by Score, Lucy
Me: …
Me: Wow. Congratulations.
* * *
Me: Teen boy named Milton. Go.
Floyd: I can only assume this is regarding Ruby and Sophie S. and their catfight today. How’s the eye?
Me: Cheek. And I don’t even want to know how you know. It’s bruised and they’re benched. Milton?
Floyd: Teenage stud. Starter on the varsity boys soccer team. Floppy Harry Styles hair. Shot up six inches last year. Rumor has it he dumped Sophie S. for Ruby this summer and then dumped Ruby for half the field hockey team.
Me: Great. So they’re fighting over a guy neither of them is dating?
Floyd: It’s the hormones in milk. It makes them all insane.
12
Marley
“You look adorable,” my mother announced.
“Thanks.” I glanced down at my outfit. Khaki shorts and a polo shirt. I’d sent pictures of both to Floyd the night before to make sure it was gym teacher approved.
As long as they weren’t booty shorts, he’d given me the thumbs up. They weren’t booty, but they were shorts. I couldn’t remember the last job I’d had that encouraged shorts.
On the bright side, the last two weeks of sweating my ass off on the soccer field had resulted in the shorts fitting less snugly around my ass and mid-section.
“I made you lunch,” Mom said, holding out a brown paper bag with my name scrawled across it.
“Aw, Mom.” For some reason, it went straight to my heart, and I wanted to cry. Even though the food would be something like soggy leftover fish sticks, my parents’ support was both a security blanket and an oppressive reminder that I’d yet to do anything to really earn their love. I felt like they were just making down payments on being proud of me for a time in the future when I’d actually earned it.
This was my first “first day” of school in sixteen years. Holy shit. I did the math again. Yep. I’d been out of college for a whole person who could drive.
But this was by far the scariest first day of my entire life. I couldn’t handle thirty-two teen girls on a soccer field for two hours at a time. We’d barely survived preseason as a team. What the hell was I going to do with who knows how many of them I’d be juggling over the course of the next six hours? Oh, and then there was afterschool soccer practice. Also known as ninety minutes of pure torture. The divide between Team Ruby and Team Sophie was Grand Canyon deep since their fight. And there was bully Lisabeth lurking around being a straight-up dick.
The girls hated me. I disliked them intensely. They questioned everything I did. I yelled at them until practice was over. It sucked.
My dad trotted into the kitchen, a big grin on his face. He handed me my car keys. “All gassed up and washed for your big day,” he said.
The school was five whole blocks away.
There was that stinging behind my eyes again. “Dad, you didn’t have to—”
“Just want to make your first day as great as it can be,” he beamed.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, hugging him hard.
I really needed to not fuck this up.
* * *
My office was…depressing. I hadn’t paid much attention to it when Jake hauled my ass in here. But now that I wasn’t dying of heat exhaustion, I took a good long look around. I didn’t have any office knickknacks or supplies to move in. It was just me and my brown bag lunch.
The bell rang, signaling the start of first period. It was a freebie for me. I didn’t have a class until second period, so I had forty-odd minutes to hyperventilate or peruse the Jane Fonda VHS tape collection neatly arranged on one of the bookshelves.
“Yo, Cicero!” I heard Floyd call through the gym door.
I exited my office and stepped out into the gym. The floor gleamed with its new coat of wax, and the HVAC system groaned in the rafters above us.
“You ready for this?” Floyd asked, bouncing a basketball at me.
I caught it and dribbled without enthusiasm. The lump of dread in my stomach had unfurled into a large, winged dragon.
“You look like you’re gonna hurl again,” Floyd observed.
“Very funny,” I said, passing the ball back to him.
He dribbled to the hole, tongue out like Jordan, and made a peppy layup.
“You can be nervous, but don’t be palpably nervous,” he advised, sending the ball back to me. “Miss it, and you have an H.”
It was 7:45 a.m., and I was playing HORSE. Not a bad gig if I could rescue myself from my own terror.
