Misconduct

by Penelope Douglas

  “Okay!” he burst out, turning away. “We’re not that close.”

  I shook with quiet laughter, sinking down onto the couch.

  “You want to know the best part?” I asked, and he looked at me.

  “I haven’t counted anything since yesterday morning,” I told him.

  He looked at me like he didn’t believe me. “Really?”

  I nodded, standing up and crossing my arms over my chest.

  “I’m keeping my expectations reasonable,” I assured him. “But for now, I feel relaxed for the first time in forever. I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.”

  He seemed to give up his objections, because he slowly started nodding and taking deep breaths. My brother was a contradiction, and I still had trouble understanding him. He wanted me to move on, but he seemed to get antsy whenever I picked up a racket. He wanted me to date – not just have dalliances – but apparently someone like Tyler Marek wasn’t what he had in mind.

  If anything, I would’ve thought my brother would entertain the idea. Tyler was successful, connected, and political, everything my brother wanted to be.

  I knew what my brother said he wanted for me, but on the rare occasion – like lately – when I seemed to go after it, he would try to pull me back, and I didn’t understand why.

  “Well.” He heaved out a sigh and shot me a nudging smile. “Since you’re in such a good mood, I have been dying for some of your bacon and mushroom quiche.”

  “Quiche?” I winced. “Do you have any idea how long that’s going to take?”

  He widened his smile, looking more comical than sympathetic, with both rows of teeth showing.

  But I couldn’t deny him. Being needed kept me busy.

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine, but I’m playing music, then. Use the headphones if you want to watch TV.”

  I rounded the couch and walked into the kitchen, halting immediately when I spotted three cabinets and a drawer open.

  Seriously?

  “Jack!” I called, walking over and closing everything. “If you’re going to hang out here, at least close the cabinets and drawers after you’ve opened them.”

  “Now, in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War” – I paced down the aisle in my classroom the next day – “our country experienced the First Industrial Revolution,” I told the students, summarizing the reading from the storm break.

  “What kind of inventions sprang forth?” I asked, snapping my fingers. “Let’s go. Come on.”

  “The cotton gin!” Rayder Broussard shot out.

  “Which did what?” I continued, listening as I stared at the tile and paced back and forth.

  “Uh,” a girl stuttered, and then shouted, “Cotton fibers separated from seeds, enabling clothing to be more quickly produced!”

  I looked up, seeing it was a student from Team One, so I jetted over to the board and tallied a point for her team and one for Rayder’s.

  “What else?” I called out.

  The students flipped through their notes and charts, working vigorously and still going strong despite being worked like machines from the moment they’d stepped into the room today. They sat or stood scattered around the room in organized chaos with their groups and with their noses buried in their research. I would’ve loved this level of participation if my intentions were noble.

  But they weren’t. I’d needed the distraction ever since my brother’s visit yesterday. He’d denied leaving my kitchen a mess, and now it was all I could think about. If Jack hadn’t left the drawer and cabinets open, then who had?

  He should’ve known. The minute he’d walked into the apartment the night before and seen the kitchen out of sorts, he should’ve known something was wrong. I never left things out of place.

  Four cups in a stack in the cabinet, two turns to close the toothpaste, closet organized – blouses, shirts, pants, skirts, dark to light – everything was always in order.

  But upon further inspection yesterday, I’d found my shower curtain also open and two skirts I hadn’t worn lately hanging on the back of my bedroom chair.

  My heart started to pound again, and I swallowed.

  While I arranged and organized things as a way to achieve a small sense of control, it had begun as a way to tell if anyone had been in my space.

  At sixteen, when I’d started obsessing, if something was mussed, crooked, or out of place, I would know that I wasn’t safe.

  And while now I still did it for a measure of peace, I hadn’t felt unsafe in five years. Not since the last time I’d seen him.

  Maybe I’d taken the skirts out two nights ago, when Tyler had wanted to take me to dinner. Maybe I’d opened the cabinets and drawer before that, when I was arguing with Jack.

  I hadn’t counted anything lately, so maybe I was starting to loosen my grip on the order I’d once needed. Maybe my brain was so preoccupied with my class and with Tyler that I’d started to do what I’d needed to do for years: move on and let go.

  Or maybe my brother did open the cabinets and drawers and just forgot.

  Maybe.

  I blinked, the class’s commotion growing louder.

  I took a deep breath, forcing myself to relax. “Come on!” I clapped my hands, rejoining the class. “Team One is in the lead here!”

  I looked to Christian, who sat with his team but was not participating. “Christian?” I prompted. “Any ideas?”

  He didn’t answer but only flipped through his notes absently, not attempting to even look like he was trying to work.

  “The steam engine!” someone shouted.

  I let my aggravation over Christian’s continued defiance go as I met Sheldon’s eyes and mentally tallied Team Three.

  “Which did what?” I called out, walking for the whiteboard again.

  I heard a chair screech behind me as someone shot up. “It allowed a wide range of machines to be powered!”

