by T. N. King
Oh, my gosh! Look what Harrison had turned her into, a paranoid pansy not trusting anyone who had been just a bit kind to her. This was exactly the kind of thoughts he would want Miranda to have. He wanted her to be scared and for her to isolate herself from everyone. Miranda let out a groan. Lately she felt that she had to pick apart every single interaction to see if underneath the surface there was any malicious intent and she was growing tired and wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep her guard up.
Miranda pulled up to Central Elementary School and parked her car. She rushed out just as the teachers were coming out with their students.
“Mommy, Mommy!”
Miranda knelt down and held out her arms as Elise her five-year-old daughter ran into them. She laughed with joy as she saw Elise’s curly pigtails bob as she ran. Miranda wrapped her arms around Elise’s tiny pink jacket and breathed in her sweet scent.
“Mommy missed you pumpkin.” Miranda picked Elise up and carried her to the car. “How was your day at school? Learn anything interesting?”
“Today we learned about caterpillars and how they make chrysalises and turn into butterflies,” Elise explained excitedly as Miranda opened the car door and hooked her into her car seat.
“What’s this now!” Miranda exclaimed over excitedly.
“Butterflies turn into caterpillars! I mean caterpillars turn into butterflies!” Elise responded emphatically.
Miranda smiled as she got in the driver’s seat and buckled her seat belt. She looked in the rearview mirror at Elise who was chewing on one her pigtails. Miranda laughed to herself and then slowly pulled out of the school’s parking lot.
These were her favorite moments of being a parent. These tiny silly small moments where she got to leave all craziness of her job behind and just got to live in the present with her daughter. “Did you make any new friends today?”
Elise shook her head. “There was this new boy Louis, but he was kind of quiet.”
“Well. maybe he’s just scared being at a new school. He probably needs a new friend more than anyone.”
Elise considered this while continuing to chew on a pigtail and then nodded. “What about you Mommy? Did you make any new friends?”
Miranda immediately thought of Liam and blushed. “Um…I think so…” Miranda tailed off.
“You think so!” Elise giggled. “You don’t know?”
Miranda for the hundredth time that day thought of her introduction to Liam. Everything about him seemed genuine and she had felt a really connection with him. She wanted to be friends with him. Honestly, she wanted to be more than friends with him and she wasn’t going to let Harrison scare her away from this possible good thing that had walked into her life. “Yes, you know what. I made a new friend today too. His name is Liam.” Miranda decided that this time she wasn’t going to embrace fear. This time she was going to embrace strength. “And like your new friend Louis, he seemed a little shy too.”
Elise considered this as she twirled one pigtail thoughtfully. “That’s good Mommy. I’m glad you have a new friend too.”
They say in silence for a while and Miranda began to think of what she was going to cook for dinner.
“Is that Daddy’s car?”
All of a sudden all the hair on Miranda’s neck stood up. She felt her stomach drop instantly. “Where do you think you see Daddy’s car?”
“Behind us,” Elise said offhandedly.
Miranda looked in her review Mirror and several cars behind her she saw a trace of a black Jeep Cherokee the same exact model that Harrison drove. “Well a lot of people have that car, so it could be anyone.” Miranda tried to keep the fear out of her voice so as not to scare Elise, but inside she was quaking with fear. “Tell me more about your day?” she urged trying to keep the tone light.
“Well, Miss Neman said that my painting was really good.”
“Oh, that’s great honey!” Miranda was half listening while keeping an eye on the black jeep in the rear view mirror. It was still a couple cars back following them. Maybe she was just being paranoid. Maybe it wasn’t Harrison spying on them. But something in the back of her mind wouldn’t shut up. What if it were? What did he want? Had he followed them before?
Miranda’s usual turn for her home wasn’t for another couple of miles. In a split second decision, she decided to through the jeep off her tail and took a sharp, unexpected left turn down a small residential street where there was no traffic.
“Wheeeeee!” Elise cheered in response to Miranda’s sharp quick turn.
Miranda put her foot on the gas a sped down the residential street. She looked back in the review mirror to see if the black jeep was following. She looked down at the speedometer she was going 45mph in a 30mph zone. A flash of guilt bolted through her but she kept going. “What was your picture of, Elise?”
“Where are we Mommy?”
Miranda look back in the review mirror and saw Elise looking out the windows at the houses whizzing by. Then a shiny dark object caught her eye in the rear view mirror. The black jeep had taken the turn too. Miranda’s heart thudded in her chest. She put her foot on the gas and sped up even more trying to put as much distance as possibly between her and the black jeep. “Mommy is just taking a short cut home. What was your picture of honey?” Her eyes scanned the road ahead. She saw and intersection coming up. She sped up towards it and took a tight left turn down another, even smaller residential street.
“Oh, it was a unicorn,” Elise muttered looking at her feet.
Miranda could tell by Elise’s voice that her daughter knew something was wrong. She quickly glanced backed and saw a mixture of confusion and slight worry in Elise’s eyes as tapped her two feet together, nervously.
