Rogue Ever After (The Rogue Series Book 7)

by Tamsen Parker

  “Earth to Ruth!” Joey’s voice startled me, and I almost dropped my phone.

  “Hey. Sorry.” I grinned at my best friend and tried not to roll my eyes at how horrendously his bright orange track pants clashed with his Pittsburgh Pirates T-shirt.

  “You know you have to go in, right?” Joey raised a perfect eyebrow.

  “Ugh, yes. Come with me?” I wanted some moral support. At the end of Friday afternoon’s all-school faculty meeting, Christensen had casually mentioned that he really thought our pay ought to be tied to our observation evaluations. This delightful, and contractually impossible, comment came after he spent a full forty-five minutes berating us about our low evaluation numbers. Evaluation numbers that had nothing to do with student growth or active participation in class. Numbers that reflected one thing: how closely we adhered to the scripted curriculum. Throughout the meeting (although meeting was a generous term for the weekly event of teachers silently listening to the man seethe for a full hour) Christensen’s gaze had pinged back and forth between Mia and the art teacher, Gloria Nkulu. Both women had outright rejected the curriculum and had received nothing but unsatisfactory ratings for the past three months. Unsurprisingly, both of their class attendance numbers were almost perfect, and students were quite literally singing their praises in the hallways. My own efforts to push back on this garbage curriculum had evaporated in the wake of the one-two punch of a tense face-to-face meeting with Christensen and an unnerving phone call with the union president.

  Then this morning, I’d gotten a frantic text from another building rep in the district: Teachers talking abt a strike bc of new curriculum policy and student equity concerns. What do we do?

  I’d been a union representative for six years and was used to hearing teachers talking about strikes. Sometimes I was supportive, sometimes I wasn’t. But I always listened and talked through the issues with the relevant parties as fairly as possible. Now, I wanted to strike. And I sure as hell couldn’t pretend to be unbiased.

  Joey tugged on the collar of my jean jacket. “Okay, you slug. Let’s get moving.” His tone was warm, even as he bodily dragged me up the steps to the school.

  Fumbling to unclip my keys from my beltloop, I felt my jaw actually drop as I rounded the corner to my office. At least a dozen teachers were huddled outside my door, talking in the kind of hushed, angry whispers I’d become accustomed to this semester. Joey gave my elbow a reassuring squeeze. I spotted Mia among the throng of angry coworkers, and my heart rate slowed. Her fall wardrobe was somehow even cuter than the adorable French-sailor look she’d been pulling off throughout August and September. She wore tight black jeans and a baggy crewneck sweater, and she’d let her hair out of its customary braid, glossy waves tumbling down her back. Damn. I needed to get my shit together. She had a boyfriend. Or at least, I thought she did.

  She waved and lifted a coffee cup from my favorite place near school.

  “Is this for me?” I asked as she slid the warm cardboard cup into my hands. I’d been in a hurry this morning and hadn’t had time to make coffee at home like I usually did.

  “Unless you want an iced chai with three extra shots?” Mia shook the ice cubes in the huge reusable cup that appeared to be glued to her hand during school hours.

  I grimaced. “No. Thanks, though. Seriously. Thank you. I think this earns you first dibs on union talk time.”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “I don’t really have any official grievances you haven’t heard about already. I thought of you when I was at the coffee shop…” She shook her head rapidly and cleared her throat. “I mean, I just figured you’d be super-busy this morning and…yeah. Coffee. Oh, I have that book you loaned me. I finished it last night even though I had about a zillion worksheets to grade. I couldn’t put it down.”

  “Come by my office at the end of the day and we can discuss? And here, actually, come in with me.” I inclined my head in the direction of my office door. “I need a few minutes of pleasantness before I have to face the angry mob.” Talking to Mia always did this to me, quieted my jangling nerves and made the world a far sunnier place than it often seemed. I was grateful for her friendship, even if it meant forcing myself to pretend I didn’t want more.

  She nodded enthusiastically, and I took a long grateful sip of coffee, savoring the bright acidity and slight note of vanilla. Then I steeled myself for a long morning of failing to solve people’s very valid problems.

