi is a home health aide. “Oh. No. Just need to add gluten-free bread to her shopping list.” Candi smiles through tears. “It's gonna be one hell of a day.”

  “Mattie's safe here, Candi. You don't have to worry. And you can always watch the webcam.”

  “No,” she chokes out. “Hell, no. You have any idea what that did to me? Getting a text from other parents about what was happening and logging into the app to see that?” Profanity fills the air between us. “If you don't mind, Fiona, I'm done watching webcams. I'll just take your word for it when I pick him up at the end of the day.”

  A squeeze of my hand and she's off, climbing into a small red SUV, waving at Fletch as she drives away.

  I stare at him.

  He doesn't look up from his phone.

  Janelle and Myles are my next two students.

  For the next hour, I greet the other eighteen kids and parents, everyone nervous, all of them overwhelmingly grateful, emphasis on overwhelming.

  By the time the kids are all settled, the parents assured, and the classroom in order, I'm ready for a nap.

  Too bad naptime isn't until 12:30. Today, I'm grabbing my own mat and catching some zzzs with the rest of them.

  I walk into the other room where Michelle and Ani have everyone in a circle, already speaking in hushed voices. Miguel, a little boy with big brown eyes and a crooked smile, looks at me.

  And points.

  “You scared me. When you roared.”

  “I did?” Controlling my expression, I seek to affirm. Validate. Confirm. “You heard me?” Silent questions pour out of me as I catch Ani's eye.

  One shoulder goes up. “We could hear you in the woods,” she says softly.

  “You were really, really loud!” Miguel squeals.

  “Like a dinosaur.” Lisa nods her head so hard, her blonde braid flops against her back.

  “No–like Sully from Monsters, Inc.,” Miguel corrects.

  “No! Like the big furry guy in the Star Wars movie,” Jahra replies. “The big monster.” She makes a Chewbacca roar.

  “Monster?” Myles asks, trying so hard to join the conversation. “Pond monster on Steven Sharer channel on YouTube!” he cries out, using the only concept he has about monsters that connects to language he knows.

  That's also the longest sentence I've ever heard out of him. His speech pathologist is going to be so thrilled with his mean utterance length expansion. Normally, I'd take time to appreciate the huge gain this represents, but the situation in my classroom is spinning wildly out of control.

  All because of my roar.

  “Nuh UH! Miss Fiona roared like a T-Rex!” Janelle shouts.

  “She screamed like the dinosaur in Jurassic Park!” Miguel counters.

  “Okay, okay, everyone, let's settle down–”

  “If Jahra points a stick at me, can I step on her neck?” Janelle asks, eyes narrowing as if she suspects Jahra has considered this.

  “What? No! Of course not.” My stomach drops.

  This welcome back is not going as planned.

  “But Mattie's dad pointed a knife at you and you got to step on his neck!”

  “I think Miss Fiona needs to sit at the Peace Table with Mattie's dad and hold hands until they can be friends,” Lisa says firmly.

  Twenty pairs of wide eyes look to me.

  “My daddy's in jail. He can't come to the Peace Table,” Mattie says, lip quivering.

  “That means he can't hurt people now.” The set of Janelle's chin makes it clear she approves of Rico's current residence.

  “He didn't hurt anyone here,” Mattie defends.

  “My mommy said she knew you when you were in high school and she showed me your picture. You used to shave your head. Why'd you cut all your hair off like that?” JoJo asks, red curls covering perplexed eyes.

  Ani and Michelle give me nearly identical looks that make it clear they want to see those pictures. I look down at my slippers and feel a sudden craving for my old Doc Martens.

  “Did you have cancer? My cousin had cancer and her hair all fell out. Even her eyebrows! She looked like an egg,” Lisa declares.

  Michelle and Ani shoot me looks that say, What do we do now?

  I shrug.

  Hell if I know.

  “Like Humpty Dumpty?” Myles asks Lisa.

  “No. She wasn't broken.”

  “Took picture with Humpty Dumpty at Storyland last summer with my grandma!” he adds.

  Go Myles!

  “I want to go to Storyland! Miss Fiona, can we do a field trip to Storyland?” Lisa enquires.

  “No, honey. Storyland is almost a three-hour drive from here.”

  “Then how about Chipotle? I like Chipotle!” Mattie chimes in.

  These children are members of Generation N.

  The N is for negotiate.

  For the next two hours, as we transition to routine activities, I do my best to soothe and calm, to speak in age-appropriate ways about what happened with Rico. Preschoolers are remarkably simple and complex beings. Simple in needs, simple in thoughts, complex in emotions.

  Which makes them, well… human. Like the rest of us.

  By noon, after a story and an art project, they’ve mostly moved on. We settle them at their various tables, Myles, Laura, and Miguel at the peanut-allergy one, everyone else eating peanut-free lunches but sitting separately.

  Michelle waves for me to go eat in peace.

  Coffee first. Lunch, second.

  I'm brewing my cup in the cheap office machine when it dawns on me.

  Fletch.