“Palpably nervous?” I drove in, nearly tripping over my own feet, and heaved the ball at the backboard. The gods were smiling on me because the ball dinked off the backboard and swished neatly through the net.
“Don’t let them smell the fear.”
“How does this team-teaching thing work. Good cop, bad cop?”
“Ooh! Dibs on bad cop! Nah. We just tag team two classes at once. You grade your students, I grade mine, and we both get to yell at all of them.”
I was good at yelling. I could do this.
Second period was off to a bang-up start when sixty percent of the kids didn’t show up with a change of clothes. “It’s like the first day of school,” a girl in a purple bodysuit and high-waisted jeans complained. “We’re not, like, supposed to do anything.”
We weren’t asking them to do anything. We were asking them to stand around in the gymnasium and take the pieces of paper we handed them that listed suggested clothing and shoes and laid out the fall curriculum. Floyd introduced me to the class. Two of my players were in the class. Two that didn’t totally hate me. I felt good about that.
A guy with floppy blond hair and a dark tan purposely shouldered another small, less surfery-looking student out of his way to get his paper. “Watch it, Amos,” Floppy said in an excellent imitation of Keanu Reeves in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He looked vaguely familiar.
Amos hunched in on himself as if he was used to the douchebaggery.
Floppy snatched the paper out of my hand, spun around, and shoved his face into Amos’s. “You got a problem?”
“Start running,” I said pleasantly. The entire class and Floyd gasped.
Floppy turned around and looked at me. He pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Say what?”
“I said start running. Laps. You know. In a circle.” I made the shape with my finger in case he’d flunked Sesame Street.
“I’m not dressed to run,” he said, waving a hand over his pink checkered polo and pressed golf shorts.
“Should’ve thought of that before you displayed the manners of an entitled toddler. Go forth and run, Floppy.”
“Floppy?” He didn’t find it funny, but the rest of the class did.
“You heard the lady,” Floyd said, clapping his hands. “Hit the court, kid. Blue line. No cutsies.”
I rolled my eyes at the “Ooooooh!” that arose as Floppy kicked off his flipflops and sullenly jogged to the edge of the court.
Floyd held up his clipboard in front of his face. “That’s Milton, by the way.”
I held up my clipboard to join him in the cone of silence. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Milton Hostetter.”
Hostetter. As in the son of my ex-high school sweetheart and his horrible, perfect wife. As in owner of Manolo the honking swan. As in stirrer of shit between Ruby and Sophie S. Just freaking great.
Some of the kids were taking video of Floppy Milton. “Are they allowed to have phones?” I asked Floyd. He shrugged.
“They’re supposed to leave them in the locker room. Can’t pry ’em out of their carpal tunnel, selfie-taking hands otherwise.”
“O-M-G, look at this Snapchat filter,” one of the kids said, and the rest of the class crowded around him.
* * *
We went through the same thing two more times in a row, and then, according to my schedule, I pulled early lunch duty. Gross. There was something nauseating about a hundred bodi
es simultaneously going through puberty in one room that already smelled like hot dogs and milk. I found my way to the cafeteria, which was remarkably unchanged since I graduated.
Same rickety folding tables with red and blue stools. Same jukebox, which had appeared during my junior year. It had been enjoyed until it became tradition for some joker to play “Cotton Eye Joe” on repeat every single day. I wondered if the administration had removed that particular song from the playlist.
Kids were pouring into the space, talking at full volume, jockeying for spots. The lunch ladies and gentlemen, I noted, were unveiling the day’s culinary specials. Spaghetti, salad, and dinner rolls.
“Excuse me, Ms. Cicero?” A woman in a cat sweater and dangly cat earrings approached.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Huh? I mean, yes?” I was Ms. Cicero. I was a teacher. Not a troublemaking student.
“Principal Eccles would like to have a word with you,” Miss Kitty said.
Okay, maybe I was also a troublemaker.
“Me?” I squeaked.
