First & Then(33)

“Like … where?” I flashed suddenly on Lindsay, building houses with her church group. She would know where.

“A community center. A hospital. A library, hospice care, the humane society. Doesn’t matter where. Find a kid and read a book to it.”

Rachel must’ve sensed the look of mild panic on my face, because she shut the laptop abruptly. “What was your best class?”

“Freshman English.”

“So it’s all been uphill since then.”

I would’ve smiled if my academic future weren’t hanging in the balance.

“Who’d you have? Chambers? Mackenzie?”

“Chambers.”

“Ask her if you can volunteer as her TA.”

“TA?”

“Teaching assistant.” She didn’t add “Geez, Devon,” but it was heavily implied.

“I know what TA means, it’s just … isn’t that for college?”

“Everyone needs help making copies and stapling handouts. Go. Tell her I sent you.”

I almost asked if that would work, like if Rachel had some kind of version of cred that worked on teachers like the kind that worked on nightclub bouncers. But then I realized if anyone could get me past the velvet rope to a teacher’s good side, it would be Rachel.

“Okay. Great. Thank you.”

“Uh-huh. Thank me when you graduate.”

“Right. I’ll set a phone alert for May.”

“From Reeding. Thank me when you graduate from Reeding.”

“You’re funny.”

“I never joke.” She looked at me. “You could actually pull this off. I see you around. You’re good at talking to people. There’s something about you that people like. You could capitalize on that if you actually gave a shit.”

“I … give a shit. It’s just that you give enough shits for, like, two dozen people.”

Rachel smiled. “That’s what I’m talking about. Use that. And don’t take it for granted. Not everyone … not everyone has such an easy time of it.”

I didn’t know if Rachel was referring to herself. She didn’t give me a chance to wonder. “I have a meeting,” she said, and that meant ours was over.





16


Rachel was right. I went to Mrs. Chambers the next day and easily secured the TA position. She flung a packet of handouts at me and pointed me in the direction of the photocopier.

She also invited me to sit in on the section of freshman English that occurred during my study hall and set me up with “office hours” when the freshmen could come to me with questions or to look over their papers.

“Grammar, syntax, and, please, if you notice anything clearly copied and pasted, give me a heads-up. I mean, I’ve had people who haven’t even bothered to change the fonts.”

“If I see any Comic Sans, I’ll let you know.”

Mrs. Chambers smiled, and I felt the weird sensation of having a sort of camaraderie with one of my teachers.

My first “office hours” weren’t exactly thrilling. I didn’t get to bust a plagiarizer. I didn’t get to do much of anything, because, in fact, no one showed up.

Sitting in on freshman English again was kind of strange—like a time warp. A lot of it was the same, except I was three years older, and I could now call exactly who died at the end of pretty much everything we read.

The freshmen in the class were a lot like the ones in gym—some of them may actually have been the same ones from gym—but they seemed a little more subdued. Maybe it was those bright red TS gym shirts that amped them up.

Foster wasn’t in the fourth-period English class, but that was fine, because I saw plenty of Foster already. However, in the weeks to come, I was finding that to be less and less the case. Football, of course, was taking up a lot of his time, but there was something else that I couldn’t ignore—something growing between him and Marabelle.

I’d see them having lunch together in the cafeteria, or talking in the halls between classes. Foster liked her—I could tell. Marabelle, on the other hand, was harder to read. She seemed to enjoy Foster’s company, but there was definitely a kind of reserve about her. At least from what I could tell as I spied on them in the hallways.

At the same time, Lindsay and Cas seemed to be hanging out more and more, and with enough enthusiasm on both sides to make me feel pretty dejected. With every giggle-infested flirt session that I was forced to witness, the prospect of the upcoming trip to Reeding became that much more appealing.

It would be my escape. Devon Tennyson’s Escape from Temple Sterling. Like a Disney World ride or something.

At least that’s how I had come to think of it until I saw the sign-up sheet on the College Info bulletin board.

The other lines for signatures had remained empty since Mrs. Wentworth put up the sheet. The trip was next week, and I was almost assured that it would just be me and her.

But there were more names today.

Maria Silva. Lauren McPhee. Perfectly acceptable.

But then, underneath those names:

Cas Kincaid.

Lindsay Renshaw.

Jordan Hunter.

Ezra Lynley.

What. The hell.

I cornered Cas between classes. “Why are you guys visiting Reeding? Their football team is a joke.”