She doesn’t expect an answer. She never does. She stands and crosses the room to clean her brushes, the conversation is over.
I stare down at my painting, the woman, the escaping light, the shadowed face, and I wonder if she feels like there’s something wrong with her the way I do?
Now
The room looks smaller than I remember.
The tables are arranged in clusters, stained with years of paint, charcoal, and glue. The big window that overlooks the football field is cracked in the corner, just as it was ten years ago.
But the old easel in the front?
That’s mine now.
I set my bag down, aware that my hands are trembling slightly, but I walk to the center of the room, breathing it all in.
Being back here, in this room, takes me back to being an awkward teenager in the wrong body, but it takes me back to all of those afternoons spent with Ms. Price, discovering who I am.
I pull out my syllabus, smoothing the paper even though it’s already perfect, before I set it down. I touch the surface of the teacher’s desk, where Ms. Price used to sit and watch me draw.
When I saw her email about the job opening, it felt like fate.
I take a deep breath before I straighten my shoulders and walk to the whiteboard.
I write my name,Iris Patel,in large letters across the whiteboard.
Nate
“Get your ass up before I eat all your bacon!” I shout toward the hallway, where my brother is no doubt still in bed, scrolling through his phone.
“I’m up!” A grumpy voice calls back from the far end of the house.
I flip the last strip of bacon onto a paper towel and pour two cups of coffee, one black, one mostly sugar and milk.
The morning sun has started cutting through the trees, pouring light across the backyard. It’s almost seven, way too early to be up, but it’s the first day of school.
And finally, we’ve been needing some excitement around here.
Lord knows everything else is the same. Same house. Same town. Same empty feeling trying to claw its way into my heart.
I’m thirty now.
Thirty and still making breakfast for a seventeen-year-old who forgot how to set an alarm. Still teaching gym, coaching football, still trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
Don’t get it twisted, I’m happy.
Seriously, I am.
But I’ve been doing the same thing every day for damn near a decade, and I don’t have much to show for it. I figured by now I’d be married, maybe have a couple of kids, even a dog-
Alex shuffles into the kitchen like a vampire being dragged into daylight, snapping me out of my pity party. He’s got on a dark shirt with a band I don’t recognize and a pair of black jeans that look like they lost a fight with a weed whacker.
I raise an eyebrow, taking a big bite of pancake.
First day of school breakfast.
Been doing it since he was a kid, who used to be a lot more impressed by my cooking.
“Hope you got those pants half off,” I say as he slides into the chair and starts piling food on his plate.