  “Okay.” I raised my voice just enough that the other teachers quieted. “It seems like a lot of you need to talk to me. We only have about an hour, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to walk into my office, unpack my stuff, and close the door. Mia brought me coffee, and because I’m a corrupt bureaucrat, that means she gets to talk to me first.” Next to me, Joey barked out a laugh. “Then,” I continued in a rush, “I’m going to put up a sign up sheet for ten-minute slots. If it can wait until my afternoon free periods, when I’ll have more time, you can stop by then.”

  As I closed my office door behind us, the small scrap of confidence I’d been clinging to like a life preserver dissolved. My head buzzed and my favorite wash-worn shirt I’d tugged on in the quiet dark now felt tight and itchy.

  “Okay, we’re just gonna hang out for a few minutes. No school talk.” Mia folded herself into the tiny chair propped next to my desk. It had become her official seat over the past six weeks. Most mornings, she and I were the first teachers in the building, so we drank our coffee together and pretended to be working while mostly chatting and showing each other funny dog videos. Sometimes Joey would join us, and the three of us would hang out until the first bell.

  I shrugged and massaged my temples.

  “Actually,” Mia mused, twisting a long strand of hair around her index finger, “I have something I need to ask you about.”

  My stomach clenched. Had she guessed that I was into her? I tried for a casual nod.

  “What is the deal with the fries on salad thing here? Like, I didn’t grow up eating healthy by any stretch of the imagination. Martinsburg, West Virginia, isn’t like the gourmet capital of America or anything. But seriously, Pittsburgh? Why even bother with the salad part?”

  A laugh erupted from me, and some of the buzzing tension in my chest dissipated. “I’m the wrong person to ask. We never had stuff like that growing up. My mom and Ama were all about the homemade life. My mom was pretty intense about healthy eating. Other than cafeteria food and junk at friends’ houses, I never ate fries or pizza or anything like that. Went kind of wild eating it in college, though. And I still probably eat way too much pizza. But not with fries on top.”

  “Please tell me that’s not a thing.” Mia grimaced.

  “Sure is.” I winked, hoping it wasn’t too flirty. “I’m totally going to take you to Sal’s next week. Prepare to be amazed.”

  By the time Mia left my office, I was relaxed, ready to take on a solid hour of difficult conversations. Usually my role as a union rep boiled down to mediating arguments between teachers. People wanted to be heard, and I was happy to listen. More often than not, the meetings were spent arguing over how much Shakespeare was too much for the curriculum (any, in my humble-but-unpopular opinion) or why we do we have to do all this damn diversity crap (because you’re a white, middle-class man teaching a mostly Black and Latinx student population, Bob.) Now the urge to do something, to take action, pulsed through me. But what the hell could I do?

  The answer came in the form of a sixteen-page report compiled by our sweater-vest loving, mild-mannered economics teacher. When he was the first to walk into my office, I didn’t even bother to hide my surprise. In a quiet voice, he explained that he and his wife, who was apparently a data analyst for some big company downtown, had spent the past few weeks going over district salary figures. Although Pennsylvania teachers generally were well-paid, our district’s numbers had stagnated. New teachers like Mia, pouring out of prestigious master’s programs full of innovative teaching strategies and laden wi
th student debt, were being offered lower and lower starting salaries. I knew these things in an amorphous way. But seeing the numbers, meticulously graphed and charted over time and compared to rising cost-of-living and inflation data was jarring.

  The financial figures stuck with me as teacher after teacher stepped into my office, some sobbing, some hopeless, some furious. But it was Gloria Nkulu who transformed my useless self-pity into searing rage. As she slid into the chair next to my desk, she looked exhausted. Her eyes were bloodshot and her typically glowing deep-brown skin was dry. Not that I looked any better. I’d fallen asleep with my contacts in and had barely taken the time to drag a comb through my hair before dashing out of the house.

  “Ruth, what is going on in this school?” Gloria released a heavy sigh.

