by ID Johnson
Lots of teachers giggled at that, but someone across the room shouted out, “Does that mean we have until Thursday to flirt with Mr. Michaels?”
Cutter looked over and saw a plump, older woman, probably older than Mrs. Long winking at him. He had to look away, his eyes wide. He had not expected this.
“No, Mrs. Paine, it does not.” Mrs. Long had her hands on her hips, and her expression revealed that Mrs. Paine must be a resident prankster of some sort, a thorn in Mrs. Long’s side, but of the fun variety.
“None of y’all ever try to sexually harass me,” Joe shouted. “I’m just sayin’.”
That got a laugh out of everyone. “That’s ‘cause you’re married!” another woman shouted.
“Yeah, and I don’t look like GQ over here.” He gestured at Cutter with his thumb, but he was laughing.
“We love you, Coach!” That came from Ms. Owen, whose accompanying smile looked forced, as if she just wanted everyone to think she was nicer than the rest of them. Joe didn’t acknowledge her.
“All right, let’s bring it back together,” Mrs. Long said. “We have some great information coming to you today, courtesy of the GT department. Then, we’ll meet as teams before lunch. This afternoon, you’ll be back in here so that we can go over the schedule for the rest of the week and the teacher handbook updates. Okay? I’ll hand it over to our gifted and talented teacher then. Mrs. Cox?”
As a spunky little brunette practically jogged to the front of the room, Cutter noticed that Joe had his magazine back open and was obviously tuned out. He couldn’t quite blame him. Did this apply to physical education? Cutter tried to listen, but she was talking about Gardner’s Learning Styles, and Cutter had no idea what any of it meant. He returned his attention to the back of Ms. Roberts’s head. She had a pen in her hand and every once in a while, she’d take a note. Maybe he could ask her to explain all of this to him later on, if he thought it was something he needed to know. Would this information be pertinent in the first few weeks of school? He likely wouldn’t be here much past that, and if the stirring in his soul was accurate, neither would she.
The GT presentation was only supposed to last until 11:00, but it was almost 11:30 before Cutter made his way to Ms. Owen’s room for the fourth grade team meeting. He walked in to see she already had stacks of papers prepared on the table with each of their names on them. Sitting down in front of his stack, he glanced at the others. “Oh, you spell it R-U,” he muttered, noticing the writing on the stack across from him.
Ru sat down in the student’s chair, which she fit in much more comfortably than he did. “Yeah,” she replied, with a shrug.
“Is it short for anything?” He flipped through the papers in his stack, trying to seem nonchalant, but he really needed to know.
“No,” she replied, another shrug.
Cutter raised an eyebrow in her direction.
“It seems you’re not the only one with an unusual first name anymore,” Jane said, taking a seat at the head of the cluster of desks she was using as an office table. “Cutter, you also have a strange first name. Is there any significance behind it?” She was smiling widely, like a politician with an insincere sneer on her face.
“No, just a name,” he replied, taking a turn at shrugging himself.
“Oh, I thought maybe your parents were cattle ropers or something.” Jane laughed at her own little joke, but no one else did.
Mustering his most sincere face, Cutter said, “My parents didn’t name me.”
Jane’s smile faded and her eyes widened.
“I was raised by wolves. Antarctic wolves.”
The two women across from him began to giggle, and Jane seemed stuck between wanting to play it off and join in or being offended. Peer pressure won out and she began to giggle, though it sounded as fake as her eyelashes.
“We can’t all have plain Jane names,” Candice mumbled under her breath.
Something about the way she said it must’ve caught Ru off guard because she started to laugh, even though she was clearly trying not to, and she almost began to choke. Cutter didn’t know if he should chuckle or be concerned. Ru had one hand over her mouth and one across her midsection, attempting to control herself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she managed to squeak out.
“Very amusing,” Jane said, her face showing she felt it was nothing of the sort.
“You okay, there, Ru?” Cutter asked as she began to calm down.
“I’m fine.” She wiped a few tears from her eyes.
