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Julie Shriver was always the odd girl around town. Her hobbies were beekeeping and pen-paling with the prison inmates in Rahway.
“Yeah! One of the inmates she wrote to was released last year and turned out to be a really nice guy. They got married a few months ago—he plays on Gary’s softball team and is the new deacon over at Saint Bart’s. Adam or Andy . . . something like that. But the point is, Miss McCarthy is in desperate need of a theater teacher for the year—she’d hire you in a heartbeat.”
Miss McCarthy was the grouch-ass principal when I went to Lakeside—and I can’t imagine the seventeen years since have made her nicer.
“Teaching? I don’t know . . . that would be weird.”
My sister waves her hand. “You have a master’s degree in theater arts.” Her voice takes on a teasingly fancy tone. “And you’re the executive director, now, la-dee-da. A high school theater class should be a piece of cake for you.”
Note to Past Callie from Future Callie: Should be, are the operative words there.
“Is, uh . . . is Garrett still teaching at the high school?”
“He sure is.” Colleen nods. “Still coaching too.”
“That could make it even weirder.”
“Oh come on, Callie,” my sister says. “That was forever ago—it’s not like you guys ended on bad terms. Would it really be so bad to see him again?”
My stomach does a little tumble, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, because seeing my high school boyfriend again wouldn’t be bad at all. Just . . . curiouser and curiouser.
I blow out a breath, vibrating my lips. “Okay. This could work. It might be a clusterfuck . . . but it could work. I’ll make some phone calls first thing in the morning.”
My sister pats my arm. “Come on, let’s go inside, you’re probably beat. I stopped at the store for some supplies before; I’ll bring them in.”
I love the scent of my parents’ house—it’s unique, no place on earth will ever smell just like it. A whiff of April Fresh fabric softener from the laundry room, and I’m eleven years old again, climbing under the cool summer sheets in my bed. The hint of cigars and Old Spice in the living room, and I’m instantly seventeen—hugging my dad as he puts the keys to his prized Buick in my palm, my freshly laminated driver’s license heavy in the back pocket of my jeans and my head buzzing with the excitement of freedom. A whiff of roasted turkey from the kitchen stove and a dozen years of family dinners dance in my head.
It’s like a time machine.
My sister walks past me into the kitchen and sets the brown paper bag in her arms on the counter. Then she pulls a bottle of wine out and slides it onto the wine rack below the cabinet. And then another bottle.
And another.
“What are you doing? I thought you said you bought groceries?”
Colleen smirks. “I said I got supplies.” She holds up a bottle of pinot noir. “And you and I both know, if our sanity is going to survive the time it takes for those old leg bones to heal up, we’re gonna need every bottle.”
My sister is wise.
And it’s true what they say . . . life comes at you fast. Then it runs you right the hell over.
Chapter Four
Garrett
“You’re a good kid, Garrett.”
Michelle McCarthy. She was a crazy piece of work when I was a student at Lakeside, and now she’s my boss. I sit across the desk from her, in her office, a half hour before I have to be on the football field for the start of the last week of August practices.
“You always were. I like you.”
She’s lying. I wasn’t that good of a kid . . . and she doesn’t like me. Miss McCarthy doesn’t like anyone. She’s like . . . Darth Vader . . . if Darth Vader were a high school principal—her hate gives her strength.
“Thanks, Miss McCarthy.”
Even though I’m an adult, I can’t bring myself to call her by her first name. It’s like that with all the adults I grew up with around town—it’d be like calling my mom Irene.
Michelle . . . nope . . . too fucking weird.
The fact that she looks almost exactly the same as when I first met her, only makes it worse. She has one of those ageless faces—firm, round cheeks, hazel eyes, a bob of reddish-brown hair—the kind of woman who looks better with a little extra weight, who would look like a flabby, deflated balloon if she were too thin.
Miss McCarthy takes a blue plastic bottle of TUMS out of the top drawer of her desk, tips her head back, and pours some into her mouth.
“You’re a leader in this school,” she tells me as she crunches the chalky tablets. “The other teachers look up to you.”
