September Lessons (A Year in Paradise Book 9)

by Hildred Billings

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Keep Up With Hildred

  September Lessons

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  September Lessons

  A Year In Paradise #9

  Hildred Billings

  BARACHOU PRESS

  September Lessons

  Copyright: Hildred Billings

  Published: September 10th, 2019

  Publisher: Barachou Press

  This is a work of fiction. Any and all similarities to any characters, settings, or situations are purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Keep up with Hildred’s latest releases by joining her mailing list! Behind the scenes, first looks, and even some free snippets!

  September Lessons

  Chapter 1

  CARRIE

  What was the only thing worse than starting a new school year in a new town?

  Doing it senior year.

  That’s what Carrie Sage thought as she stood in the isolated parking lot of Clark High School. Although the number of signs asking everyone to please refrain from smoking on public property did not deter her as she lit up and sat on the hood of her car, she minded her manners when a man in collared shirt and dress slacks walked by with a briefcase in hand and jacket slung over his arm. He had all the markings of a teacher. Possibly the principal. Carrie had been sizing them up as they rolled up in their Fords, Hondas, and Toyotas, some old and beat up and others straight off the truck lot – and complete with hunting racks in the back. The other high school students who had their own vehicles likewise lingered in the parking lot, squealing in delight at the sight of one another and bemoaning the fact they still didn’t get decent phone reception out there. It’s pretty messed up to have a school out in the middle of nowhere. The school buses chugging by served “Paradise Valley-Roundabout School District” and to accommodate the towns that were seven miles apart, the district long ago decided to build the new high school on a parcel of flat land right smack dab in between them.

  Which meant nobody could damn well walk to school.

  Suited Carrie fine. She had packed up her meager things into her car a month ago and drove from Alabama to Oregon, taking in the sights and smells of middle America as she kept her cigarettes out the window and the wind in her hair. Her parents didn’t want her no more? Fine. She’d redo senior year in a place that was more suited to her tastes. Luckily for her, her aunt and uncle had offered to take her in so she could complete high school. As long as she got a job, anyway. Even luckier? Her uncle was good friends with the owner of Paradise Pizza and agreed to give Carrie a trial run a couple days a week to get her started.

  You know, in case I mess up, like I always do.

  Carrie knew she was different from her new schoolmates before meeting a single one. Oh, she knew all about the area’s reputation as a haven for the gays. Why do you think I moved here? Don’t have no cares about that! That wasn’t what set her apart from the hormone-riddled fifteen-year-old freshmen starting a new journey toward adulthood. Or her fellow seniors who giggled about ruling the school before they had the chance to think about college. No, what set Carrie apart had nothing to do with the color of her skin, the sexuality she was born with, or where she came from.

  I’m the oldest one here.

  Granted, she was “only” nineteen, but Carrie knew how it looked when the new girl at school was already a year older than the oldest senior. Everyone would whisper that she was held back a year, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Carrie had been on track to graduate on time back in Alabama. Before she was involved in a big enough scandal that got her expelled before Christmas break and ended up so pissed at the world that she didn’t bother going back to school until her parents gave her an ultimatum. The solution was hilariously simple once her aunt agreed to take her in and enroll her in the local high school. It was either that or get my GED. I didn’t survive three and a half years at my old school for a GED, though. Carrie was stubborn like that. As much as she hated being a nineteen-year-old Southerner sitting on the hood of her car on the first day of school – in Oregon, of all places – she would rather do that than attend GED classes back in Alabama. Especially if it meant living with her parents or suffering through two part-time jobs to afford a room in somebody’s house.

  “Hello, there.” A woman in an ivory white sundress stood a few feet away from Carrie’s car. “I’ll pretend I don’t see that cigarette in your hand and instead ask if you’re one of the new students we’re expecting today.”

  Her sweet voice didn’t sway Carrie, who had known plenty of small-town schoolteachers who were cherry sweet on the outside but sour as sin inside. This lady would be no different.

  “You a teacher?” Carrie smashed her cigarette beneath her old, worn Adidas shoes. Her uncle had quipped that she better upgrade to Nikes if she wanted to be taken seriously in northern Oregon. Carrie hadn’t understood it until she saw the million Nike billboards on the highway. Something about Portland.

  The woman tilted her head with a knowing smile. “I’d correct your grammar, but I save that for the classroom. Who’s your homeroom?”

  “Don’t you mean who’s my homeroom teacher?”

  “Something like that.”

  Carrie snorted. “Somebody named Mrs. Cooper. Math. First thing in the dang morning.”

  “Senior, huh? You must be Ms. Sage. I look forward to seeing you for third period English.”

  “So you are a teacher. Either that or a really old teacher’s assistant.”

  “These days, you can never tell, huh?”

  Carrie didn’t let her amusement show, lest this teacher think they were now buddy-buddy. “First bell hasn’t rung yet, right? So I’ve got time.”