  The normal platitudes I kept on hand crumbled to ash in my mouth. “Nothing good,” I finally said.

  Gloria nodded slowly for a moment, then sat up ramrod straight. “This is hurting the students. I’m sure you see that. All of this extra discipline. It is my opinion, and the opinion of several other teachers, that these policies are disproportionately harming students of color. Black students, in particular. I refuse to allow this in my classroom, in my school, in my country.” Gloria’s voice, strong and clear, broke on the last word.

  As a woman of color—hell as a woman with eyes and a conscience—I knew what Gloria was talking about. Even before the district and principal’s new policies had been put in place, all you had to do was look at the grossly and unjustly inflated number of white kids relative to students of color in the honors-tracked classes, and the inverse relationship at in-school suspension, to see that our education system was seriously inequitable. These new polices made the simmering implicit racism more visible. White kids still wandered the halls during closed periods, used their phones in class, got away with showing up a few minutes late. Black students didn’t.

  My eyes snapped from Gloria’s pained expression to the neatly bound pile of reports on my desk. Images raced through my brain: Mia crying in her classroom on more than one occasion, my students resigned faces as they sat for another day of mind-numbing instruction, Christensen’s patronizing speeches at every faculty meeting. The images coalesced into bright, definite words. “We need to strike.”

  4

  Mia

  Ruth was a machine, her fingers flying over her laptop keyboard. She didn’t notice me looming in the doorway of her office for a full three minutes. She didn’t hear me say her name. Twice. She finally glanced up, a little dazed, when I tossed her copy of Little Fires Everywhere on the paper-strewn top of her desk.

  “Oh shit, sorry, Mia. I don’t think I have time to discuss the book. Maybe tomorrow…although I have so much to do…” She was already looking at her computer screen again.

  I gently tapped her on the shoulder. Ruth looked back up at me, features softening. My heart jolted. “No worries. I actually have to run. Literally. Because you’re looking at…” I did a tiny drumroll against my thighs. “The new assistant girls’ soccer coach.”

  Ruth flew out of her desk chair and pulled me into a tight hug. “Yes! Joey told me that you were interested. And that you played for Georgetown. Damn, girl.”

  I always loved the sound of Ruth’s voice, rich and warm and a little low. But now, with my face pressed into her shoulder, and her ropey arms and clean smell wrapped around me, her voice warmed me all over. My ears pounded hot and my cheeks burned. I wanted to nuzzle into the fabric of her shirt. I wanted…

  Maybe she felt the infinitesimal rise in my body temperature because Ruth released me as quickly as she’d wrapped me up in what was certainly the greatest hug in the universe. “Sorry.” She laughed and mussed her hair. “But that’s fantastic. Good for you. Maybe we can win a game for a change now.” I nodded along but really wished I could slip back into Ruth’s arms for another hug. A fast, friendly hug, I reminded myself. Not an I want to make out with you for hours and trace every line of your body with my tongue hug. That was just me being an unprofessional creep.

  Ruth shook her head, and for a terrifying moment I worried I’d voiced my thoughts aloud. Thankfully, her frustration was directed at her phone, which was buzzing furiously in her pocket. Mine buzzed too. Grateful for the distraction, I tugged it out of my backpack. There was a message from Joey on the unofficial faculty group text that Ruth had looped me in on. It was mostly used by the cool teachers to plan happy hours and complain about Christensen.

  Joey: So we’re striking? YES! I propose a 7:30 meeting at the Red Moon Cantina tonight to plan the revolution/dance our troubles away. (It’s disco night so we all know Ruth will be there.)

  Ruth looked simultaneously angry and amused. “Fucking Joey. I was going to text everyone tomorrow morning once I talked to a few other reps. If Christensen finds out about this before we have a solid plan…”

  Hope unfurled inside of my chest at the idea of a strike. I had about fifteen questions I wanted to ask Ruth about next steps and how I could help. Instead, what came out of my mouth was: “So do you always go to disco night?”