“You must have interesting parents, too,” he said, hoping Jane would give him a moment to dig a little deeper before she insisted on starting the meeting.
Ru was no longer laughing. “I guess you could say that.”
It seemed as if he might’ve hit a nerve. He pretended not to notice. “They live around here?”
She cleared her throat. “Uh… I don’t have a dad. My mom lives in Tarrytown.”
“Oh,” he said, thinking of a million follow up questions he probably couldn’t ask right now.
Once again, Candice had a muttered comment. “You’re nice to call Liddy that.”
Ru elbowed her, though not hard, and then turned her attention to Jane. “I have some papers for everyone, too.”
“Right. Well, let’s get started and we’ll see if we can fit that in when we get to what we’re going to be teaching the next few weeks.”
“Some of them are for learning stations and others are for classroom management,” Ru explained.
Jane either didn’t care or was too caught up in what she was about to say to acknowledge her. “Okay, let’s take a look at the curriculum. If you’ll turn to the stack of papers in front of you, you’ll see a colored map of our first nine weeks’ objectives.”
Cutter took a look at the stack of papers and tried to pretend like he had any idea what Jane was talking about. He was hopeful that his cover story would help. His resume said he’d been teaching fifth grade math before, so if he had questions about fourth grade reading, surely they would think that was natural, wouldn’t they? He hoped so. Otherwise, he was going to have to fake it, and a lot of kids were going to wish they had a different teacher. But then, they would soon enough.
Chapter 4
Ru pulled into her driveway a little after 6:00. The sun was starting to fade behind the horizon, and she was both exhausted and starving.
Pushing open the front door, she found Piper there to greet her. “Hello, kitty. I’m sorry. Mommy had to stay late at work to set up her classroom.” She bent down to scratch her pet beneath her chin, dropping her bags on the floor as she did so. She’d come back and take care of that later, but first she needed to make sure Piper had some food and water in her bowls.
Her cell phone rang as she was filling up the water dish. Glancing down at the name, she groaned. Should she take it now or put it off? “Better get it over with,” she mumbled, slogging back into the living room as Piper dug into her fresh bowl of food. “Hello?”
“Where have you been?”
Not even a greeting. Certainly no, “How was your first day back at work?” Dropping onto the couch, Ru said, “I’ve been working. Did you try to call me?” She was pretty sure she didn’t have any missed calls.
“I told you on Friday I needed you to call me as soon as you got home on Monday to talk about Melissa’s birthday party.”
“Right. I just walked in the door.” Her mother’s admonitions didn’t make much sense. Her first question implied she thought this was a landline, and Ru hadn’t been answering it until just this moment. But her second point made it seem like she’d been sitting there forever, not calling her. Just the illogical mind of one Liddy Brown.
“Don’t try to tell me you’ve been working all day, Ruin. I know better than that.”
The use of her full first name made Ru cringe. No one in the world called her that except her mother—and sometimes her sisters if they were angry. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked, hoping her voice
sounded cheerful somehow. She’d found that arguing with her mother was never a good idea, even when Ru was more than certain she was right. Facts in books didn’t stand a chance against the logic of Liddy.
“Melissa is coming in from New York on Friday, so I will need you at my house no later than 4:00 so that you can start decorating. It’s a surprise, so don’t mention anything to her.”
The second part wouldn’t be a problem because she never spoke to either one of her sisters unless she was forced to do so. “Mom, I don’t get off work until 3:45. I can leave straight from there, but it will take me close to half an hour to get to your house.”
“See if you can leave early. This is important.”
“So is my job.”
“Ruin, we’ve been planning this party for months! She’ll be thirty. That’s a very important year. You find a way to be here on time.”
Thankful that her mother couldn’t see her rolling her eyes, Ru said, “Fine. What do I need to bring?” Her mother began to rattle off a list, and five items in, Ru realized she’d need to write this all down. If she forgot something… it would be a problem. After the list was complete, Liddy launched into her plans for how to decorate. Ru listened, thinking, That’s what she must’ve meant by we’ve been planning for months. She’d been planning.
