Before I Called You Mine

by Nicole Deese

  Jenna clapped her hands together in a quick pattern of three as she approached her line leader waiting with a parent volunteer at the corner of our hallway. Seconds later her classroom answered back with a similar clap before they marched back down the hallway. “The cards are a great idea, Miss Bailey,” Jenna replied over her shoulder in her most authoritative-sounding voice. “Let me know what my class can do to help.”

  “Hi, Miss Bailey!” Tabitha Connelly, my chosen line leader for the week, whisper-yelled at the sight of me. She held up our laminated first-grade sign as the rest of my class followed her to the corner, stopped, and waited for my clap like they’d been taught.

  There was little in the world better than this moment right here—twenty-four optimistic faces, all ready to tackle a new week with contagious gusto. Not even the most mundane of Mondays could bring down this lively crowd.

  I smiled at my happy crew. “Good morning, class. Let’s walk.”

  At this point in the year, my “firsties” knew what was expected of them upon entering our classroom. The mad dash of hanging up backpacks and storing lunch boxes had calmed considerably since the start of school in September. Their voices remained in hushed tones as they took out their morning folders, set them on their desks, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and waited for me to give the go-ahead to begin their morning word scramble with their weekly partners.

  Fifty minutes later, a knock on the door alerted me to the fifth-grade buddy sent to pick up my students for music class. Everyone filed into a semi-quiet line and waved good-bye. I blew them a kiss and told them we’d be working on a surprise project when they returned. That got a few fist pumps and booty shakes.

  Minutes after they left, I placed a sheet of construction paper on each of their desks, preparing the guilt cards—er, get well cards—for the kids’ return. Luckily, I had more than enough art supplies to share with the sub across the hall, too. I hadn’t a clue where Mrs. Walker stored her own art supplies, and I wasn’t about to be the one blamed for messing up her system whenever she did return.

  Gathering up a few pairs of funky scissors, hole punchers, markers, and stickers to share, I checked the clock above my door. The sub would be releasing Walker’s class for music in just a few minutes. With the exception of library, we swapped all other electives throughout the week.

  Armed with the necessary supplies, I carried the art box into the hall and immediately jerked back a step at the sound of . . . a bleating animal? I glanced toward the lunchroom and then in the direction of the library. Strange. There was no sound coming from either end of the hallway. I located the alarm system above the computer lab. No flashing light to signal an emergency.

  And then it happened again.

  The most off-putting, ear-splitting . . . roar? A boisterous cheer broke out an instant later, coming from inside Mrs. Walker’s classroom. I quickened my steps to cross the linoleum sea between our two rooms.

  Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t dare open her door without knocking, but instinct had me cranking the handle and throwing it open wide. And then, just like that, my feet were frozen to the floor, my jaw hanging slack at a sight that flipped my mundane Monday completely upside down.

  Whoever was currently roaring at a class of six-year-olds . . . he most certainly was not on Mrs. Walker’s approved sub list.

  chapter

  two

  Squatting on top of Mrs. Walker’s oak desk was a headless man—at least I assumed he was a man. But his white undershirt, leather belt, and dark-washed jeans were all secondary details to the Kermit-green T-shirt flipped over his head and stretched tight against his face like shrink-wrap.

  The lifelike screen print of a T-Rex head—complete with scary eyes and even scarier teeth—hid every trace of whatever human features were underneath. Two flailing hands sprouted directly from his short green sleeves, while his feet stomped as he projected several angry snorts.

  The class hooted with laughter, some of the kids calling out for him to jump down and chase them around the room. Instead, with unnerving accuracy for a blind man, he bent his head down and picked up a stapler between his giant, cloth-covered dinosaur teeth.

  For a moment I questioned the integrity of our school’s security protocol.

  “Awesome! Do it again!” Mason Grady cheered from the front row.

  “Wanna eat my lunch?” Rosie Simons asked, holding up her princess lunchbox. “I never eat my cheese stick.”

  The man-saur dropped the stapler onto the desk, then proceeded to sniff the air before letting out another massive bleat.

  Several of the girls covered their ears and looked around the room, spotting me near the door for the first time.

  “Uh . . . Mr. Avery?” Joy Goldman hiked up her glasses and raised her hand. “Miss Bailey is—”

  The T-Rex cut her off with a mighty huff.

  “But, Mr. Avery! Mr. Avery!” The kids giggled and continued to point at the only teacher in the room who was not trying to reenact Jurassic Park.

  Of all the emergency trainings we’d been given as a staff, all the lockdown drills we’d done as a school district . . . I was completely unprepared for this particular scenario. What exactly was my role here? Did I throw my box of markers at its head in an attempt to save the children? Did I distract it with the granola bar in my pocket, then rush the kids to my classroom?

  “Excuse me?” I approached with caution. “Are you Mrs. Walker’s sub?”

  The still-blind, ready-to-charge dinosaur whipped his head in my direction, and I barely managed to bite back a scream. Not real, Lauren. Not. Real.

  Instantly, the miniature T-Rex hands poking out the sleeve holes began to grow into two full-size, all-male arms. Ten fingers grappled at once for the hem of his T-shirt tucked unnaturally behind the nape of his neck. He gave it a sharp tug.

