Page 21 of Always a Roommate
“I don’t know. I was also told that teachers don’t get involved in a student’s homelife.”
My jaw clenched. “Even if you can help them? That’s a load of—”
“I know.”
“He’s sad, Shane.”
“You noticed that too, huh?” He sighed. “That kid is smart. The smartest student I have. He’s a good kid. I just don’t know how to help him.”
“Shane.” A woman walked toward us, eyeing me with suspicion.
“Diana.” He nodded to her, but I didn’t miss his posture going rigid.
Putting a hand on his arm, I whispered, “Find a way to help him.” I removed it when the woman, Diana, stepped up beside me. She looked to be another teacher in the school, but I could tell Shane wasn’t happy with her presence.
He opened the door and turned back into his classroom. “I’m sorry, Diana. I have a student to deal with.” And then, he shut the door on us both, leaving me to face the dark-haired woman with hard eyes.
She scowled at the closed door before turning to me. “Visitors to the school must have a name badge.”
“Oh.” I stepped away from her. “I was just leaving.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
There was no getting out of this. We didn’t speak until we were almost to the parking lot. “How do you know Shane?” she asked.
“We live together.” When her expression darkened, I felt no need to clarify it was platonic.
“And you?”
“I teach English here. We’ve worked together for many years.”
I nodded, knowing there must be more to the story. She opened the door, and I was sure she wanted to shove me through. Before shutting it, she called out one more time. “Just make sure you don’t move his things.”
“What?”
“At your place. He’s very particular about where he leaves things.” With that, she shut the door.
I stared at her retreating figure through the glass panes. Yeah, there was definitely more to that story.
8
SHANE
“You see this, Shane?” my dad asked as soon as I walked in the door. It was Wednesday, and I’d come here straight from school to talk to my mom. She’d know exactly what to do about Trevor; she always knew what to do.
I entered the living room where my dad sat in the spot on the couch that had been his since we were kids. Though, these days he also spent a lot of his retired time in the man-cave out back. It was just a room connected to his work shed that had two recliners, a beer fridge, and a TV. We weren’t fancy people.
“See what?” I perched on the arm of the couch.
Dad pointed to where a storm trajectory swirled toward Florida on the map on TV. “They say it should miss the bay area and towns just north of it.” Hurricanes usually missed those of us on the north side of Tampa. The bay protected us. “But it’s awful late in the season for a storm this size.”
“Where’s it going to make landfall?” I slid onto the couch. Hurricane watching was like a sport in this town. The news always made a giant deal of storms for days and days leading up to them. This always made people panic shop, causing shortages of bottled water and plywood.
While some people bought everything they could to be prepared, the rest of the state shared ridiculous hurricane memes online, making light of all their fears. People coped in different ways.
My family… we’d always been news watchers. Every year, from June to October, we’d watch storms edge up along the coast, mostly missing the state but sometimes hitting some poor town that probably shouldn’t have been built so near the water.
And then, all our flood insurance payments went up.
