by Lia London
“Nik, tell me you don’t talk to your students like that. You’ll kill them.”
Nikki locked her classroom door and walked through the hall. With the students gone, the vastness of the quiet relaxed her, as did any call from her closest brother.
“Okay, brat. How’s this?” She made an angry face with matching gruff tone. “Whaddya want?”
Charlie chuckled. “Oh, I just thought I’d call to see how the big professional is doing.”
“Well, except for wearing mismatched shoes to school—”
“You didn’t!”
“You know I did!”
Charlie laughed. “Nik, I can’t believe they let you graduate middle school!” He sighed. “Seriously, though. How did your first day go?”
“It was yesterday. You missed it.” She released the clip from her hair and shook her tresses free.
“Well, I figured Mom got you yesterday.”
“That she did.”
“How many sentences before she asked about a man?”
“Maybe three. I think I blacked out.”
Charlie laughed, but a weighted silence followed, and Nikki stopped walking.
“What?”
“This is me talking, okay? Mom didn’t put me up to this.”
Nikki’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Just…I’m super proud of you, graduating with highest honors and landing a job straight up. That’s awesome.”
Tapping the back of the phone with her finger, Nikki waited for more. “But…?”
“No. No but. Just…” He sighed, and Nikki swept into the office to check her cubby for any last-minute memos. When it proved empty, she waved to the office staff and slid back out.
“But what, Charlie?”
“You’re finally really on your own now, you know?”
“I’ve had my own apartment for two years, Charlie.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a student any more. You’re like a real adult.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Nik, I just mean you can call the shots now. Don’t let Mom bully you, but…don’t let your fears bully you, either.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look, ever since Craig—”
“That was five years ago, Charlie. Over it.”
“Okay, if you say so. But just don’t give up on the fact that there are nice guys out there. Craig was great, but...”
Nikki nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see her. Craig had been her first love, and his move across the country had left a hole in her heart that none of her following male friends could fill. Why didn’t he ever call or write?
“You there, Nikki?”
“Yes, Charlie.”
“I love you, Nik. Take care of yourself. Meet some guys, and…you know, just be friends. I’ll come out there in a couple of weeks to see you.”
Nikki pushed open the back door with her shoulder. “I love you, too. Can’t wait to see you!” She hung up, smiling gratefully at the phone that connected her to the sane, loving voice in her life.
When she raised her eyes, Officer Ross was looking at her curiously, his head tilted to one side. “Have a good day, Mrs. Fallon.”
“Thanks, Officer Ross.” I sure like his voice. Nice and rich. She trotted lightly down the steps, thinking maybe Charlie’s advice wasn’t all bad. There might still be some nice guys around.
9~The Department Lunch Closet
Nikki ventured across the hall to find Gayle and two other teachers crowded around a tiny square table. Gayle reached behind her to a mini-fridge and pulled out a Pepperoni Pizza Lunchable. Tossing it on the table, she said, “Take a seat! Let’s hear all about it.”
“Uh, which ‘all about it’ do you mean?”
“I want to know why Officer Ross has to keep going to her room,” said a man who resembled a troll doll, but with a wide brown tie and green suit pants.
“Dusty, be nice,” said Gayle. “Nikki, you’ve met Greg Dustin, haven’t you? Ancient of days and crab-apple of your eye.”
Unsure of how to respond, Nikki smiled at him and sat down to the Lunchable.
“The cool Ms. F, I hear,” said the other woman, a pert but plump woman in her thirties or forties with short, spiky hair.
Nikki’s eyebrows popped up. “Really? I have a reputation?”
Dusty snorted. “Kristin is the Merry Sunshine to my Oscar the Grouch,” he said. “And yes, the reputation is out. You are the dreaded F-word. Fun. Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us.”
