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By the time Kat was reciting her poem in the movie, Stevie was laying on my left arm, and Josie was snuggled into my right side. Garcia and Hassik were snoring away on the floor. We were like a happy little family, and I felt an overwhelming desire for it to stay this way forever. I was struck with the realization that I loved this life. I was a naive bastard to think life was so great before, but I never imagined how much greater my life would be with Josie and Stevie added to the mix. Things were perfect.
But that line of thinking should’ve made me pause. I should’ve realized the universe wouldn’t let me keep things this way. It never did. Everything wastooperfect again… So that meant another shoe was about to drop.
45. Josie
It’s almost like the world decided that if it was going to rain, it was gonna pour on everyone, because it seemed like everyone was having a rough day.
Apparently Stevie was going through it too because while I was teaching, she snuck into my classroom and wandered to an open seat.
When I finished the lecture portion of my lesson, I gave my kids work time on their essays, then made my way to Stevie and bent down by the desk.
“Stevie, you okay?” I asked gently.
Her little jaw set, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “My teacher is mean. Can I stay here?”
She needed to learn she couldn’t just cut class, but at least she snuck into a different classroom versus going outside or hiding out in a bathroom. I’d have to tell Tyler so he could handle that lecture– I was a teacher here, and her friends, not her parent.
“How about you stay the rest of the hour in here? You can come up to my desk, yeah?”
She nodded and slowly followed me to the front of the room.
I quickly sent an email to her teacher letting her know she was with me. She looked busy at my desk with my gel pens, so I wandered around my room to help kids with their papers. Toward the end of the hour, I peeked over her shoulder to see what she was working on.
“That’s beautiful,” I told her.
She took in a shuddered breath. “Actually?” she asked, avoiding eye-contact.
“Actually,” I confirmed.
“My mom taught me some stuff,” she mumbled, keeping her eyes on the paper.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah… Like this,” she said, pointing to the way she criss-crossed pen strokes.
“My mom’s an artist too,” I told her.
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Really?”
I nodded. “She’s always getting paint all over and blasting music while she makes a whole mess,” I laughed. “But her paintings are really pretty.”
“My mom’s paintings are really pretty too.” She eyed her drawing again. “I want to make some just like hers.”
When the bell rang, I held her hand as we walked down to the lower elementary school hallway, and we talked about what we wanted for dinner instead of anything school related.
When we came to a stop outside her classroom door, I could feel her tensing up.
“You know, you can tell Tyler if you’re having a problem in class. He’ll help you, no matter what. He won’t be mad. He had his own problems in school. You should ask him about it, I’m sure he’d like to talk about it with you,” I told her.
Her eyes turned a little glassy and she wiped the back of her hands against them. “Yeah,” she said weakly.
“Is there a reason you said your teacher is mean?” I asked gently.
Her shoulders sagged and she let out a little cry. “It’s not my fault.”
I immediately bent down to her level and held her hands.
“She doesn’t like so many questions, so people get scared of asking them, so then people askmeto ask them because they know I’m not scared of anything. At recess I get a whole list of things to ask her. Sometimes I can’t even remember them. So then I ask as many as I can and she thinks I’m stupid.”
