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“Can someone please plug in-” The Christmas lights lining my entire classroom’s ceiling suddenly flickered on without me even having to finish my question. “Thank you!”
I quickly attached my laptop to the big screen to play the morning announcements and was getting ready to discussGrey’s Anatomywhen my cell phone rang.
Looking down at the caller I.D., I groaned. The school secretary calling before the day even started was never a good sign.
“Hi Kiley,” I answered hesitantly. I made a shush motion to my kids so I could hear her better.
“Good morning, Josie, thank you for answering,” she said dryly.
“Am I gonna regret it?” I laughed. I understood why people avoided her calls; she was usually tasked with asking for favors on behalf of other teachers.
“Eh… depends on how you feel about subbing during your prep today.”
I sighed. Working at a small K-12 school was amazing because you could really get to know all your kids and watch them grow into young adults. The downside was dealing with shortages. We could work around budget and supply shortages, but substitute shortage problems plagued us every day, which meant we were always having to cover for missing teachers during our prep hours.
I covered my eyes and groaned. “Are you serious? Who’s out?”
“Katie Keen. A nasty flu has been going around the lower elementary grades. It went around her room two weeks ago and finally caught up to her,” she sighed.
“You’re asking me to sub forsecond grade?” I asked incredulously. That caught some of my kids’ attention and they were now looking at me with amused faces. I pulled an annoyed face. I was a ninth grade teacher who usually tried to sub for high school classes only. While the elementary kiddos were always cuties, I didn’t have the patience that was required for teaching them. Kiley must’ve been really desperate to be calling high school teachers to sub for the little angels.
“Yes. And…”
“And?!” I asked. “There’s more?”
“Some of the Crewmen players are scheduled to come read to her class today, and we’d really prefer to have one of our own staff members there to supervise the whole thing. Katie’s really bummed out about missing today. She said she’ll owe you big time,” Kiley sing-songed.
I harrumphed. Of course this would happen.
Ever since the whole Garrett cheating scandal, I made a promise to myself to avoid hockey players at all costs. While a lot of the world witnessed my drama on social media, it was pretty much a guarantee that every single hockey guy knew about it because they were all best buddies with each other. If they didn’t play together as kids, they knew each other from tournaments or beer leagues or from golfing together. They literallyallknew each other. The hockey community put the business bros to shame when it came to networking.
Don’t get me wrong— I still loved going to hockey games and was a very passionate fan. I just now embraced the mantra: hate the players, love the game.
And while maybe some hockey guys didn’t deserve the hate, the Garrett situation was enough to make me swear off their kind forever. And really, with my dad’s position as the head coach for the Detroit Crewmen, I should’ve known to stay away from them in the first place. The fact that Garrett only stayed with me to stay close to my dad still stung, and a girl’s ego could only handle that kind of mistake once.
Besides, I hated being known for my dad’s reputation. I thrived here at school because shock over my familial connections wore off very quickly when I was the one disciplining kids and handing out their homework every night. School was my place where I could be my own person, not Coach’s daughter.
Although– everyone here found out a little too much about my personal life this year because of that damn viral video.
The Monday morning after it happened, the Vice-principal stopped by my classroom and a kid yelled, “Leave Ms. Petey alone! Hasn’t she gone through enough?”
I groaned, but the VP actually laughed and said he was only there to check that I was okay and to warn me not to go viral again– which I had absolutely no plans on doing ever again.
But it didn’t end there. The kids had a field day over the whole thing. At the start of each of my classes, they all gave me a round of applause, and one of my kids even shouted down the hall,Don’t be sad Ms. Petey! You’re a strong, independent woman who don’t take NO SHIT from NO MAN!which I responded to with:No swearing!But as soon as I was in the privacy of my own classroom, I full-on cracked up. My kids were great.
“How about this,” Kiley said, pulling me from my thoughts. “I’ll double the typical wage for subbing if you take today?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not necessary, I’ll do it.” I didn’t care about the money subbing would bring, the only reason I didn’t want to sub was because I’d be losing out on precious prep time for myself to catch up on grading. Now, I’d be stuck having to enter grades over break.
“Sounds good. Katie left directions on her desk. We’ll expect you in her room at 12:30 when the kids are walking back from art class. Thanks, Miss Josie,” she said before disconnecting the call. I grimaced at the first name use, which signaled I’d be in one of our school’s elementary rooms.
7. Tyler
I hunched my shoulders, bracing against the light snow falling as I jogged across the packed school parking lot to catch up with four of my teammates. We were all expected to visit local schools before their break to count as our “holiday charity” time.
We all dressed in nice slacks and dress shoes and wore our jerseys overtop of button downs. I threw on some sunglasses because the bright day was not helping my pounding headache. Coach had been right– I sustained a minor concussion from the Colorado goalie’s little stunt.
I tried to sweet talk the team’s nice HR ladies into letting me use my injury to get out of our charity requirement, but it was a no-go. They said kids were asking specifically for Duke Callahan and myself– the lead scorers this year– and how could I really be upset about that? My only reservation was that I still fuckinghatedschool.