Kristin shook her head. “Dusty, just because cops only visit your class to remove the corpses who died of boredom…”
Nikki choked on a cracker, and Gayle laughed. “We just rib each other, Nikki. It’s all in good fun.” She leaned on her elbow and eyed Dustin. “Fun, Dusty. Try it sometime.” She looked back at Nikki. “He thinks if you teach about old, dead poets, you have to act like one.”
“The dead part,” added Kristin.
Dusty grunted and stuffed a pickle into his mouth. Somehow that seemed fitting.
“So how did I miss the fact you’re married?” asked Gayle, suddenly very chipper. “It didn’t come up in the interview.”
Ooops! I really don’t want to correct that rumor in front of strangers and look like I lied to my superior. Nikki swallowed hard and looked at a scratch in her fingernail polish. “Didn’t it?”
“I’m pretty sure it didn’t,” she said. “You’ll have to bring him to the faculty barbecue later this month. What’s his name?”
“What? What barbecue?” Nikki felt the heat rising in the room, fanned by guilt and a terrible capacity for lying.
“It was in the memo stack today,” said Kristin.
“Oh, that.” Nikki sagged and blinked away the memory of Coach’s note. “So, did I read correctly that the state standards tests are all taking place during English classes next month? That’s like a week of lost class time.”
“Welcome to the disposable department,” said Dusty. Gayle and Kristin nodded in agreement. Nikki gave him a questioning look, and he continued, “The principal basically believes that all kids need to be able to write is a resume and a business letter. All they need to be able to read is a financial news magazine article and the nutrition information on their breakfast cereal. Everything else we teach in our department is more or less useless in his eyes.”
“Dusty’s right about that one,” said Gayle.
Kristin bobbed her head, sipping a Super Big Gulp of something yellow. “Good luck teaching this year. Between the administrators, the in-services, the parent-teacher conferences, and the sick days, you’ll be lucky to get in a solid twenty weeks of actual teaching.”
“What? But I planned out the whole year!” I am, after all, a curriculum specialist, she thought.
“I guess you’ll just have to cut Twain,” said Gayle with a mock sigh.
“Sad, but true,” said Kristin, slurping the remains of her drink and letting out a healthy burp.
Dusty laughed and crumpled his brown paper bag with pasty fingers. “You picked the wrong subject to teach. Should’ve been a P. E. teacher.”
Another cracker attacked Nikki’s windpipe, and Gayle tossed her a box of Kleenex. “Oh, she gets in her running time,” she said with a wink. “Will is making sure of it.”
“Will again?” asked Kristin, shaking her head.
“What do you mean, ‘Will again?’ Will always,” said Gayle. “This is not to bruise your ego, Nikki, but if you’re wearing a bra and haven’t started receiving AARP pamphlets in the mail, Coach Will Carlin will chase after you.”
“It’s that first part that saves Louise Berrett in the art department,” said Kristin. “The AARP saves Gayle.”
“Har har,” droned Gayle. She glanced at her watch and swore lightly. “I just remembered I have to meet with a kid who wants to apply for yearbook staff. I’ll have to get your report later,” she said with a finger pointed like a gun at Nikki. “I’m kind of interested
about the frequency of cops in your classroom, too!” With that, she threw her purse over her shoulder and left.
“Officer Ross,” said Kristin. “Now there’s a nice guy. I think the kids don’t get into trouble with him around because they can’t stand the thought of him looking disappointed in them. The secretaries all have crushes on him, but he says he’s saving himself for Miss Right. I’d go for him if I wasn’t already blissfully married.”
“Yeah,” said Nikki vaguely.
The door opened again, and Will looked in. “Ah, there you are!” he beamed. His intoxicating cologne wafted in. Kristin, whose face was hidden from his view, crossed her eyes and made a gag face. Dusty just stood up and brushed past him to leave.
“Hi. Did you get more of my mail? Tampering with it is illegal, you know,” said Nikki with an uncharacteristic bite to her tone. Her ears burned with embarrassment as she thought of his note.
“No, no. No more mail,” he said, crouching down between Kristin and Nikki and resting his elbows on the table for balance. “I actually wanted to talk to you about David Pembroke.”
