Page 4 of A Class of Her Own

“Actually, I didn’t want it at all. But I’ve heard that you did, and that explains a lot.”

Not much in life managed to steal words from my mouth, but that last little dig did it. Before I could summon a response, he spun on his heel and was off my property in a matter of seconds. I watched him go next door to knock on Hazel’s door, but I wasn’t able to see her or hear the conversation thanks to one very large bird and his inappropriate dance moves.

The scent of my reheated chicken casserole was giving off tuna fish vibes the next day at lunch, and I thought about apologizing to my friends, but that would mean acknowledging that the smell was me. Right now Ruby was shooting daggers at Peter Jarmin, fellow teacher, who had a bad habit of bringing stinky foods into the faculty lunchroom. Peter and I weren’t fans of each other, so I was letting him take the fall. I also wondered if there was some sort of food poisoning risk in eating the casserole, but I was never one to waste food, so I took a cautious bite. It was sort of chewy in a bad way. I reached for my bag of celery slices.

“You told him you didn’t know what twerking is?” Lizzie laughed as she stirred a thermos of reheated soup. “That’s so perfect. I wish my brain worked as quickly as yours does. I only have great comebacks an hour later, which is never actually helpful.”

Pleased with her compliment, I offered a small smile around my bite of celery. I hate celery, for the record, but adults are supposed to eat healthy, so it kept making its way into my lunch bag. Plus, it’s cheap, which is like a unicorn. Cheap and healthy isn’t a partnership easy to find.

“One Meredith brain is enough, Liz,” Aryn teased from her place at the table. “Imagine what would happen if there were two of them out in the world? It would probably create a vortex through which time and space ceased to exist.”

I stabbed Aryn in the arm with the celery. “Science obviously isn’t your specialty,” I replied with a smirk, “and you’d be lucky to have more than one of me.”

“I may not be a scientist,” she smirked, “but I did study psychology. I’m considering going back to school and writing my master’s thesis on you.”

The others laughed, and I rolled my eyes -- the same routine we’d done thousands of times. In fact, I couldn’t imagine a world where I wasn’t rolling my eyes every day. Not for the first time, I considered getting my eyeballs examined by an ophthalmologist. Maybe my eye muscles would win an award or something. This was, of course, an idea Ruby had put into my head one afternoon after studying me closely enough that I asked her what was going on. She’d replied that she’d love to study my eyes and their musculature, and that strange idea popped into my mind on occasion. I was warming to it.

“I couldn’t have had that beautiful moment without the help of Lizzie and Ruby,” I wiggled my celery and snapped off another bite.

“Twerking turkey,” Hailey said softly on a chuckle. “It really is perfect.”

“Please tell me you didn’t deflate it,” Ruby said as she peeled off the lid of a pudding cup.

While I think pudding cups are gross, I admired Ruby’s ability to do what she wanted to do and eat what she wanted to eat without any sign of concern over it. Sort of strange for a nurse. She should have been firmly in my camp where healthy mattered.

“Are you kidding? Until Hazel actually delivers a ticket, that bird is there to stay,” I replied, watching her scoop out a mouthful of chocolate-flavored gelatin.

“You need to send us a picture,” Aryn stated before biting into her sandwich, “before a ticket arrives and you have to take it down.”

“Something tells me a ticket isn’t going to get you to back down.” Hailey watched me with her typical quiet expression.

“You assume I can afford to keep paying extra fees to the HOA board,” I muttered. “I’m a schoolteacher. I’m not made of money.”

“No,” Hailey nodded, her blue eyes sparking suddenly. “But I might be willing to pitch in . . . you know, for a righteous cause.”

“Twerking turkeys are a righteous cause?” Lizzie asked, her curls bouncing as she laughed. “This gets better and better every day.”

“Have you thought about what you’ll be doing for Christmas yet?” Ruby asked me.

I shrugged and slowly finished chewing that diabolically disgusting celery stick, purposely drawing out their interest. “I have a few thoughts.”

The truth was, I had thoughts, but it was currently fifty/fifty on whether I actually put it up or not. It wasn’t cheap to thumb my nose at the community rules -- and I wasn’t making much headway with inflatables.

“Complete with drawings?” Lizzie’s head popped up, her smile growing. I nodded.

“Did you color code our assignments?” Aryn asked me as the first lunch bell rang, signaling that it was time to head back into teacher mode.

“The fact you said that with a straight face worries me,” I replied, putting my food containers in my lunch box.

“The fact that you probably did is what worries me,” she retorted, pushing back her chair to stand. She brushed her long red curls over her shoulder and smiled down at me. “You’re getting predictable in your old age, Atwood.”

I stood but still had to look up to meet her eyes. “I still have to assign porta potty duty.”

Her laughter was her only reply as she headed out the door.

CHAPTER TWO

It’s a well-known fact among schoolteachers that there really is no perfect month for student behavior. September brings the back-to-school giddiness. October is chatter about Halloween. November is looking forward to Thanksgiving break and discussing who’ll be eating the most pie or who is going on the most exotic vacation. Makes it hard to teach math when all they want to do is discuss whether pumpkin pie is actually made from jack-o-lanterns or from cans. The current stats in my classroom were fifteen for canned and ten for the actual gourd itself. I was partial to apple and thought the mushiness of pumpkin was nasty, but there was no way I’d be mentioning that and derailing our language arts lessons, too. I only had seven more school days to get through before these kids would be released into the food-filled arms of their families, and while I found some of it entertaining, it couldn’t go fast enough as far as I was concerned.

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