“She said it would only take a minute. I’m Lois, by the way. I work in the front office.”
“Nice to meet you, Lois.”
Lois led the way into the office and pointed at the long wooden bench that I remembered was for troublemakers. “You can have a seat right there. She’ll be with you in a minute.”
Reluctantly, I sat. I tried to keep my focus on the floor. But the door opened, and I looked up. Jake was wearing nice-fitting khakis and a polo shirt somewhere between silver and blue. He’d shaved, trimmed his hair. But the ink down both his arms still said nothing but “bad boy.”
“Hey, Lo. Got anything in my mailbox?” he asked, juggling a cup of coffee and a file folder.
“Welcome back, Jake,” Lois said, hopping up from her desk to paw through a mailbox on the back wall. “Kids giving you a hard time yet?”
“Nah.”
He glanced my way and flashed me that dirty, bad boy grin. “Well, well. I’d say I didn’t expect to see you here, Mars. But I’d be lying.”
Lois handed him a few papers. “Oh, leave her alone. It’s her first day,” she clucked.
“I wasn’t sure if I was doing this right,” I said gesturing at the bench. “You had a lot more experience than me in the day.”
“Maybe sometime we can compare experiences,” he said with a wink. He left, and Lois picked up a fundraising flyer and fanned herself.
“If I was twenty years younger, not married, and more flexible…”
I knew the feeling.
13
Marley
Dr. Lindsay Eccles was a far less terrifying figure than I imagined. Instead of a stern dictator in a suit, she wore cargo pants and a sleek black shell top with purple reading glasses on top of her salt and pepper curls.
“Marley.” She greeted me with her hands extended, and I didn’t know what to do, so I took them both and made a weird little curtsy. Had I lost the ability to people? “So good of you to stop in. I just wanted to have a quick chat.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, wiping my palms on the seat of my shorts.
Following her into the office, I was hit with a subtle citrusy scent. There were houseplants on every flat surface and a small fish tank crammed in a corner next to shelves holding books, art, and knickknacks.
It didn’t feel like the stern disciplinarian space my principal, Mr. Fester—who looked exactly as he sounded—occupied. He was old-school and of the belief that any expression of creativity was one step away from mutiny. I remember running into him at a trampoline park a few years after graduation and being shocked to realize that he had a family and grandkids…and a smile.
Principal Eccles sat behind her desk and gestured for me to do the same.
My bare thighs touched the vinyl upholstery of the chair, and I wondered if this was a trap to prove that my shorts were too short.
“I wanted to see if you had any questions or concerns for me with this being your first teaching position?”
First and last. I didn’t know a lot of things for certain, but this was one of them.
“Oh, um. Not so far,” I said. “Floyd has been really helpful.”
“Good,” she nodded, stirring her tea. “I heard that there was a small issue or two during your preseason practices.” She looked pointedly at the mostly faded bruise I’d covered up with foundation on my cheek.
I swallowed hard. Yeah, I almost gave thirty-two girls heat stroke, then vomited in front of them. Oh, yeah, and I got a black eye breaking up a fight that I didn’t prevent.
“It’s been a steep learning curve,” I said evasively.
Dr. Eccles smiled. “As long as you’re putting the safety of your students first. We can deal with just about anything else temporarily.”
I nodded. Not trusting myself to say the right thing.
“So you will?” She was looking at me, eyebrows raised expectantly.
“I will make their safety my priority,” I parroted. Somehow.
“I appreciate that. Along those lines, I believe that everyone deserves a second chance. And I’m assuming there won’t be any repeats of Homecoming 1998, will there?”
Most people weren’t brave enough to bring it up to my face. Most of them just whispered behind my back. Twenty years later, and you’d think the town would have something better to talk about. Damn Culpepper.
“There won’t be any repeats,” I promised.
“Excellent. One more thing. Milton Hostetter.”
I bit my lip. News certainly traveled fast in these walls.
“Yes. I met him this morning.”