  Fabric-ruffled hair that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown stuck up in every direction. He pulled the shirt lower still, uncovering dark-lashed eyes, covetable cheekbones, and a square jawline. The shocking reveal resembled nothing of the prehistoric monster he’d portrayed.

  The man blinked as if to reacquaint himself with the twenty-first century and let his Ask Me About My T-Rex shirt fall to his waist before he leapt off Mrs. Walker’s desk. He raked a hand through his rumpled, caramelly hair and smiled a grin that had me questioning my own species at the moment. “Hi there, I’m Joshua Avery.”

  That was it. No explanation. No apology. No ruddy cheeks of humiliation for being caught with his shirt over his head while pretending to be a dinosaur. Just a casual greeting, as if all were perfectly normal.

  I swallowed and shoved the random grouping of art supplies I was still holding in his direction, including the stamp collection my mother had found during one of her more lucrative closet-cleaning raids. “Here. This is for you—for your class, I mean. To do. If you—they—want to.”

  He looked down at the craft paraphernalia now in his arms and then back up to me, every student in the room focused on the two of us. “Did I miss the art lesson in Charlotte’s lesson plan for today?”

  Charlotte? He calls Mrs. Walker by her first name? There was something blasphemous about calling a teacher of nearly thirty-five years by her first name. “No, uh, these aren’t for an art lesson. They’re for making get-well-soon cards. To send to Mrs. Walker’s hospital room.”

  “Oh, right. Sure.” He nodded. “That’s really cool of you. Thanks for thinking of that.”

  “Yeah . . . no problem.” An awkward beat of I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-next loomed over me, and I hitched a thumb in the direction of the hallway. “I should get back to my room. My kids will be coming from music class in just a minute.” His lack of reaction pushed me to continue. “Which means Mrs. Walker’s students will have music next. They’re working on a Thanksgiving program. A fifth-grade helper will be here to pick them up as soon as she walks mine back.”

  “Oh, great. Thanks for the heads-up.” Another good-natured chuckle
was followed by a gesture to the desk behind him. “I do have a schedule written down somewhere, but as you can see, we got a bit off track.”

  I nearly laughed at that. “Sure. Okay. Well, I’m across the hall if . . .” If what? “If you need anything or have any questions.”

  As if my arms and legs were made of metal and bolts, I took a stiff step toward the door.

  “Bye, Miss Bailey,” several students sang out.

  I twisted slightly to wave at the class, when Joshua met my gaze with a wink.

  “Yes, good-bye, Miss Bailey. Hope to see you around.”

  Something about the way he said my name made me want to take back the words I’d spoken to Jenna earlier this morning. Not my pledge to steer clear of the dating world, but my definitive analysis of all the men who resided in my area.

  Because I’d been wrong. I hadn’t met every type of man Idaho had to offer. And Joshua Avery was proof.

  My gaze gravitated toward the half window in my classroom door more times than I cared to admit, straining to catch a glimpse of the sub across the hall. How did someone so outrageously opposite of Mrs. Walker—or Charlotte, as he’d so casually referred to her—land a teaching job in her fortress of a classroom? Had someone in the office rebelled against her wishes? Was Joshua Avery a prank sent by the school district?

  Try as I might, I simply could not make sense of the situation. In this case, one plus one did not equal two. It equaled a grown man who ate staplers through his T-shirt for the amusement of children.

  “Miss Bailey?” Noah Lawler’s fingers wiggled in the air like worms on the end of a fishing line. “Can I get the class book bag ready? It’s my turn today.”

  My attention snapped from the window to the clock above the door. Three minutes until library.

  “Oh, yes. Thank you, Noah. All right, my little firsties,” I said, addressing the room with a double clap. “Please close your folders and line up next to your buddy against the wall. We’re headed to library time with Mrs. Dalton.”

  One by one my students closed their writing booklets as Noah practically galloped to unhook our class book bag from the hanger. Tucked inside the bag were the books we’d read together last week in Red Rover’s Reading Corner. The job of bag carrier was a coveted one, which likely explained why little Caitlyn Parker’s expression had morphed into a cartoonish pout. I signaled Tabitha, our line leader, to lead us onward and tapped my finger to my lips.

  After the majority of my students had snaked into the hall like a slow-moving train, I took up the caboose with Caitlyn and offered her my hand. It was amazing how quickly a sour mood on a child could turn around when given a little extra attention. And with Caitlyn’s mommy nearing the end of her third trimester with baby number four, extra attention was understandably more difficult for Caitlyn to come by at home these days.

  I squeezed her hand after passing the computer lab and cafeteria. “So I was thinking I might need an extra helper to select a special book about Thanksgiving for our reading time this week. Would you mind checking one out for our classroom?”

  Caitlyn’s watery blue eyes blinked up at me. “Really, can I?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I’ll tell Noah you’ll be adding a book to the bag today.”

  “Thanks, Miss B.” Her smile warmed the center of my chest as I moved to the front of the line to give another reminder to keep our lips still upon entering the library.