  Having no idea how he takes his coffee, I make him one in a spare travel mug, grabbing some sweetener and sugar packets. If he needs cream, I can always pop back in. Careful not to disturb the class, I go out the back door, walking down the alley behind the insurance agency, suddenly seized by the emotional residue of what the children, Michelle, and Ani were feeling as they escaped this way.

  Swaying, I lean my back against the building wall, both hands full of travel mugs: mine and Fletch's. Why did I bring mine?

  I recover quickly and find my way to his car. His eyes are closed, head leaning against his seat.

  I tap awkwardly on the window. He snaps to attention, gruff and frowning.

  When he realizes it's me, he cocks one eyebrow, tilting his head. The window has condensation on it, and as he lowers the glass, he comes into full view.

  “Here,” I say, handing him a mug with Bailargo's logo on it. The local dance studio handed them out at last year's Dance and Dairy festival on the town common. “It's black. Do you take cream or sugar?”

  “No. Thanks. Thank you,” he says, voice filled with growing gratitude as he realizes what I'm doing. “I told Mattie I wouldn't leave at all, and now I'm in a pickle.”

  I laugh. “In a pickle? Haven't heard that phrase since my great-grandma said it.” Mallory's use of the word smitten comes to mind.

  Which makes me realize I am.

  Smitten.

  With him.

  One shoulder shrugs. “Isn't this your lunch time?”

  “Yeah. What about you?”

  “Brown bagging it. But I forgot coffee.” He holds up the mug and gives me a grateful smile. “Th
anks again.”

  I nod, hovering and realizing that with each passing second, he's become more attuned to me. Fletch looks mighty fine no matter where he is, broad shoulders stretching the cloth of his shirt, his alert eyes focused entirely on me.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “How do you – how do you do it? The paramedic work, I mean. It's been hard for me, since the attack. Falling asleep. Closing my eyes and not thinking about all the 'what ifs.'”

  His head tilts slightly, attention sharpening. I've taken a light-hearted conversation and gone deep, fast.

  He's going deep right along with me.

  “What ifs?”

  “You know. People getting hurt. Not being able to save them from pain. I've imagined a thousand times all the ways that day could have gone wrong, and then it occurred to me that you do this for a living. You see what happens when things do go wrong.”

  “You think about me?” he replies with a half smile, eyebrows lifted, eyes serious.

  “I do. I mean, I did. I just – ”

  He reaches out the window to place his hand on my forearm. “I get it. Sorry to make fun like that. I didn't mean to – well – it's a serious question.” The smile fades.

  The hand stays.

  “Because sometimes things do go wrong,” he says in a low, troubled voice. “And we have to live with what we see, what we did, what we didn't do – what didn't work. And it's in your mind and memory forever.” The pad of his thumb is on my pulse, as if he's checking on me even in this moment, marking me safe, his steady presence so centering.

  Even as the topic most certainly isn't.

  “Right.” The word comes out in a pained rush. “Like when you worked on Dancy that time at Bailargo, when we were taking dance lessons. The entire time, I kept praying he would live. And you did it. You knew what to do and you saved him.”

  He shrugs. “That's my job.”

  “It's more than your job and you know it.”

  “I know. But if I talk about it, it's hard to do the job, you know?”

  “No.”

  “You know the Mr. Rogers thing?”

  “The what?”

  “The quote. About how Mr. Rogers said in times of difficulty, his mother taught him to look for the helpers?” Fletch pulls his hand away, but not his eyes.

  “Oh, yes. We use that a lot in my class.”

  “I think about that when I'm on a call that goes wrong. When the person we tried to save dies. When an injury causes severe pain I can't stop or help. When we have to white-knuckle our way through a horrible tragedy, second by second.” He pauses to take a sip of his coffee. “And I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that the moment the 911 call came in from your classroom, I went straight to worst-case scenario mode in my brain.”

  “Oh, Fletch.” Wrapping my arms around my waist, I lean closer to his window.

  “I didn't – I couldn't get Mattie out of my mind.”

  He doesn't have to share the kind of images that plagued him, the half-crazed sequence of what could have been.

  Because I have those thoughts, too.

  “But,” he says, clearing his throat and shaking his head. “None of that happened. Because of you.”

  I inhale, open my mouth to say something, and freeze.

  I have been such an idiot.

  My bladder starts to tickle me, the kind of intrusive body sensation that makes it impossible to think.

  “If you need to use the bathroom, feel free to come in,” I blurt out, instantly regretting my words.

  He laughs, though the amusement dies out quickly. “I don't think having a man appear at the door, knocking, is a good idea, Fiona. Today of all days.”

  “Good point.”

  “I don't want Mattie looking out here and not seeing me.”

  “Is he looking out here?” I can't keep the surprise from my voice.

  Fletch points. Mattie's in the window, hands cupped around his eyes, clearly checking in on Fletch.

  “Yeah. He's... well, I think it'll be a while before he's okay.”

  “Children are remarkably resilient,” I say lamely, regretting the words the second they're out.

  “Sure they are. But this isn't your normal, everyday problem, you know?”

  Candi's cold hands come to mind. “Yes. I know.”

  Bzzz

  My phone surprises me. I pull it out of the big pocket in my tunic.

  Have you checked your dating app? Perky texts.

