Room-maid(37)

“A hundred total?”

“No.” She said it like I’d asked something silly. “A hundred in each shade. Our gym is huge! We also need you to create some snowfall out of fishing wire and cotton balls. We plan on hanging those up on the walls. I’m not sure how many we’ll need of those, but they should be six feet long and I guess just make them until you run out of supplies.”

I let out a noise that was a cross between a squawk and the sound of my blood pressure going up.

Mrs. Adams misunderstood my sound. “Don’t worry. We’ve already bought everything you’ll need. You have two weeks and we put completed examples in the bags for you. This will be fun!”

I told my kids the same thing when I made them do something they didn’t want to do.

I guessed now I was the kid being assigned the art project.

She handed me the bags and I might have said, “Thank you,” like some kind of demented person who didn’t rightfully protest something she was going to screw up horribly.

Ms. Gladwell expected me to participate. That was the end of the discussion.

I dropped the bags off in my classroom, heading to the teachers’ lounge to find Delia and Shay. The other teachers were starting to gather there, as we still had our staff meeting. My friends had staked out a prime location, nabbing one of the faux leather couches.

“Over here!” Delia waved. “We saved you a seat.”

I dropped down in the empty spot and Shay asked, “What did Gladwell want?”

“She wants me to help out with the winter festival.”

Shay smiled. “I love the winter festival!”

Nothing could have surprised me more. “You love the winter festival? Did three ghosts visit you last night?”

“I like the holidays,” she said defensively.

“It just doesn’t seem like you,” I said.

“What does seem like me?”

Setting traps for Santa? Changing out candy for coal in little kids’ stockings? Shoving Christmas trees up chimneys? But I didn’t say any of those things out loud because I enjoyed living.

Delia intervened. “You know why Ms. Gladwell chose you, right?”

“My fantastic bone structure?” It couldn’t have been because of talent. Of the three of us sitting there, Delia was easily best suited for the job I’d been assigned. Why hadn’t they asked her?

“It’s because they give the new teachers the crap work thanks to your probationary year. They know you won’t say no. It’s unfair, but that’s the reality,” she explained. “My first year I got assigned to clean out the cages of all the room pets before winter break.”

Shay jumped in with, “Gladwell had me doing setup and takedown for all the PTA meetings.”

“They’re having me make decorations. Something called a pom. And something else that involves cotton balls and fishing wire. I don’t even know what fishing wire is.”

“Oh no!” Delia gasped.

“Do they not know how bad you are at that stuff?” Shay asked, equally horrified.

“I tried to tell them!” Well, I hadn’t tried very hard because I really did want to please Ms. Gladwell and keep my job. This probably had something to do with my childhood, but I didn’t have any time to unpack it just then. “You guys could help me!”

“Sorry, but I’m already in charge of organizing the donated toys for children’s charities,” Shay said. “And Delia’s running the ice-fishing booth. We’ve all got to pay our dues.”

I could tell the moment Owen walked in the room because of the look on Shay’s face and the fact that the temperature dropped twenty degrees. I knew he was currently mad at her because she was threatening to fail the quarterback, which would mean he couldn’t play Friday’s game.

While I’d never gotten the full story of everything that had happened between those two, I knew it was bad. One night when Shay had been overly tipsy (her term, not mine), she had confessed that if she ever found herself in some life-threatening situation she was going to write Owen’s name on her body with a Sharpie pen just so that he’d be the primary suspect. She later claimed to have been joking, but . . .

“Look at that, there’s the new substi-cute teacher taking over Jennifer’s class.” Delia pointed across the room to a good-looking guy in his late twenties. “His name is Kyle. I think maybe he should be my new boyfriend.”

My phone buzzed before I could properly assess Kyle. It was a text from Brad. I tried not to groan. He was supposed to be leaving me alone.

“From Brad? We should talk. I thought you guys were done. What is this?” Shay demanded.

Too late I realized that I hadn’t thought to cover up my screen in case something like this happened. My hand flew up to cover the message even though the damage had already been done. “It’s just—”

Her hand dropped to my wrist, where she noticed Brad’s bracelet. I didn’t know what had possessed me to put it on that morning. It didn’t mean anything. I had just . . . wanted to wear something sparkly.

The hope that when Tyler got back he might notice it, might even ask where it had come from, maybe have a twang of jealousy about it?

Yeah, that had crossed my mind.

But considering that I couldn’t be with him, I couldn’t exactly confess my ulterior motives to my friends.