“Now, Danielle won’t be here until 6:00, but that can’t be helped. She has rehearsal.”
Sure, she can be late, but I can’t take time to drive there. “Okay.”
“I expect Melissa will arrive sometime about 7:00. I’ll need you to stay and clean everything up after the party, though. If you don’t, Melissa will try to do it, and that would just be ridiculous.”
Fighting the urge to mention everything her mother did or said was ridiculous, Ru said, “I can do that.” She didn’t have plans on Saturday anyway, unless she wasn’t finished setting up her classroom yet. “Anything else?”
“Don’t forget!” Her mother said it as if Ru was known for having short-term memory loss.
“I won’t.”
“Bye.”
Her mother disconnected the call, just like that—abrupt and cold, like most everything else she did where Ru was concerned. Ru tossed her phone across the couch and slipped out of her shoes. It was one of those days when her head was already spinning, and now, having to deal with Looney Liddy wasn’t helping any.
Piper popped up onto the couch, and she began to stroke her fur. “At least you love me,” she muttered as the cat nestled into her lap.
She knew it wouldn’t do any good to feel sorry for herself, but she often wondered what it would be like to have a mother who loved her. Sometimes her friends at work would get calls from their moms, or talk about going shopping on the weekends. Some of them said their mom was still their best friend. Ru had never had any of that. For as long as she could remember, it was quite clear that Liddy could hardly stand her. While she thought part of it might have something to do with Ru being accident prone, even before she started short circuiting appliances, Liddy treated her differently.
But then, she was different. By the time she’d joined the single mother’s family, she already had a five-year-old and a four-year-old. Her husband had walked out on her a few years before. God only knows why, Ru thought, reveling in her own sarcasm. Liddy’d said more than once that if she hadn’t been receiving money from the state, she’d toss Ru out on her rear.
With a sigh, Ru looked down at Piper and ran her hand across her fur. Even today, Cutter had asked about her name. “What kind of a name is Ru?” she asked aloud, and the cat tossed herself onto her back, looking for her belly to be scratched, oblivious to the sadness in her owner’s voice. “It’s the kind of name your mother gives you when you ruin everything.”
She could hardly explain that to Cutter, though. Thinking of him brought her back to other events of the day. How did someone so good looking, so charming, end up in Reaper’s Hollow? He was definitely proving to be a distraction for some of the other teachers, but Ru was focused on what Candice had mentioned. They did have some similar qualities. Hair coloring, eyes. Even the fact that they were both taller than average. Not knowing where you came from sometimes made it difficult to think about anyone romantically.
“Not that I need to be doing that,” she also said to the uninterested cat. “Can you imagine? Me with Cutter? Please.” She only received a purr in response. “Maybe he’ll ask Candice out.”
She stroked the cat a few more times before pulling herself up off of the second-hand, sage green sofa she’d found on Craigslist and heading into the kitchen, finally paying attention to her rumbling stomach. Cooking would be hard—she didn’t need to lose an appliance today—so she decided to make a sandwich and eat some leftover potato salad. She’d have to open the fridge, but the pot holders would make that doable.
“After this, I’m taking a nice, long, relaxing bath,” she said, staring down at her kitty. Ru took her plate and headed to the living room, thinking a mindless sitcom might help her to forget about her mother, her past, and the handsome new teacher across the hall. “I’m sure he’s not thinking about me,” she said, tearing off a piece of turkey and feeding it to Piper, who purred in agreement.
Cutter had stayed at work until after Ru left, watching discretely out the window as she made her way to her car. Sadly, she wasn’t the last to leave, and Cutter began to realize he’d had some misconceptions about public school teachers, but then, he’d never gone to public school, so he hadn’t really known what was typical.
Once she was in her car and out of the parking lot, he grabbed his lunchbox and headed out as well. The light had been off in his classroom for more than two hours. He wanted everyone to think he’d gone home. Several people had stopped by that afternoon, after the final meeting of the day, and he was getting tired of pretending to be interested in their lives. They were all nice people, but he wouldn’t be staying there long enough to get to know any of them.
