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Not the guilt trip. I can turn down my friends, I can turn down my brothers in leather, but I don’t know if I can turn down my boss. “Well, that’s unfortunate,” I add awkwardly.
“Yeah,” he sighs again. “She spent all summer asking me about what it’s like to be a teacher and what the hours are and everything. She was showing some real interest in teaching. In fact, I even encouraged her to become a TA. So many of the teachers here are overworked.”
I can feel my resolve lessening with every word that he says. “Yup, that’s true.” A sense of dread fills my chest as I realize I won’t get what I asked for, and it’s all my fault.
“Anyway. If you’resureyou don’t need her help, I can have her guidance counselor look into reassigning her.” The smile on Principal Fulton’s face has decreased exponentially. Guilt leads me to shake my head.
“Well, now that you mention it,” the words tumble out of my mouth and seal my fate, “I guess it is nice to have her around to help lessen the work I have to do after school hours.”
Marcus smacks a hand down on the desk excitedly, and his smile returns in full force. “That’s great. I’m sure you could rustle up some work for her. She’ll do pretty much anything you ask.”
He has no idea how right he is. If I told Danielle to jump, she’d ask how high. “Thanks for talking me into this, Mr. Fulton.”
“You know you can call me Marcus,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I’ve got to get back to my emails, but I’ll see you at lunch, Howard.”
I get up and head for the door. Marcus. He wouldn’t want me to call him that if he knew his daughter had kissed me yesterday. He wouldn’t be foisting her upon me if he knew what she was capable of.
I convince myself that I’ve done the best I can. I’ve tried to change the winds of fate, and I’ve failed. This is my destiny.Sheis my destiny. And God, what a beautiful destiny it is.
9
DANIELLE
Iskipped Holy’s class today. I think a combination of nerves and excitement made me do it. Nervous and afraid that he might tell me my behavior was inappropriate and that it could never happen again. Excited that he might ask for more. Eventually, the nerves won out, and I left school at lunchtime.
My schoolwork has been piling up even though it’s only the second week. My AP literature and composition class already has a three-page paper due by Friday about a book we were supposed to read over the summer. My comparative government and politics class is diving head-first into political systems and regimes. We’ve been issued an entire chapter to read, outline, and summarize by next Monday, and I haven’t even cracked the spine of my textbook. My Physics class is, blessedly, the only class that has yet to assign homework. But my divided attention is coming back to bite me in the ass because I’ve gotten nothing done.
I photocopy the pages we need to read from my government and politics textbook and start going over the text line-by-line. When my eyes start to glaze over, and words no longer make sense, I start searching Google for a deeper understanding of the chapter. I’m knee-deep in the political challenges of Russia when the garage door starts to whirr, announcing that my father is home.
I withdraw my attention and try to shake my head clear of political structures. My dad comes in from the garage and drops his things in the mudroom off of the kitchen. When he comes a little further inside the house, he smiles when he sees me. “Working hard?”
“Ask me about the Russian government,” I reply.
He snorts and shakes his head. “I’m good. But glad to know who to turn to if I have questions.”
I don’t think I ever wanted to take advanced placement classes; they just fell into my lap. I’ve always been a relatively good student, but it wasn’t until middle school that my teachers told my dad that they felt I wasn’t being challenged. They couldn’t do much in junior high besides putting me in eighth-grade classes as a seventh grader, but someone recommended college-level high school courses, and the rest became history. My four years at Manhattan High School were spent taking as many advanced placement courses as I could fit into my schedule. My dad said passing the tests meant I’d get free college credits. Who was I to turn down free?
My knowledge is vast and useless in an array of specialties I couldn’t care less about. Who needs a physics class on electricity and magnetism when you don’t plan to enter the science field after high school?
“How’s your teacher’s aide position going?” Dad asks casually. When my eyebrow shoots up, he walks to a cabinet and starts rummaging for a snack. It’s 4:30, and we’ll be eating dinner in an hour or two, but he’s always hungry. “I just mean, are you bored? Is it a good use of your time?”
I’m afraid Holy said something to him about our kiss, but I think my father would be freaking out more if he had. He’d be yelling if he knew. I respond slowly. “I think it’s been an eye-opening look into the world of being a teacher.” That’s neutral; he can’t take offense to that.
“Sure,” he waves a hand at me to continue before opening a bag of chips. “But do you have enough to do? Could your time be better spent doing a work-study or simply taking the afternoon off to catch up on homework and stuff?”
He’s making me anxious. The space behind my eyes starts to throb; a combination of reading complex textbook work and an interrogation causes the pressure to build slowly but painfully. “I mean, I’m not doing something every second of the time I’m in Mr. Pelham’s class, but that gives me a chance to flip through homework sometimes.” Not that I’ve done that, but the option is there.
My dad nods sagely before shoving a handful of chips in his mouth. The way he stares makes me uncomfortable; it’s like he knows something, and he’s waiting for me to fess up. This might have worked on me when I was eight, but I don’t crack under pressure nearly as quickly anymore.
“Is there an issue with my placement in Mr. Pelham’s class?” I ask outright after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence. My father isn’t the type to beat around the bush if he can help it. He was a teacher years ago, and he’s learned how to deal with students and faculty alike. He’s an excellent reader of people, which has served him well on his climb to principalship.
“Howard came to my office this morning to ask that you be placed elsewhere.” He speaks to me like an employee or a colleague. His words are matter-of-fact, with no inflection in his tone. “He stated that he didn’t have enough work for you. I think he felt bad that you were sitting around with nothing to do so often.”
I can’t immediately tell what this means. For all the advanced classes I’ve taken and all the hours I’ve spent studying, I don’t know how to interpret Holy’s response to my kiss. He didn’t directly rat me out to my father, but he made an effort to get rid of me. He doesn’t want me in his class. He probably saw that kiss as a student’s desperate attempt to start a relationship. And frankly, he’d be right to think that. I’ve been in love with Holy since I was fourteen. He’s known me for what, two weeks? And he has no interest in me. I’m just some high school girl that’s risking his career.
Panic sinks in. I’ve made a dumb, silly girl’s mistake. I’m going to lose my teacher’s aide position, and it’s all my fault. I’m a stupid girl.
“But he retracted,” my father adds after what feels like an eternity. “We talked, and he said you were a great student and assistant. Turns out he was keeping certain tasks to himself that he could easily pass on to you to free up his evenings.”