Nikki avoided eye contact by looking down, which was worse. His muscular thighs strained at his jeans. She closed her eyes. “Never heard of him.”
“He’s in your American Lit class next period.”
“Oh, that David.” She puzzled for a moment. “No, I still didn’t know who you’re talking about because I have yet to memorize many names. Pretty much only the brilliant kids and the obnoxious ones left impressions, so he must be somewhere in the middle.”
“David’s my starting varsity running back.”
“He must be very proud,” cooed Kristin.
“He is,” said Coach. “But he’s not very…”
Kristin tapped Nikki’s shoulder. “I bet Will is here to beg you to go easy on him so he doesn’t get put on academic probation. Am I right, Will?” She said it with a lilting voice that reeked of patronization.
Will expelled a burst of air and stood up. Nikki tried not to watch each passing part and reprimanded herself for failing. Seriously, why does he have to be so very delicious? Like a poison truffle.
“I’m not saying inflate his grades,” said Will, raising a hand. “Just—”
“He’s saying inflate his grades,” said Kristin. “Riverview is poised for a championship this year in two different sports.” She gathered her things and left as the bell rang to announce five minutes before class started.
Nikki rose and Will took a step back to let her through to the door. “Don’t raise his grades artificially,” he said. “Just…be aware he may need some extra tutoring.”
Acutely aware of being alone with him in the small room, Nikki reached for the handle, but he intercepted her hand.
“If you ever need to stay after school to help David…or anything.”
She felt her breath catch. Does he really want to help the kid, or…?
Pressing her lips into a firm line, Nikki broke free and grabbed the doorknob. “I’ll keep that in mind, but my husband doesn’t like me working late.”
10~Tiger Frame Sunglasses
“I cannot tell you how nice it is to have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around something happening at Riverview. I mean, I love my job, but it consumes me!”
“Uh-huh.” Janna squinted and pouted at herself in the mirror before switching sunglasses for a more a blingy pair.
Nikki shuffled her feet, trying to work off excess energy. “It’s exhausting, but not physically, so then I have all this energy. I feel like dancing.”
“Now, you’re talking!” Janna stood straighter and blew a kiss at her reflection.
“Not on a school night.”
Janna tapped her sunglasses. “I’m talking about the sunglasses. Even I don’t go clubbing on a Wednesday night!”
“This is the first time I’ve been at the mall when it wasn’t swamped with teenagers.” Nikki grabbed a pair of white-framed sunglasses and put them on.
“Big surprise. You never come at all.” She frowned. “Don’t even try to wear those. Go gold or black.”
“Oh, I’m just goofing around.” Nikki pulled off the white frames and put on a sequined tiger stripe pair. “Oooh, now I could go prowling in these.”
Janna laughed. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m a wild thing, don’t you know?” Nikki pantomimed as if she were a slinking jungle cat.
“Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to see you?”
“There’s no kids here.”
“Your boss then.”
Nikki blew her hair off of her face with a big puff. “If he doesn’t think I’m a lost cause by now, I’m probably safe. I can’t believe how many protocol blunders I’m making. Too chummy with the kids, not schmoozing enough with the administrators.”
“You’re young!” Janna tossed her arms in the air. “Be free!”
Nikki roared playfully.
Janna grabbed Nikki’s collar and pulled her in close. “You’re also attracting the attention of the guy across the way.”
“What? Who?” Nikki spun, horrified and stared across the fake ferns and koi fountain.
“In the salon. The guy getting his hair cut.”
Nikki walked out into the thoroughfare, careful to keep herself behind the greenery. Peeking over the rim of the sunglasses, she searched the faces of the clients. Only one man. “Oh. My. Gosh!” She turned and ran back behind the accessory kiosk, dragging Janna with her.
“It is your boss?”
“Worse.” Nikki buried her face in Janna’s shoulder. “It’s Officer Ross, the campus cop. He catches me being weird all the time!”