“He’s not used to being disciplined. His mother might try to have a discussion with you. She’s quite protective of her sons. Don’t let her scare you off.”
My head was bobbing again. Now probably wasn’t the time to admit that she’d scared me off once already. “Thank you. I won’t,” I said.
There were miles between me and the old Marley. I’d shed most of my people-pleasing tendencies by the time I hit thirty. But I’d be lying if I said the idea of Amie Jo didn’t still terrify me. She’d been a holy terror at eighteen. I doubted that knocking on forty would have mellowed her.
“Great,” Dr. Eccles said with a smile. “I’ll let you get back to your first lunch duty. Good luck.”
I returned to the cafeteria feeling like I’d somehow just dodged a major bullet.
“You must be Marley Cicero.” A man in orange corduroy pants and a plaid shirt approached. His thick-rimmed glasses made his already thin face look longer and leaner. He was definitely one of those cool, hipster nerds.
“Yeah. Hi,” I said, shaking his offered hand.
“I’m Bill Beerman.”
“Beerman,” I repeated.
He flashed a shy smile. “Yeah, it’s a real hit with the students. Computer science, by the way.”
“Ah. Gym.”
“Right. Right. How’s it going so far?”
The cafeteria was full. Mostly recognizable food was either being inhaled by growing teenage athletes or pushed around plates while its students were too busy talking at full volume. There were two cash registers buzzing away as kids purchased lunches, snacks, and slushies. Barely controlled chaos.
“So far so good,” I said.
“You look like a deer in headlights,” Bill offered.
“I feel like a deer that’s been hit by a school bus,” I confessed.
“It’ll be fine. Just make sure they know you see them.”
Okay, that was new advice. “See them?”
“Your attention is the best and worst thing you can give them. Either they need to know someone out there sees them. Or they need to know they’re being constantly monitored so they shouldn’t stuff that freshman in their locker.”
“Were you the freshman in the locker?”
“Sure was,” he said cheerfully.
“I was the ‘waiting to be seen’ one.”
Bill stuck his hands
in his pockets and eyed a table of what must have been mostly basketball players. There wasn’t a student under six feet tall.
“You graduated from here, right?”
“Yeah. A thousand years ago.”
“Think of this as a do-over,” he suggested. “Remember everything that you hated about high school and see if you can do anything about it from this side of things.”
I wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of person. But something had me reaching out and putting my hand on his shoulder. “Bill, that’s the best advice I’ve gotten since I came back.”
He turned six shades of tomato.
“Ooooh! Mr. Beerman has a girlfriend,” a boy in ripped jeans and an eyebrow ring crooned.
“Oops. Sorry,” I said, dropping my hand.
“It’s better than when they spent a week asking me if I took my sister to prom.”
Reflexively I made the sign of the cross. I wasn’t even Catholic. But I’d take every layer of protection I could get against these adolescent monsters.
“I don’t suppose you’d want to be a girls soccer assistant coach?” I’d been thinking my adult-to-teenage-athlete ratio was too slim. My dad had volunteered to help out, but I couldn’t put him through that. Plus, I worried about him breaking a hip or saying something inappropriate while lugging a bag of balls.
Bill’s neck was breaking out in hives. “I don’t really have a background in the sports. Besides, my role-playing group is gearing up for a big festival at the Renaissance Faire in a few weeks. I’m pretty busy. Besides…” He leaned in closer. “Teenage girls are terrifying.”
“You’re not wrong, Bill.”
We split up to make sure no one was making out in the corners or sticking chewing gum to the bottom of the table. I had a sudden, intense flashback to seeing Jake Weston strut through the cafeteria, leather jacket thrown over his shoulder, sunglasses on. That right there was a benchmark. When a woman stopped finding sunglasses indoors sexy, she could go forth into this world and choose a respectable mate. Maybe I could impart some of these pearls of wisdom on my team. After all, I’d been them. I’d suffered through everything they were currently suffering through.