  It was a sharp, cold night. Walking from the parking spot I finally managed to snag a mere six blocks from my apartment, I took a moment to savor the clean snap of air at the back of my throat. Soon, it would be winter, icy roads and white skies and constant talk of snow days. For now, though, I could tip my head back and gaze up at the muted wash of stars in the early November sky. I spotted Polaris but could barely make out the rest of Ursa Minor because of Pittsburgh’s light pollution and regular pollution. After a long moment of slightly unsatisfying stargazing and missing the vast depth of the West Virginia night sky, I realized I was shivering. I hadn’t bothered to change out of my soccer shorts and newly customized assistant coach hoodie after practice.

  When I stumbled into the apartment, a little winded from dashing up four flights of stairs with my soccer stuff, tote bag full of work to be graded, and overburdened backpack, Gary bounded to greet me, tail a brown-and-white blur, big paws sliding on the hardwood floor. I found my roommate and best friend, Ayanna, busy in the galley kitchen. Frantic jazz screamed from her laptop. The apartment smelled amazing, like ginger and onions with the sharp undercurrent of the mind-blowingly hot peppers she put in everything. As always, she looked lovely, dark skin glowing, makeup flawless, natural curls pushed back with a colorful headband. I came home every day looking like I’d been doused under my classroom’s emergency chemical shower and spun dry in the school’s industrial dryer.

  My stomach pinched and growled, and I desperately hoped I had time to eat after showering and finding something to wear to this union-strike-planning-session-slash-dance-party.

  “Hey, you.” Ayanna wiped her hands on her denim apron and hurried to turn down the music. “How was practice?”

  I collapsed into a stool at the tiny breakfast bar and took a long sip of Ayanna’s lukewarm green tea. “It was great actually. The girls were pretty excited to have an assistant coach that actually, you know, knows how to play soccer. We just ran drills, but I think we have a few promising players.” I chewed my lip, wondering if I should say anything about the potential strike. Ayanna and I had gone through the same teaching master’s program, but now she taught French at an elite all-girls prep school. It wasn’t like she was part of the district. And she certainly wouldn’t tell anyone. Before I could start running my mouth, though, Ayanna slid a plate of rice and delicious-looking stew in front of me.

  “Eat.” She pinned me with a long look. “If I know you, you worked through your lunch period and forgot to eat whatever bullshit salad you packed yourself.”

  She was right. I attacked the food, immediately burning the roof of my mouth. It was worth it, though. If Ayanna weren’t straight and engaged to a wonderful man, I would propose to her myself. After growing up on pepperoni rolls and soup-based casseroles, I didn’t know people could even make food that tasted this good. “Thanks,” I said through a mouthful of perfectly seasoned
vegetables. “What’s the occasion tonight?” Ayanna always cooked pepperpot when she was angry and trying to avoid the constant onslaught of parent emails.

  “Just some assholes who still aren’t so sure I’m qualified to teach their precious angels. Worried I don’t speak ‘proper’ French. Bitch, I grew up speaking it! And it would be fine if they brought it up to me directly, you know? But they have to copy the damn head of school on this shit.” She shook her head and took a seat next to me with her own plate of food.

  “I’m so sorry, Aya. That’s awful. Anything I can do?”

  “Nah.” She speared a piece of chicken and chewed contemplatively. “So what’s new with your girlfriend?”

  My heart jolted. I may have talked about Ruth a bit too much. Okay, way too much. “Not my girlfriend. My friend. Colleague. Anyway, actually it looks like we might be going on strike? I’m not really sure what’s going on yet, but people are rightfully pissed off, and we’re getting together to discuss.”

  “Ooohh. Just the two of you? Hot. You can get all fired up and take that energy to the bedroom…”

  I smacked Ayanna’s shoulder. “No, you perv. A few of Ruth’s teacher friends are apparently meeting at that Red Moon place at 7:30.”

  Ayanna glanced at the stove clock, and I almost choked on my bite of rice when I saw the time. How was it already 6:45?

  “No!” I scraped back my stool. “What do I wear? I have to shower. Crap!”

  “Okay, go beautify yourself. I’ll find you something to wear.”