  “You know where the classroom is?”

  “I’m pretty resourceful, and this school is the size of a shoebox. Think I’ll be okay.”

  “Like I said, see you for third period English. Pardon me, I have freshmen first period, and I fully expect at least one to cry.”

  Was that sarcasm? Or did freshmen really cry on the first day of school in these parts?

  The bell rang. Students rushed inside. Carrie slid off the hood of her car, made sure everything was locked, and secured her backpack over her shoulders. She calculated that she had about five minutes to throw things in her locker and get to her first class at a new school. How was that for first period math?

  Carrie knew what would happen as soon as she walked down the junior-senior hallway. She was new. Nobody recognized her. From the moment she turned the corner and looked for locker #27, her fellow Clark High students whispered in her direction. When Carrie stood in front of her locker on the senior side of the hall, the whispers turned to shouts of excitement. A new kid! On the first day of school! A new senior! What were the odds?

  It would have been funny (or annoying,) but Carrie got it. She anticipated it. She was from rural America like these kids, after all. Whether
Alabama or Oregon, not much changed when a new kid showed up on the first day of school. We used to look around the halls on the first day every year, hoping to see unfamiliar faces. The media depicted huge high schools that bullied the new kids, but it wasn’t like that in these super small towns at all. Not when kids were eager for new friends. It was like The Hunger Games, man. As soon as we heard there was a new kid, the boys gathered their wits and the girls prepared to pounce, depending on the gender of the student. If a new girl walked into their classroom, the few friend groups that had chiseled out over the years would take turns pitching their circles, hobbies, and boasting about who lived where, all in the hopes of attracting the new girl into their fold. Social circles were easy enough to find in these small schools. Kinda hard to ignore kids when there were only twenty of you in a class. But true friendship? Great girlfriends or boyfriends that really matched your personality? That was way harder. Friendships that blossomed in these small schools weren’t usually founded on personalities and interests. They were relationships of convenience, because being friends with someone you tolerated but had nothing in common with was better than being alone, and that was the only alternative when twelve girls sat in your class and planned a sleepover.

  Except that was more common in middle school, maybe. By the time these kids made it to senior year, they had become so set in their ways that a new kid might be taking over their turf, so to speak. Good thing I’m not a kid, then. Carrie may have recently turned nineteen that past July, but after everything she had been through, she liked to think she was more mature than the average high schooler. For God’s sake, she was the age of majority. She had already voted. She bought her own cigarettes instead of paying someone else to do it or bumming them off her older friends. Some of her acquaintances back home had already shown up in adult videos at this point in their lives.

  Everyone in that hallway looked like a baby.

  Carrie grabbed the same binder she had used for the rest of her high school career and followed half the seniors into a room at the end of the hall. Mrs. Cooper’s Math Room was illuminated with neon-colored paper cut into the shapes of numbers and letters commonly found in algebra. What is this? Kindergarten? Carrie stood by the door while everyone else sat with their friends or did logic-gymnastics to get out of sitting next to that one kid who embarrassed them eight years ago. Carrie would sit wherever there was room once the dust settled.

  So happened that was three rows back, between a boy with tremendous acne he seemed to give no shits about…

  And a girl with hair as dark as a goth’s soul.

  Hello there. The girl said something to her friend in front of her before flipping open a fresh notebook and scribbling something at the top of the first page. Her fluid movements held the grace of a dancer who didn’t want to forget her daily practice. The soft flutter of her eyelashes highlighted the cheekbones and the curls hanging like dainty spirals from her head. Her makeup was noticeable, but not garish. A little blush. A touch of eyeliner. A subtle hue on her lips that would probably keep her from too much trouble with authorities. Not like Carrie, who either went bare-faced or overdid it so much that her own mother called her a Jezebel.

  Lesbian Jezebel, here I come… ahem, assuming she’s almost eighteen… Yeah, dating got more complicated when you were one year over the age of majority and all of your classmates were still seventeen.

  “Hey,” Carrie said, folding her arms over her binder and flashing her neighbor a smile. “I’m Carrie. I’m new here. Anything… uh… you can tell me about the old lady up there?”

  She was met with a curious gaze that neither judged her nor sized her up. “New girl, huh?” They were soon drowned out by Mrs. Cooper flipping over her attendance sheet and calling out everyone’s names. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn who she now went to school with, Carrie continued to stare at her neighbor like she was the perfect princess of one’s dreams. “Cool. Math first period is gonna suck, though.”

  “Christina Rath!” called Mrs. Cooper.

  The girl jerked upright. “Present!” She bent back over her notebook and scribbled something in the margin. Carrie continued to stare at her out of the corner of a blurring eye.

  “…Carrie! Carrie Sage!”

  Half the class looked in her direction. Caught daydreaming, Carrie sat up and looked the old woman at the front of the room in the eye. “Present,” she dryly said, before flipping open her binder and double-checking the existence of her calculator.