  I recognized Marcus’s voice and placed another point for Team One and one for Team Three on the board.

  “What else?”

  “The telegraph!” someone called.

  “And what was its purpose?”

  “To um…” The girl’s voice drifted off, while everyone else whispered in their groups or flipped through their notes.

  “Come on,” I urged. “You’re heading for Earth, and your spaceship is out of control. You’re going to crash!” I shouted, a smile tilting my lips.

  “Communicate over long distances using Morse code!” Dane called out, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “They already could communicate over long distances by writing letters,” I challenged.

  “But the telegraph was quicker!” he shouted, pointing his finger up in the air as if declaring war.

  I laughed. “Good!” I praised, walking to the board and marking points.

  Turning around, I walked back down the aisle, paying special attention to Christian.

  “Now,” I started. “Imagine that you need a ride home, and cell phones don’t exist. How do you get home?” I asked.

  “Find a phone,” Sidney Jane answered.

  But I shot back. “The school’s closed, so you can’t use theirs.”

  “Go to a business and use their phone,” Ryan Cruzate called out.

  I shrugged. “No one answers when you call.”

  “Walk home,” Shelby Roussel continued the problem-solving.

  I nodded. “Okay, you got there, but you don’t have a key.”

  “Sit your butt outside,” Marcus joked, a few kids joining in the laughter.

  “It’s raining,” I argued again.

  Trey Watts locked his hands behind his head. “Go to a friend’s and wait,” he suggested.

  “They’re not home, either.” I winced with fake sympathy.

  “Call someone —”

  I stopped her with a head shake about the same time she realized we’d already been through that. The class laughed when they remembered that they don’t have cell phones in this
scenario. How easy it was to forget that we no longer had something we didn’t realize we relied on so much.

  And there really was no solution. You adjust and cope, but you can’t make it the same again.

  I paced the aisle, feeling Christian’s silence like a deafening weight to my left.

  “Now, we can survive without cell phones and microwaves,” I explained, “but advances in technology have obviously made life easier. To the point where, in some cases, we don’t know what we’d do without them.”

  “If your mom – or dad – had a cell phone,” I went on, “you could’ve reached them wherever they were, no matter that they weren’t home. Now, we know what some of the big inventions during the Industrial Revolution were, and we know what they did, but what was the impact on our country and our daily lives after they came into existence?” I asked. “How did they make life easier? Or more difficult? How does new technology” – I raised my voice for emphasis – “forever change the course of our lives?”

  I gazed around the room, seeing their contemplative expressions. I hoped they weren’t merely blank and that they were actually thinking.

  Maybe I’d asked too many questions at once.

  I glanced to Christian, who stared at me, looking very much like he had something to say but was holding back.

  “Make a T-chart,” I ordered. “Label pros and cons and then put your pencils down.”

  The students did what was asked of them. They opened their notebooks to a blank page, drawing one line down the middle and one across the top and labeling the two sections.

  After they’d replaced their pencils on their desks, I went on.

  “Revolution usually means quick, dramatic change,” I pointed out. “Do you think the Industrial Revolution was aptly named? Were the changes in production and distribution fast, or were they a steady development over time?”

  I walked up the last aisle and stopped. “Christian, what do you think?”

  He shook his head, looking bored. “I think it was fast, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  He dropped his eyes, mumbling, “I don’t know.”

  I got closer. “You don’t have to know.” I kept my voice light. “Tell me what you think.”

  His eyes shot up to mine. “I don’t know,” he repeated, his voice turning angry.

  “It was decades,” I shot out, knowing I was close to overstepping my bounds. One of the first things you learn about classroom management is to never call out a student in front of the class.

  But I needed a reaction out of him. I needed him to do something. To say something.

  “Is that fast or steady, Christian? What do you think?”

  “It’s all about perspective, I guess!” he barked. “Humans are, like, two hundred thousand years old, so yeah, a lot of advancement in only a few decades would be fast,” he argued. “Some civilizations in history barely made any progress in generations, while others a lot. Everyone’s frame of reference is different!”

  I held his angry blue-gray eyes – the same as his father’s – and elation flooded my chest. I let out a breath and gave him a small smile, nodding.

  “That’s a good point,” I told him, and then turned around to walk away.

  “But then it may not be fast, either,” he continued, and I stopped.

  Spinning around, I watched as he crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin up, more confident.

  “I would say the past two decades have seen even more advancement in manufacturing and technology than during the Industrial Revolution,” he debated. “The phones, the iPads, automobiles, the Mars rover…” He trailed off. “It’s about perspective.”

  It felt like those moments when you get exactly what you want and then you don’t know what to do with what you got.

  I stood there, wondering what the good teachers do when a student opens up, and I was clueless. Christian Marek was an angry kid. He was difficult and defiant and so like his father and yet so different. Whereas I gathered Tyler always felt he had something to prove, Christian seemed like someone who never needed to prove anything to anyone.

  “So was it fast or steady?” a student called out to my left.

