Em gathered her things from the table and looked at Frida. “Please promise me you won’t play matchmaker and message him.”
Frida set her phone down. “Do you really think you need to say that?”
Em stood up and sighed. Frida always teased about Em needing to get a boyfriend, but Em was ninety-nine percent sure that she would never do anything to embarrass her. “No.”
“Good.” Frida’s wicked smile was the reason for the one percent uncertainty. “Then I’ll see you later.”
Em waved at her friend as she threw away her trash and walked to grab her students from the lunchroom, determined not to worry about Frida or Grant anymore today—only that her clothes remained puke-free.
The restof the day was fine until class was done for the day. When the dismissal bell rang, one boy remained in her class. His arms folded on his desk, and his head rested face down on top of them so that Em could only see his blond hair. He was supposed to go to aftercare until his mom finished working in the cafeteria, though this wasn’t the first time he’d stayed behind in her class.
Em took a deep breath before she sat down on the desk beside him. “Riley?”
The young boy sniffed a few times but didn’t say anything.
Em’s heart broke for him. His dad had died last year, and while she hadn’t known him the year before, everyone said he wasn’t the same boy. Based on what other teachers had said, he’d gone from a happy and silly kid to a quiet one who kept to himself.
The quiet kid was the only Riley that Em had known.
She hated that he’d experienced such a devastating loss at a young age. If it was possible to take his pain and make it her own, Em would do it in a heartbeat. But she couldn’t. All she could do was be a consistent presence in his life and offer comfort when he needed it.
She reached out, put her hand on his back and rubbed it in circles hoping to soothe him. Slowly, his muscles relaxed, and the sniffles became few and far between.
Riley pushed up and rubbed the back of his hands over his eyes. His gaze stayed trained to the floor. “Sorry, Ms. O’Brien.”
“Sweetie, you don’t have to be sorry.” She leaned in. “Wanna talk about it?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to talk to me, but if you ever want to, I’m always happy to listen, okay?”
Without looking up, he nodded.
She knew that she should send him to aftercare, but he looked like he was barely keeping it together. The idea of him crying and kids making fun of him was too much to bear. “Do you want to stay and help me tidy until your mom finishes up? I can text her and let her know you’re here.”
He nodded again.
“Great,” she said, trying to keep the pity out of her voice. “You can wipe down desks or sharpen pencils. Whatever you want.”
Riley got up from his seat and grabbed the canister of sanitizing wipes from her desk and went to the far end of the room. Once he did, Em pulled out her phone and sent a quick text to his mom to let her know where her son was.
Notifications from Instagram flashed on her screen. It had been fun to look at Grant’s pictures earlier, but now she just felt guilty for doing that. It felt wrong to enjoy herself when there was so much pain in the world. She just wanted to go around and fix it.
Frida had warned her time and time again that she would burn out if she wasn’t careful. She’d told Em that she needed to put a wall between herself and her kids. Not a stone wall that didn’t allow for meaningful connections, but Em needed to be able to separate herself from the constant onslaught of emotions that came with teaching so that she could recharge and be the very best teacher for these kids.
Em knew that Frida was right. She couldn’t fix everything and everyone.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t make every effort to be the best teacher she could be. That started with getting rid of unnecessary distractions. She swiped the notifications left to delete them and started cleaning with Riley.
Grant
Grant pulledhis shirt off over his head and wiped his face.
He never thought body weight exercises could be so tough, but Finn had a way of pushing everyone when it came to agility training. They’d been going at it for an hour at Big Results, the gym where the players all went. Grant’s muscles were beginning to feel like Jell-O, and he was sure he’d lost half his body weight in sweat.
But he still wasn’t done. He still needed to post something online to build up his online presence.
He really wished he would have taken some videos of his workouts before he was as sweaty—and tired—as he was, but he’d shown up to practice late and didn’t want to ask anyone to stop what they were doing to record him.