  Mrs. Cooper moved on to the next person on the alphabetical list. Meanwhile, someone poked Carrie between the shoulder blades.

  She whipped her head around, elbow falling over the back of her chair. Was this it? Was when the hazing began?

  To be fair, though, the girl looking back at Carrie didn’t appear to be someone capable of hazing. At least not physical hazing. Straw-colored hair drooped past a long face dotted with two big, brown eyes. A brown and white plaid shirt clung to a wiry frame that did nothing for the girl’s figure, not that Carrie cared about that. She may have been no Christina, but she wasn’t Quasimodo, either.

  “You’re wasting your time,” the stranger said.

  Mrs. Cooper picked up a white board marker and squeaked her name at the front of the room. “Call me Mrs. Coop for all I care, but please do not call me Patricia. Out there in the real world, you will need to pay respect to your elders!” Carrie knew she should leave a good impression at her very first class at a new school on the other side of the country, but she was too intrigued by what the girl behind her had said.

  “Wasting my time, huh?”

  The girl gestured her head to Christina, who continued to scribble in her brand-new math notebook. “She’s straight.”

  In all of her life, Carrie Sage had never been found out so quickly. Granted, this was Paradise Valley, where everyone was assumed gay until proven otherwise, but wow.

  “Carrie? Leigh-Ann?”Mrs. Cooper peered over the heads of the students sitting in the front row. Busted again. “Can I have your attention, please? I know we’re all very excited on your first day of senior year, but we have some administrative things to take care of before we can go over this semester’s syllabus. I really hope you are all ready to learn Algebra II! You’ll need it if you want to get into college.”

  Carrie shot the girl behind her one more look before turning to the front of the room. Mrs. Cooper gave her the kind of warning glare that made it clear there was no room for troublemakers in her class.

  Everywhere I go, I’m a troublemaker. Oh, well. At least Carrie knew how to roll with it. All she cared about was staying in school long enough this time to actually finish.

  Assuming this school didn’t have an issue with her being gay!

  Chapter 2

  LEIGH-ANN

  Wednesday was always sandwich day at Clark High. Every week like clockwork. Didn’t change simply because Leigh-Ann’s first day of school was on a Wednesday that year. Only freshmen had to attend the preliminary first day right after Labor Day, which meant they got chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, a roll, and whatever canned fruit the lunch ladies doled out that day. I always hope for pears. The peaches are way too sweet.

  Sandwich day, though…

  She didn’t miss the days of the premade sandwiches they served when she was in elementary school. Since coming to Clark High, though, kids got basic sandwiches they could add condiments and vegetables to themselves, which meant condiment-averse Leigh-Ann finally ate her whole damn sandwich. She still had nightmares of being a kid and getting scolded by the lunch lady because she didn’t finish her mustard and mayo infused sandwich.

  Her first back at Clark High – turkey with lettuce and tomato, no mayo – came with a whole apple and a small bag of off-brand potato chips. All around her, kids popped open their sack lunches or chowed down from their cafeteria trays. There were no off-campus lunches at Clark High, and why would there be? Even if kids with cars were allowed to leave campus for forty-five min
utes, there was nowhere to go. No McDonalds. No Dairy Queen. Not a Subway for fifteen miles. The teachers who lived nearby never bothered to go home for lunch. Occasionally, someone like Ms. Tichenor the English teacher came into the cafeteria to eat with the students, but most of the teachers kept to their classrooms or the teacher’s room.

  Ms. Tichenor wasn’t there today, which suited Leigh-Ann fine. She saw enough of her “favorite” teacher that summer, when their volunteer duties at the B&B Waterlily House overlapped. Always the most awkward thing. What did one call their teacher outside of school? Didn’t help that Anita Tichenor was what most of the kids called “chill.” Leigh-Ann could have totally called her Anita at Waterlily House and not garner a second glance of admonishment. But it felt so wrong!

  Gone from the cafeteria were the long benches and tables that once pulled down from the walls. They had since been replaced with short, square tables and plastic chairs, making the cliquing of classes easier than ever. Leigh-Ann had friends, sure, but she was always the first one voluntarily pushed out when the chairs were filled and the teacher on duty got miffed at the cramming of more around a single table. It didn’t bother Leigh-Ann, though. Really. She liked her solitude, especially since the school district allowed students to have their phones out at lunch. Leigh-Ann either caught up on her homework (which she didn’t have yet,) or she read a book on her phone. Or, more than likely, she scrolled through the Tumblr app and hoped the nudity that was supposedly banned didn’t show up the moment an adult walked by behind her.

  The only person to approach her corner table that auspicious day was someone she barely recognized.

  “Hey.” The new girl – Carrie, was it? – dressed in torn-up jeans and a baggy black and gold plaid shirt placed her tray on the table. “Can I sit here? Everything else is booked, if you catch my drift.”