Miranda looked back in the review mirror. There was no black jeep. She let out a huge breath that she was holding in side. She felt her gut twist inside with frustration. It’s because of this paranoia that Harrison was creating in her that made her daughter frightened now too. Harrison could do whatever he wanted to her, but when it started to affect Elise’s life that’s when Miranda really lost it. She was at a point where she was either going to snap or snap back and she really hoped she was strong enough to do the latter of the two options. “Hey how about we get ice cream sweat pea?” Miranda playfully posed, hoping to get Elise out of her head and make her forget this little car chase.
“Really?” Elise looked up excitedly, joy filling her eyes.
“Yeah, it feels like and ice cream day doesn’t it?”
“Yeah!” Miranda smiled at the excitement in Elise’s voice. But even with all of that she couldn’t help but double check the review mirror one more time to see if the black jeep was there.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“And as you remember, the upstairs is the English literature and history classrooms,” Caroline explained as they turned at the top of the stairs.
It felt pretty surreal to Liam that he was back again E.B. High and even more surreal that he actually accepted the assistant coach position, but when it came to Caroline, she usually always got her way with him and in the end, things turned out well for him. “That’s different. I always used to have math up here with Mr. Lambert,” he paused for a second before going on, “Well my math class was up here. I usually wasn’t.”
“Not a surprise. It was up here for many years.” Caroline laughed, remembering something. “You should have seen the reaction when I announced the move. You would have thought it was the first horseman of the Apocalypse trotting through the school.”
“Why bother then?”
“It makes more sense to have the humanities and the sciences grouped together. Both groups are taught by similar people, and use similar resources. If students are to succeed, we need to help them set the stage for that success.”
Liam nodded, that was Caroline through and through. She’d always had a think for using resources properly. He wasn’t sure if it was something she came by naturally, or if it came from her husband, the business
man. She’d always said that using resources badly was the same as not using them at all, that you might as well throw everything away at that point.
“Have you seen your mother lately?”
Liam rolled his eyes.
Caroline saw it and shook her head. “You know how important it is to her, she just wants to know you’re all right. And it’s important for your stability too.”
Liam shook his head, “I don’t know. It sometimes feels like I’m in the way. Her two real kids are so perfect, and I’m so not.”
“No one is perfect Liam, it’s dangerous to think otherwise. And you do your mother a real disservice by talking like that. You are just as much her child as the other two. And besides, aren’t they adopted too?”
“I know…” He sighed, running a hand through his dark hair. “It’s just hard sometimes.”
Caroline gave him a small, fond, smile. “You make it hard on yourself sometimes.”
“That does sound like something I would do.” He started a laugh, but it trailed off weakly.
“I’m glad you decided to take the job here,” Caroline said as she grabbed Liam’s biceps and gave it a tender squeeze. She looked warmly into Liam’s eyes.
“I love how you make it seem like I had a choice,” Liam scoffed.
“You always have a choice Liam, you also know that I’m always right.”
“Well, it just temporary, so…” Liam caught Caroline raising her eyebrows in a ‘will see’ kind of gesture and he shook his head at himself and his own weakness. All of a sudden, one of the pictures along the wall caught his eye and he turned to look at it.
The wall, all along that hallway, was lined with the pictures of every graduating class the school had ever had, starting in 1964, when the school first opened to last year. As he walked past the frames of pictures, he could see the hairstyles change, and remembered how some of the girls would gather around to laugh at some of them. Without even thinking about it, he stopped at 2008. One picture jumped out at him, a young man with dark hair, and eyes that seemed more lost than angry, which was strange because all he could remember from that time was the angry. It was his own picture, and it didn’t even smile back at him. It didn’t come as too much of a surprise, he didn’t remember smiling much at anyone, or having much to smile about.
He knew some of the names, of the girls he’d liked, and the guys he’d fought, but couldn’t put those names to any of those pictures. If he were honest, he didn’t actually recognize any of the faces, besides his own. It was like those pictures belonged to totally different people than the ones he went to school with.
The only thing he could remember was how mad he’d been. Angry at himself, angry at his mother, the new one and the old one, furious with everyone who’d been around him, for seeming to not care how enraged he really was. All he’d wanted was someone to notice how much he needed help, but no one did, and the worse his darkness got. It was only until Caroline stepped in, when he finally realized that someone was there to help him. Looking at the picture now, it all started coming back.
All teenagers felt like the world was against them, but it seemed like for him, that was true. Losing the molesting stepfather was no real loss, but being taken away from his mother had hurt. She’d been a drunk, sloppy and whining, but she was his, probably the only thing that really had been his, and losing her was like having the ground pulled out from under him.
Even after the adoption, he could never be sure it wouldn’t happen again. It made it so hard to concentrate on anything else. If he hadn’t met Caroline, where would he be now? Probably jail, or lying in the gutter with the other drunks, or dead. Somehow, she’d seen through the drug dealing and the fighting to find something worth saving. Liam had no idea how she’d found it, or what she’d seen. Even now, he just couldn’t see in himself, whatever it was she had, it was just enough to know that she had. If she wanted to waste her time with him, that was her problem not his.
A soft hand resting on his shoulder pulled him out of his thoughts.