  I bowed my head, smiling as I turned around and walked to the front of the classroom.

  I cleared my throat. “You’re not being graded on what you think,” I told the class. “You’re being graded on why you think it. Defend your answers.”

  I turned off the Smart Board and placed my hands on my hips.

  “Complete your T-chart with the pros and cons of the impact on life by the inventions of the Industrial Revolution. Then tweet what you learned today – hashtag Bradbury2015 – and then you may get online and start adding primary sources to your folder for the Deep South project,” I instructed.

  I turned, grabbing a dry-erase marker, and finished adding points for the class.

  “Aw, yeah!” I heard Marcus bellow when he saw the points I added to Team One. “We got fifty points. Good job, Marek!!”

  Team One clapped, celebrating their success and the final point Christian had earned for them, bringing them to a total of fifty before all the other teams.

  “So we get Song of the Week, right?” Marcus asked, already working his laptop to find his song, no doubt.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “You have five minutes.”

  “It’s my choice, everyone!” he shouted, clicking his computer and standing up as the song began playing.

  The entire class stopped what they were doing and joined in the fun as the song came out louder and louder from Marcus’s computer. Soon there were hands in the air, voices singing along, and people standing up at their desks, moving to the music.

  I laughed at the sight, loving the amount of work they put in to succeed just so they could have these five minutes as often as possible. Even Christian was laughing as he watched others dance to the music.

  And then my face fell and I sucked in a breath as I finally realized what song was playing, Afroman’s “Because I Got High.”

  “Wait!” I blurted out. “That song has profanity.”

  Marcus jerked his shoulders in moves probably only he thought were cool.

  “How would you know, Ms. Bradbury?” he singsonged.

  And I just planted my face in my hands as the entire class joined in on the chorus so loudly the entire school probably heard.

  SIXTEEN

  TYLER

  T

  wo days later and I was still thinking about her. What the hell was wrong with me? The luncheon was the day after tomorrow, and I couldn’t wait. I hoped she wasn’t going to chicken out, because it would throw off my entire fucking day.

  I pulled back the pen, noticing I’d been retracing notes I’d already made as I sat at the head of the conference table, vaguely aware of Stevenson, one of my vice presidents, updating everyone on distribution figures from the last quarter.

  I wasn’t even listening.

  Every time I sat still, my head would drift back to her. Her body, her lips, her hunger… She was driving me crazy, and I knew right then and there that I hadn’t lied to her.

  I might actually have a crush.

  And I dropped the pen to the table, knowing that was the last thing I needed.

  Easton Bradbury was beautiful, educated, and strong. She was built for challenges. But she was also complicated, difficult, and moody. She wouldn’t make friends easily.

  Even if she weren’t my son’s teacher – even if I weren’t about to enter a campaign, knowing that going public with a love interest could put me further under the microscope – Easton could still fuck me up.

  Damaged people were survivors, and they survived because they always put themselves first. Self-preservation demanded it.

  I didn’t like realizing I might not be the first one to walk away.

  I had to enjoy her for what she was and not let her mean more than that. She was fun company, good in bed, and a welcome distraction when I had time for one. And I
had every confidence I was the same for her.

  Other than that, she needed to be pushed out of my head.

  I came back, refocusing on the table in front of me. “All right,” I said, cutting off Stevenson midsentence. “Everyone go to lunch. We’ll continue this later.”

  I didn’t wait to see if anyone had any questions before I got up and moved back into the main office to continue the work that was doubling before me, no matter how many hours I spent at it.

  Everyone slowly drifted out while I got on the computer and started reviewing messages from Corinne.

  There was a stockholders’ meeting in the evening, but I was going to send Jay in my place, and some new contracts to delegate to regional vice presidents.

  Jay was right. I couldn’t handle everything myself. With the campaign – and the Senate, if I won – I was going to have to learn how to hand off more work to others.

  Then I looked around, seeing that my brother had left the meeting. Picking up my phone, I speed-dialed him.

  But Corinne walked in. “Mr. Marek? Ms. McAuliffe is here to see you,” she said.

  “Five minutes,” I commanded.

  She nodded, knowing that it was her job to come in and scurry out whoever I needed gone, so I could get on with my day.

  Corinne walked out, and Jay picked up his phone.

  “You just told us to go to lunch,” he pointed out, knowing I needed him back here.

  “Not you,” I shot back. “I want to be out of here by four, so get back in here.”

  “Four?” he blurted out, but I hung up the phone without responding.

  I never left the office that early, and he knew it. But slowly I’d started to try to manage my time better. I could take a break, eat dinner with Christian, and then work in my home office while he went to his room to do homework or over to a friend’s house.

  I began clicking on the messages on my computer when I saw Tessa stroll in, a casual smile brightening her face and her beige suit jacket and handbag hanging in her hand.

  She was dressed in a burgundy blouse and a beige pencil skirt, and as usual, she had a relaxed sway to her hips and determination in her steps, as if she were always comfortable, no matter the room or the company.