  The instant I pulled the bulky door open, I saw him. Dinosaur man. Only this time he wasn’t crouching on top of a desk, he was reaching for a book at the top of a display shelf. He handed the nonfiction hardback with a basketball on the cover to a boy with a cast on his arm. “Here you go, champ.”

  I blinked my attention back to my students as they filed into the large space, waving at their fellow first graders enthusiastically. The sub shot me a conversational smile and strode toward me as if we were old acquaintances who’d had longer than a three-minute interaction.

  “Hello again, Miss Bailey.”

  “Hello,” I replied, working to mask my face into something other than the stupefaction I’d worn during our first meeting.

  “I’ve just heard a rumor about you. Though, technically, I don’t think it can still be called a rumor when I heard it from twenty-six highly reputable sources.” His grin intensified. “Do you really have balance boards and yoga balls in place of chairs in your classroom?” he asked in a voice that was in no way library-friendly.

  My lips twitched. “Your sources are correct.”

  “Incredible. I’ve heard of teachers shifting around their classrooms to promote better learning, but I haven’t met many in person. How has it been for your students?”

  “Honestly, it’s been a total game-changer as far as their attention and focus goes, especially for my more sensory-seeking kids. I’m fortunate to work in a district that supports private donations and unconventional ideas.”

  “Unconventional ideas are often the best ideas. If more teachers were willing to step out of the box and take creative liberties within their classroom, I believe today’s educational system could look vastly different.”

  From the kindness in his tone, I knew his statement was meant to be complimentary, but the issue he addressed shouldn’t be so easily simplified. “Taking some creative liberties in the classroom definitely plays a part in bettering our educational system, but more often than not, a teacher’s limitations usually begin and end with the level of support they receive from their administrating staff. Brighton isn’t a wealthy school by any standard, but we’re blessed with some open minds who are willing to listen to the real needs of our students. In my opinion, that’s worth far more than a donation for an alternative seating method.”

  “Wow.” The corner of his eyes crinkled appreciatively. “I can see why you were awarded a donation for your classroom. If I ever need to write a grant someday, I know who to come to.”

  My face heated under his scrutiny, and I could only imagine the deepening shade of crimson that splotched my neck and cheeks. My classic Scandinavian skin left little to the imagination, like a permanent mood ring I couldn’t take off or even tan away. My father had never been one for handing out life advice when I was growing up, but he told me once that a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl with skin as fair as mine should stay clear from any vocations that made a profit by omitting truth. When I asked him why, he simply said, “Because lies don’t keep under skin as pale as yours.”

  “Although,” the sub continued unabashedly, “take it from me, there are a few six-year-olds just across the hall from your classroom who could use some writing pointers, too.”

  “What?” I asked, thoroughly confused by his abrupt change in topic.

  “The get-well-soon cards for Charlotte. Great idea, but I had to censor a few of my reactions while they dictated their messages to me.”

  I turned to face him fully. “Their messages to Mrs. Walker, you mean?”

  “Oh yeah.” He lowered his voice and leaned in. “One of them offered to loan Charlotte the rusty walker in her family’s garage—the one that didn’t sell in their annual yard sale. Another one asked if he could draw a robotic joint on her hip cast so she’d look more like a superhero. But my favorite one . . .” His pause focused my attention on his mouth. “Was regarding her undergarments.”

  “What? No way!” Three of my students who were being helped by Mrs. Dalton, Brighton’s resident librarian of more than twenty years, spun to look at me from four aisles over. I clamped a hand over my mouth. Oops.

  “Yes way,” he said teasingly. “One Miss Aurora Brown mentioned how her great-grandmother had to wear special underwear for old people, kind of like her baby brother’s pull-ups, but way bigger and way squishier.”

  A burst of giggles slipped through my lips.

  “Exactly,” he said through a full grin. “Now imagine if that same darling child drew a picture to match.”

  My shoulders continued to shake.

  “Te
achers,” came Mrs. Dalton’s tight voice from two shelves over. “We’re ready to move to the carpet for story time now.”

  I nodded and tugged at the hem of my navy cardigan, trying to regain composure. What Mrs. Dalton lacked in stature, she made up for in stern scoldings. I pinched my lips together, working to erase the image Joshua had created in my mind. Quietly, I ushered my students toward the square carpet where Mrs. Dalton sat on a tall, spindly chair, her feet dangling three inches above the floor.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Joshua doing the same with his students, only where I gave light guiding touches, he gave fist bumps and high fives. Given the sour line of Mrs. Dalton’s lips, she was not amused by his tactics. For some reason, this made me smile all the more. He certainly had his own way of doing things.

  “Hush now, students. It’s time for our weekly chapter reading of The Boxcar Children.”

  Miles Kennewick from my class waved his hand in the air, not waiting to be called on before he spoke. “Can we read something funner today?”

  Oh boy. Miles was a say-it-like-it-was type of kid.

  Mrs. Dalton closed the book and stared at him pointedly. “Funner is not a word, Miles. And we are continuing this series for the rest of the school year.”

  A handful of students groaned, and Miles blurted, “But your books aren’t like the books Miss Bailey reads to us. Hers are funny.”