Caroline watched him as he turned away from the pictures, blinking his eyes rapidly, as if the hall lights had suddenly become too bright for him. Her lips were moving, but it was hard to hear what she was saying. Giving his head a small shake, he turned to look at her again, the sound finally coming through with her words.
“Are you all right?”
He thought about the question for a moment, thinking about the answer. Was he all right? Was anyone really all right? “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Are you ready to keep going?” She checked the slim watch around her wrist. “It’s getting close to the time to meet Harrison. You’ll be more comfortable there I think.”
“Then let’s go.”
They went back to walking through the halls, finished the tour of the new additions, they were looking for the coach’s office. It was a room they both knew he could find in his sleep, but he let her show him around. It was nice to walk with her like this, to talk about how things were now. His entire body felt like it was getting too tight, like all these memories coming back to him were filling him up. Any minute now, he was going to explode from the pressure, he could feel it radiating off his body in waves, filling the hallway. Caroline was talking again, but it was still so hard to focus on her words. The sound of his heart and the rushing blood was so loud in his ears, it became hard to concentrate on anything else. When he could catch the words, it sounded like she was talking about the school, giving him all kind of facts and bits of information that seemed pointless at first, but in the end made it easier to listen and this was probably why she was doing it. Giving him something he could hang on to that didn’t require him to really pay attention. He could just use the sound of her voice, to pull him back.
“I’m hoping that now we can really help students prepare for life. You know better than most that every student needs different things to succeed. For some it’s academic, for some it’s more personal. They have problems in life they can’t solve alone, and for whatever reason, aren’t able to solve at home.”
“And some people have problems in all those areas.”
“Your struggles are what gave me the impetus to make these changes. To make people more aware of what they need.”
Liam wondered if he should be feeling flattered, the whole way this school was set up, was because of her experience with him. Instead, the whole thing left him feeling numb. What did any of this have to do with him? She wanted him here to work with the coach, why did the rest of this matter? Why did any of it matter? Why did she even want him here? To work with the coach, he got that much, but why? There had to be someone around who was better than him who could do this, someone who wouldn’t mess up the kids just by talking to them. He knew from long experience that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, but he really needed to convince her that this idea wouldn’t work. She would just have to find someone less broken to do what she wanted.
“How long has it been?” she asked quietly, breaking through their silence, probably noticing he wasn’t really listening to her words.
Liam shrugged. “A while, probably.” It had been a while. He stopped, trying to think of who it was, all he could remember about her was her white, blonde hair, and that she had been surprisingly flexible, putting her hands flat on the floor, when she bent over. He’d had her a few times before, since they got along well together. “It was that girl Sarah, I guess,” he answered, the name suddenly coming to him.
Caroline shook her head slowly. “That was over a year ago.”
He figured she would know exactly when it was, she’d probably known the answer before even asking the question, but she always asked, and always waited for his answer. Their relationship had changed over the years, but she still gave him ways to be in control.
Liam slowed his steps until he had stopped walking completely. “Yeah, I guess so. That was before I shipped out this last time.”
“That’s too long. I’ll find you someone quickly then. Y
ou know what happens if you wait too long. Why didn’t you tell me it’d been so long? I don’t want you to get too close to the edge.”
“I thought it would be okay.” He shrugged. “It hasn’t really been a problem.
Caroline shook her head again. “How can you not see it? Everything about you is radiating tightness, your voice, your body. You’ve been clenching your hands almost the entire time you’ve been here. You need to let out your control, you need to use to it.”
Liam looked down at his hands he hadn’t noticed he’d been clenching them. He did notice how everything seemed to be sharper, everything seemed to affect him more deeply, but he hadn’t thought that was why. Forcing himself to keep his hands open, he let them drop to his side. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
They started walking again, Liam’s head turned, watching the classroom doors slide by. The sea of student faces blending into one another, until they were just a big blur. Until suddenly, they weren’t. One person, one face grabbed his eye, making him stop and stare. It was Miranda’s classroom. Her back was to the door, as she pointed to something on the wall, probably the board, the skirt moving around her as she moved. She bounced gently on the balls of her feet, waving a hand at a student, before going back to the board, whatever it was they were talking about, it was clearly exciting to her.
“Someone else,” Caroline growled behind him.
He couldn’t hear it clearly. It was like her voice was coming from far away.
All he could see, all that mattered, was that woman standing on the other side of that door. He wanted to open it, to hear what she was talking about, to let the sound of her voice drift over him, and fill up all his empty spaces. It seemed like there was some kind of light, shining down on her, making everything about her seem a little golden, almost radiant. For the first time he really understood that word, radiant and it fit her perfectly. Every time she turned towards the door, he could see the smile on her face, and see how it sometimes seemed sad, probably the problem she’d mentioned to Caroline before. It made her look like the woman on those old paintings his mother liked. It almost enhanced her beauty, as much as he wanted to wipe the sadness away. It made him want her even more. Without even knowing anything about her, he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything else. He could stand there watching her forever, and he would have, if Caroline hadn’t grabbed his shoulder, making him jump in surprise.