Janna chuckled. “Like that’s hard.” She lifted Nikki’s head off her shoulder and peeked around the kiosk. “He’s kinda tubby.”
Nikki shook her head. “No, he’s not.” Joining Janna in a casual glance, she said, “He’s just wearing that smock thing. Everyone looks like a tent in those.” She put the sunglasses back on the rack. “So, did he really see me?”
“Yep.”
“Do you think he knew it was me?”
“I bet you’ll find out tomorrow.”
“So, did you end up getting the tiger frames?”
Nikki groaned and rolled up her car window. Officer Ross was leaning on her door, peering in at her with a wide grin. His mouth dropped open with surprise at her move, but he recovered quickly and opened the door for her. “Because I thought the black ones were better.”
“What is it about you that makes me act like a complete idiot if you’re within a certain radius?”
Ross let out a belly laugh. “Not at all. Life was boring before you came along.”
Nikki couldn’t help noticing he didn’t say, Life here was boring. What did that mean about his life off campus? She glanced up at him, daring a flirtatious eyebrow to rise. “You must not have much of a life.” She slid out of the car, aware that this was her shortest skirt.
His smiling eyes stayed honorably on her face. “Eastmont’s not all that exciting.”
“Aren’t you a native of this bustling metropolis?” Is my voice lilting?
“Nope. I’m originally from the capital.”
Nikki stood and shut the door. He backed up a step to give her space. “Well what brought you from the big city to little ol’ Eastmont?”
“The job.”
“There weren’t police jobs in the city? You could be doing big time investigations.”
For a fleeting moment, his face darkened. “I wanted to work where I could protect kids.”
Nikki felt something inside her bubble. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Not very ambitious, I know. I hear that all the time.” He looked away, and Nikki saw pain in the set of his jaw.
“I think that’s really cool. What’s more ambitious than taking care of the next generation?” Her hand went up to rest on his shoulder instinctively before she realized she had touched him. Blushing, she tu
gged at a curl behind his ear. “They missed a spot.”
“What—?” He breathed out a laugh, and she used the time to retrieve her hand. “Thanks. You’re the first woman over sixteen to say so.”
Nikki furrowed her brows skeptically. “That’s crazy.” She opened the back door of her car and grabbed the stack of papers and folders. “It’s awesome that someone cares about these kids. Obviously, I do!”
“You sure do.” His smile spread wider. “I bet you don’t even complain about the pay.”
Slamming the door shut, Nikki eyed him. “Are you kidding? I’ve been making jo-jos for the last four years. I feel rich now.”
“Yeah?”
“Besides, who goes into teaching for the money? You do it to make a difference, right?” She tilted her head towards the building and began walking.
Ross followed with easy strides. “That’s right. Some things are worth more than a big paycheck.”
She raised a finger. “Friendship.”
“Service.”
“Honor.”
“Happiness.”
Ross sighed and stopped walking so that Nikki barely heard him add, “Love.”
11~The Farmer and the Goth Girl
Two young men sauntered in, their cowboy hats proudly contrasting with all the designer jeans and shoes in the room. Adam Irving and Cody Dean didn’t subscribe to the campus hero worship of the football players.
As Nikki passed out the worksheet for an upcoming essay, she saw Adam cram his hat further on his head.
Josh, one of the star football players, poked Adam’s shoulder. “What’s the matter, Tex? Do you need someone to read the instructions to you?”
“Shut up, Josh.” Adam’s voice was quiet, like the hum of an electric fence.
“Is this essay going to be too hard for you?”
“Shut up, Josh.”
“What’s the prob—?”
Adam spun in his seat and thrust a finger in Josh’s face. “Some of us are up at 4 a.m. every morning working, and then after school, working for another five hours. If I have a lot of homework, I don’t get to sleep!” He turned to face the front, his voice a low growl. “Not all of us get to play video games and hang out at the pizza place.”