He noticed Ru left the door to her classroom open and the light switch on when she left, though it had extinguished itself now, thanks to the motion detectors installed to help cut back on electricity costs. He wondered why she didn’t like to touch her door or her lights, though he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew.
Rider had sent him several more texts, and he’d even gotten a couple from Lyric, but since he was headed to their location now, he thought it a waste of time to respond. He’d talk to them in person in less than a half hour.
As he climbed into his Dodge Ram, he wondered how it could be possible that the one they’d been searching for all these years could actually have been right under their noses the whole time. Hopefully, someone on the team would’ve come up with an explanation. There had to be some sort of cloaking going on because when Cutter reached out to Ru mentally, it was as if she wasn’t even there. He should at least be able to pick up on her mental vibrations, even if she wasn’t aware enough to let him in.
Once he was out of Reaper’s Hollow, the roads began to wind through the woods, and he began to relax a bit. It was growing dark, but something about being out in the open country made him feel more alive. Not that the little town he’d recently relocated to was congested by any means, but the strain of being around so many people different than him was a bit tiring. He’d always felt more at home with his own kind and was looking forward to discussing what he’d learned with like-minded individuals who would potentially help him come up with a plan for how he should approach Ru. He knew he needed to handle the situation delicately.
The turnoff that led to his destination would be hard for someone with lesser eyesight to see, but he picked it up easily and made a right hand turn onto a gravel road that wound its way back to a clearing on a rolling hill. The house loomed in the distance, set against a backdrop of forest which continued to climb into the sky. They definitely needed to do some repairs on the colossal Colonial, but for now, it would do. Some of his friends had been surprised to see it was still standing.
Cutter pulled his truck in between Ivy’s and Rider’s cars and noticed Lyric’s motorcycle over beneath one of the trees. He took a moment to breathe in the stillness of nature before he climbed from his truck and headed to the house, realizing he’d be bombarded with questions the second his foot stepped on the parquet floor.
The foyer was empty, though, as was the living room. Cutter wandered toward the back of the house and found Lyric plating mounds of spaghetti for the rest of the team. “Hey! Look who’s here, just in time,” she said.
“He’ll always make it home in time to eat,” Rider jabbed.
“You’re one to talk.” Rider Michaels was well-built but had at least thirty pounds on Cutter. He was a bit of a brute.
Ivy Uriahs offered Cutter a plate, and he took it, thanking her. She smiled and fixed the final plate for herself as Cutter made his way to the table in the corner of the kitchen. The house had been renovated in the 1950s, but that meant most of the appliances were over sixty years old when they’d decided to set up basecamp here about a month ago. Cutter and Rider had ordered all new appliances and had the electric and plumbing checked over, but there was still plenty of work that needed to be done if they would be staying there long term.
Lyric Gabriels was digging into her spaghetti next to him as Cutter waited for Rider to pass the parmesan cheese. He tossed it across the table, literally, and Cutter caught it, shaking his head. He always seemed to do things the hard way.
“So, what did you find out?” Ivy asked, sitting at the end of the table between Cutter and Rider. “Do you think it’s her?”
Cutter hadn’t even taken a bite yet and already with the questions. “I’m not sure,” he said before twirling a bit of spaghetti onto his fork and shoveling it into his mouth.
Ivy and Lyric looked like they could’ve been sisters, even though they weren’t related at all. Both were tall and muscular, with Ivy having an inch on Lyric, who was almost six-foot. Lyric wore her pale blonde hair short and tinged with pink while Ivy’s cascaded down her back in long ringlets. She often pulled it up before she did anything too dangerous. The four of them had grown up together, so when they were given this assignment, Cutter thought it would be a great group to work with. So far, they hadn’t disappointed him. Working together closely had brought them to this location, and while Cutter was still having a hard time wrapping his mind around how he came to be sitting here, he was hopeful it would all make sense one day.