Rock Bottom Girl(23)

“Great,” Dr. Eccles said with a smile. “I’ll let you get back to your first lunch duty. Good luck.”

I returned to the cafeteria feeling like I’d somehow just dodged a major bullet.

“You must be Marley Cicero.” A man in orange corduroy pants and a plaid shirt approached. His thick-rimmed glasses made his already thin face look longer and leaner. He was definitely one of those cool, hipster nerds.

“Yeah. Hi,” I said, shaking his offered hand.

“I’m Bill Beerman.”

“Beerman,” I repeated.

He flashed a shy smile. “Yeah, it’s a real hit with the students. Computer science, by the way.”

“Ah. Gym.”

“Right. Right. How’s it going so far?”

The cafeteria was full. Mostly recognizable food was either being inhaled by growing teenage athletes or pushed around plates while its students were too busy talking at full volume. There were two cash registers buzzing away as kids purchased lunches, snacks, and slushies. Barely controlled chaos.

“So far so good,” I said.

“You look like a deer in headlights,” Bill offered.

“I feel like a deer that’s been hit by a school bus,” I confessed.

“It’ll be fine. Just make sure they know you see them.”

Okay, that was new advice. “See them?”

“Your attention is the best and worst thing you can give them. Either they need to know someone out there sees them. Or they need to know they’re being constantly monitored so they shouldn’t stuff that freshman in their locker.”

“Were you the freshman in the locker?”

“Sure was,” he said cheerfully.

“I was the ‘waiting to be seen’ one.”

Bill stuck his hands in his pockets and eyed a table of what must have been mostly basketball players. There wasn’t a student under six feet tall.

“You graduated from here, right?”

“Yeah. A thousand years ago.”

“Think of this as a do-over,” he suggested. “Remember everything that you hated about high school and see if you can do anything about it from this side of things.”

I wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of person. But something had me reaching out and putting my hand on his shoulder. “Bill, that’s the best advice I’ve gotten since I came back.”

He turned six shades of tomato.

“Ooooh! Mr. Beerman has a girlfriend,” a boy in ripped jeans and an eyebrow ring crooned.

“Oops. Sorry,” I said, dropping my hand.

“It’s better than when they spent a week asking me if I took my sister to prom.”

Reflexively I made the sign of the cross. I wasn’t even Catholic. But I’d take every layer of protection I could get against these adolescent monsters.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to be a girls soccer assistant coach?” I’d been thinking my adult-to-teenage-athlete ratio was too slim. My dad had volunteered to help out, but I couldn’t put him through that. Plus, I worried about him breaking a hip or saying something inappropriate while lugging a bag of balls.

Bill’s neck was breaking out in hives. “I don’t really have a background in the sports. Besides, my role-playing group is gearing up for a big festival at the Renaissance Faire in a few weeks. I’m pretty busy. Besides…” He leaned in closer. “Teenage girls are terrifying.”

“You’re not wrong, Bill.”

We split up to make sure no one was making out in the corners or sticking chewing gum to the bottom of the table. I had a sudden, intense flashback to seeing Jake Weston strut through the cafeteria, leather jacket thrown over his shoulder, sunglasses on. That right there was a benchmark. When a woman stopped finding sunglasses indoors sexy, she could go forth into this world and choose a respectable mate. Maybe I could impart some of these pearls of wisdom on my team. After all, I’d been them. I’d suffered through everything they were currently suffering through.

I spotted my Mean Girl Angela at a table with six other sleek brunettes. They were all in coordinating blouses and plaid skirts. She shot me a glare.

I waved cheerily back at her and wondered if this desire to embarrass her publicly was what parents felt on a daily basis.





14





Jake





Ah, that industrial cleaner smell on the first day of school. Everything was clean, sanitized, and the air quality was high. There was a buzz in the building. Kids excited to catch up with friends. Teachers anxious for a regular paycheck.

It would be all downhill from here.

I surveyed my new fourth period American History class and prepared to dazzle them.

The teaching of history was, traditionally, one of the most boring things ever invented. We white-washed our country’s doings, painted a bunch of white dude schmucks as heroes, and swept everyone else’s good deeds under the rug of gender and race.

When Hamilton came out, I fucking cried. Okay, it was only a tear. Still counts. But if I ever see Lin Manuel Miranda on the street, I’m gonna kiss that guy on the mouth for what he did for American history. With the popularity of the musical, some of the curriculum shackles fell off. This district in particular—our superintendent was a huge Hamilton fan—embraced the idea of teaching real history. As long as my students could still pass the tests.