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Me: Even better. It’s lost in the world of spam.
Annie: Owen!
Me: Fine. What’s the question?
Annie: What if THE ONE doesn’t exist? When do I decide to settle for option number two?
Settle? Seriously? This is rattling her? And making her consider… Buttman? Since when does Annie settle for anything? This fraud business is really getting in her head.
I need to say something—something inspiring, somethinghelpful, something to get her out of the gutter that James and her doubts have put her in.
But then… I’m not the advice columnist.
Me: Annie Archer does not settle.
Me: The end.
I tap my toe, waiting for her response. Three bubbles light my screen, and I watch them. Intently. My eyes are glued to those bubbles. My head repeats the words, willing her to believe them:Annie Archer does not settle.
When—
I am tapped on the shoulder.
It’s a light tap. A gentle tap. And yet, I leap like someone just dropped a rattlesnake down my pants.
Somehow, someway, someone approached me, and I didn’t realize it. I am in a room full of tweens and hormones, and yet I missed someone walking up to my desk. In my leap, my cheap, should-have-been-tossed-years-ago rollie chair slides out from beneath me.
I come down hard. On the ground. My butt hits the cement ground first, and then my head.
Ouch.
Pain shoots through my backside. And out my ears.
Double ouch.
Sam and Rylee peer down at me—from this place of shame on the ground.
“What do we do when we’re finished reading?” Sam says.
Rylee nudges him in the ribs. “And are you all right?” Her nose wrinkles, and her hair swings from side to side as her body is at a ninety-degree angle to look down at me. “You hit pretty hard.”
I squint because suddenly there are two Sams and twoRylees, and I’m pretty sure exponential growth isn’t happening in my classroom. “Did anyone else see that?”
Sam stands straight, looking out at the classroom, then he’s back staring at me on the ground. “Yep. I think Teag missed it. He’s asleep back there.”
Rylee disappears, and I’m left with Sam.
I should get up. I will. As soon as the room stops spinning.
“Office,” says Kimberly, our school secretary, through my classroom intercom. “Can we help you, Mr. Bailey?”
Can they help me?
“Yeah,” Rylee says. “Mr. Bailey fell down. He hit his head pretty hard. He might need a stretcher.”
“A stretcher?” I groan.
She’s called the office? They aren’t calling me. Rylee called them.
