Rock Bottom Girl(26)
Mrs. Gurgevich snorted and dragged a popper through her puddle of raspberry jam.
“Oh?” When I’d taken Home Ec, I’d learned how to burn brownies and balance a checkbook.
“I’ll have to tell my husband, Travis Hostetter, president of Hostetter Cadillac and Trucks, that I ran into you today. Why just yesterday, we were talking about you. Travis said, ‘Amie Jo, what was the name of that girl I dated before I fell in love with you?’”
I had a pet theory that narcissists had an overwhelming desire to hear their own names and tended to use it themselves in conversation. So far, Amie Jo was proving my hypothesis.
I gave Floyd a look that clearly asked what the hell was wrong with the other teacher’s lounge. But he was too busy shoveling his second bologna sandwich into his beard.
“Everyone surviving?”
I looked away from Amie Jo’s Aqua Net masterpiece to see Jake standing in the door, a curious aluminum foil triangle in his hand.
“Hey, Jake,” everyone said.
His gaze skated to me, and I saw his lips quirk. “How’s the first day, Mars?”
“Hi, Jake,” Amie Jo purred with a flutter of those spider lashes. “You’re looking nice and tan. Our pool’s still open if you ever want to go for a dip.”
Well, well, well. It looked like Amie Jo was still holding on to a bit of a high school crush despite being married to Travis Hostetter, president of Hostetter Cadillac and Trucks.
“Thanks.” Jake took the seat at the foot of the table next to me and unwrapped two neatly stacked slices of pizza. Amie Jo pouted.
Floyd sang something under his breath that sounded like “evil queen.”
“How’s the first day?” Jake asked me again, his voice lower.
I gave a shrug and finally unwrapped the sandwich my mom had made me. White bread, marshmallow fluff, and peanut butter. I needed to take over my parents’ kitchen. Their culinary skills had frozen sometime in the mid-eighties. “Good, so far.”
“No troublemakers?” he pressed. Amie Jo’s pale blue eyes burned into my flesh.
Shaking my head, I answered, “Nope.”
I pulled a box of animal crackers and another of raisins out of the bag. It was the breakfast of junior high champions unconcerned with diabetes and belly fat.
A yellow sticky note fluttered out.
Have the best first day in the history of first days. I love you.
Love, Mom
Jake’s eyebrows winged up in amusement. Embarrassed and touched, I stuffed the note in my shorts pocket.
Our feet were inches apart under the table. My sneakers near his comfortable loafers.
“Gurgevich, you coming to poker this week?” Jake asked.
I blinked.
Mrs. Gurgevich shifted in her seat. “You can keep your money this week. I have tickets to that nudie acrobatic art show they’re putting on in Lancaster.”
“Nice. You taking the Harley?” Jake asked.
I’d entered a parallel universe. One in which Mrs. Gurgevich rode a Harley and went to burlesque shows.
I ate quietly and listened to the conversations around me. Disconnected, out of place, but not uncomfortable. It was how I always felt in new work situations. But at least I knew this situation was just temporary.
“Five-minute warning,” one of the teachers announced, and everyone groaned.
“We better get going, Cicero. It’s a long walk back,” Floyd said, packing up his food pantry.
“It was nice meeting everyone,” I said. Jake winked.
“Whew. I thought Amie Jo was going to tear into us about Milton,” Floyd said when we were in the hallway. “She rarely eats in this lunchroom.”
“Marley, do you have a minute?”
Floyd’s face drained of color. “Shit. Evil Queen alert.”
Amie Jo tottered out of the lounge on her heels. Seriously, how did she even teach in those? My feet would have been bleeding by second period.
“I know you’re new here, but I really think you need to understand that my boys are angels. They are handsome, athletic, popular boys, and there is never a reason to discipline them.”
“He was being a dick, Amie Jo,” Floyd intervened.
She held up a manicured hand. “Zip it, Floyd. Never. A. Reason.” She poked me with her Barbie Corvette pink talon to emphasize every word. “Got it?”
I was working up a response somewhere between “get your weird bird hands off of me” and “your son is a moron who’s too entitled to treat people nicely” when the bell rang.
The hallway instantaneously flooded with bodies and BO. I could hear the staccato click of Amie Jo’s stilettos on the industrial tile floor as she marched back to whatever ring of hell she occupied.
16
Marley
“Lunch duty and parking lot duty?” Floyd asked when I headed in the direction of the student lot. “Somebody hit the jackpot this semester.”
Grimacing, I bumped the exit door with my hip as I shot him pistol fingers. “Lucky’s my middle name.” The late August swelter took my breath away when I stepped down onto the asphalt. I could bake a frozen pizza on this slab of parking lot.
Parking lot duty, as it had been mirthlessly described to me, entailed making sure students didn’t light up their cigarettes or run each other over on school grounds. Apparently there was something about liability insurance. I was to report to the top of the practice field hill that overlooked the student lot and yell disciplinary phrases if necessary.