AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You don’t think I’m insecure, do you?”
I stared at Daya for a moment. The fact she was asking this question all but confirmed it, didn’t it? I couldn’t tell her that, though. But I also couldn’t lie to her. “Well, what made her say that?”
Daya crossed her arms. “I’m just really having a hard time with this whole Indianapolis thing. She’s going to have this entire life without me there, and—it’s not that I don’t trust her. I do. It’s just…”
I nodded, trying to understand. “It’ll be different.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s only a couple of days a week though,” I reminded her, grabbing my phone from the island to look at the time. I would need to get dressed soon if I wanted to get to school on time. “And the semester will be over before you know it. It’s going to be fine.”
Daya nodded, although she didn’t seem all that convinced. She turned around to face the coffeepot. “Yeah, maybe,” she said, barely moving her lips. She looked up at my face. “Today’s the day, isn’t it?”
I nodded with a grin. “It is.”
She was talking about Mason. This would be his first day volunteering in my classroom, something I’d talked about all weekend. And last night, he’d messaged me—within the parent app, as requested—to ask if he could speak to me face-to-face about Finley, promising me he had no ulterior motives. So we arranged for him to arrive twenty minutes sooner than I’d originally planned so we could talk while my students were in art class.
“I’m a little nervous,” I told Daya as I filled my water bottle at the sink. “I’ve never had a man volunteer in my room.”
“Let alone the fact that this particular man has sent you a picture of his… pee-pee.”
I almost dropped my water bottle. Daya wasn’t quite as blunt as my sister, but it was her word choice that got to me. “Daya! I’m trying to forget it.”
“I mean,” she said, reaching for a mug from the cabinet above. She half-shrugged, smiling from one side of her mouth. “I would be, too, but probably for a different reason.”
“Uh huh.”
Daya and I wrapped up our conversation, and I got dressed for school. As much as I wanted to tell myself I didn’t care what Mason thought of my appearance, I may have set aside my most flattering outfit to wear on that particular day—a white and black striped A-line dress that was flowy enough to allow movement while still accentuating my waist.
And my butt.
I pushed every thought of Mason from my mind as I did my morning prep in the classroom and sat down in front of my work laptop to check my email. I had deleted my work email from my phone when Sarah took over as principal and the onslaught of “what do you think of this?” emails started flooding my inbox. She meant well—she really did—but some of us didn’t think about this school 24/7.
So I wasn’t surprised when I had not one, not two, but three emails from Sarah with information about the fall festival. The first one was an updated list of vendors, while the second one suggested that we should get t-shirts designed ASAP in order to start promoting this thing now.
And the third was an apology.
I apologize for all the emails. I promise not to email you again for a while. At least not until lunch. Have a terrific Monday! -Sarah
P.S. Do you think the hayride route should be longer?
I smiled down at my notebook as I added “figure out t-shirt design” to my to-do list. That woman drove me bonkers sometimes, but she was impossible to dislike. Sarah and I were polar opposites, which is why we worked so well together.
With a sigh, I slipped my lanyard over my neck. The first bell of the day rang, filling my stomach with butterflies. Mason would be arriving in fifty minutes.
“You’re ridiculous,” I whispered to myself as I double-checked my lipstick in the mirror inside the storage closet at the back of my classroom. Tempting Mason was a bad idea. If anything, I should have been making sure I looked my absolute worst. Scare him off, maybe.
Elijah was one of the first students to arrive, tears pooling in the corners of his, just like every morning at drop-off. Parents weren’t allowed to come back to the classroom after the first couple of days, which helped most of my students quickly get over their separation anxiety. But not Elijah.
“Oh my goodness, is that Charmander on your shirt?” I asked him as he hung his backpack in his cubby. He looked up, and though I knew he wouldn’t respond verbally, he seemed pleased I recognized the Pokémon on his shirt. “He’s my favorite.”
Finley finished putting her backpack away a couple of cubbies down and skipped over to us. “Ms. Devin, look.” She propped herself up against a cubby to lift her leg, showing off a Batman band-aid on her knee. “I fell off my scooter. Do you want to see the blood underneath?”
“No thank you, Finley. Let’s keep the band-aid on, please.” I laughed. “Batman, huh?”
Finley rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I let my dad pick out the band-aids this time. He says it’s payback for the time he cut his finger and all we had were unicorn ones and all his friends made fun of him.”
This was putting the most adorable mental image in my mind. As I tried to collect myself, Elijah leaned over and whispered something in Finley’s ear. This kid wouldn’t give me anything—barely even a head nod—but he was comfortable enough to share his whispered thoughts with Finley. After just a week, the two of them were practically attached at the hip.