  “Go. You've got kids to teach,” Fletch says, shooing me.

  I look at the text.

  Look back at him.

  Take a sip of coffee.

  And then I wave as I go back inside.

  Through the back.

  I haven't given the stupid dating app a moment's thought, but as I settle in for a quick lunch in my office, facing the dating app sounds way better than answering hundreds of emails.

  Huh. Nine people interested. I look.

  Six dick pics. Left, left, left, left, left, and ohmyGod, where would you fit that thing?

  Definitely left.

  That leaves three. Guy #1: a picture of a bloody deer between his legs. Obviously a hunter. I have nothing against hunters, but that is not sexy.

  Guy #2: says he's thirty-five. Maybe in dog years.

  Guy #3: outdoorsy type. Long blond hair. Minus points for the man bun in one picture. Plus points for mentioning buying local. Works for a nonprofit that places first-generation college students at small liberal arts schools. His photo is not taken in his car–that alone makes him stand out from the crowd.

  What makes me swipe right, though, has nothing to do with anything the guy says, or any aspect of what he looks like.

  What makes me swipe right, and spend the next half hour chatting–finally settling on a date tomorrow evening at Beanerino, the coffee shop where Perky works–is this: He seems grounded. Stable. Settled.

  And he’s not Fletch.

  If I'm going to stop being defined by my past, to let go of letting other people tell me who I am, I have to act.

  I have to take risks.

  I have to be anyone but Feisty.

  The pull of Fletch's goodness (and, I confess, hotness) takes too much of my past and blends it with my present.

  I need to look to the future.

  And Man Bun, the dude in the app, represents something pretty close.

  So I say yes to coffee.

  Yes to a stranger.

  Yes to risk.

  And maybe, just maybe, when I say yes to the unknown, I take some of that energy Mallory noted that I spend filtering out Fletch, and I filter in something worthwhile.

  Maybe.

  But that maybe makes me open my email.

  And say yes to someone else.

  Someone important.

  Someone I've been avoiding.

  Chapter 7

  “I am so glad to see you,” Jolene says as she opens her front door and steps out barefoot, moving with me toward the spot where we will earth. In anticipation, I've already removed my shoes, the crisp grass making my toes curl against it, to grasp a bit more of the anchor that I desperately need.

  You won't find a website with Jolene's name or business on it. Perky calls her place The Quantum Cottage. You become a client through word of mouth only. I was fortunate, a few years ago, to have a friend of a friend of a friend suggest me to her.

  She is pure energy.

  “I should have come sooner,” I admit as we stand before each other, right hand on belly button, left over the heart, bare feet connecting with the electrified charge of dirt and stone, dust and dead leaves, of energy and home.

  Kind eyes meet mine. “There are no shoulds. Only what pulls you toward.”

  “I thought I could wait. I thought I was fine. But the children and the parents and then there's Fletch and–”

  “Breathe. Let's breathe together. Your energy grid looks like a time-lapse photo of Los Angeles traffi
c at night. Just... inhale. Exhale. In. Out.” A breeze pushes my long hair against her arm, the curtain of lilac and platinum like gossamer on the wind.

  Tangled gossamer that hasn't had a decent deep-conditioning treatment in too long.

  The brush of my own hair against my bare wrist feels pleasant. Soothing. A reminder that I'm a body as well as a mind and heart. Our energetic layers need attention and kindness, just like our physical bodies and emotions do.

  It's so easy to spend your entire life unaware, always a bit on edge as we pick up on energy but don't understand or see it. I'm grateful that my life has brought me to teachers who encourage me to let intuition be my guide. Dad calls it gut instinct, which is the closest he's ever going to come to the idea of a higher, wise self.

  But I'll take what I can get.

  “Open yourself. Accept love. Accept power. Accept and take from the world what you need, Fiona. You've given so much. It's time to let the rebalancing feed you. Refusing what the universe offers will only keep you unstable. You must receive.”

  A rush of tingling ripples through me, filling my mind and soul. I am nothing but breath.

  Breath that brings in.

  Breath that lets go.

  When my mind settles, thoughts melting into a puddle of water that turns to a rushing brook feeding a beautiful waterfall of shush-shush-shush, I open my eyes.

  Jolene’s hair, long and braided behind her back, has grey and white frizzies that frame her face as the sun caresses her back.

  “Better?”

  “Yes. I feel so blocked.”

  Her brow knits. “That's not what I see. You have no boundaries now, Fiona. The world has reset them. You need to feel the edges. Find your perimeter.”

  “My what? I thought I was supposed to stay open to receive.”

  “To receive energy, yes. And love. But if you don't have the protection of the light around you, it flows right through you. It never recharges you.”

  “Being open is what makes me one with everything.”

  “But trying to do that before you've learned what you need to learn in this lifetime means you learn nothing.”

  “I am so confused.”

  “Good! It's in the confusion that we find serenity.” Pulling gently, she guides me by the hand back up the stairs of her small deck and into the giant, multi-story solarium attached to her house. Smelling of cedar, the room is filled with light, a simple structure of glass panes between large wooden beams. Inside this room, we stand and face south.