Page 46 of Kiss Me Now
“I mean a mysterious benefactor paid for your morning coffee and muffin and asked me to wish you good luck.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll pay it forward. The next two coffee orders that walk in are on me.” I laid a bill on the counter and turned toward the door but stopped. “I have to know. Was it Miss Lily?”
Taylor grinned. “Close. Definitely Miss Lily’s genes.”
Ian, then. I took a sip of the coffee, made the way I liked it. “That’s what I get for being predictable, I guess.”
“Sorry?” Taylor said.
A smile tugged at my lips. “Nothing. If you have a way of getting in touch with my mysterious benefactor, tell him I said thank you, and it was a great way to start the day.”
I drove to school, sipping the coffee and smiling at Ian’s gesture. I was grateful for something else to think about instead of obsessing over how my first class would go.
Inside my classroom, a spray of flowers greeted me from my desk, but it wasn’t the same bouquet I’d gotten from Ian. These were peonies, full and luscious in vibrant shades of pink.
For a moment, I wondered if these were his doing too, but whoever had put them there had keys to my classroom, so it couldn’t be him. It was early still, and from the mostly empty parking lot, I suspected I was one of the first teachers on campus. Maybe these were from the administration, wishing me good luck? Or the PTA? It seemed like a PTA thing to do.
I plopped my brimming tote on the desk and plucked the card from the profusion of petals.
Dear Brooke,
I hope your first day is nothing but happy surprises.
Good luck!
Ian
I studied the wild bunch of peonies. How had he gotten these in here so early? I was leaning down to smell them when my principal walked in. “Good morning, Ms. Spencer. Saw your light on and thought I’d check in to see if you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Dr. Boone. I am. I think.” Then deciding it wouldn’t do for my boss to think I was uncertain I added, “No, definitely. Looking forward to the students arriving.”
“Good, good. Looks great in here. Stop by my office any time if you need something.” She left with a cheerful wave, and I broke into action, unpacking the books I’d lugged from home, some of my favorites that I would set out for kids to read if they finished classwork early.
The next hour was punctuated first by visits from other teachers wishing me well, then by the slowly increasing sounds of locker slams and chatter as more and more students arrived on campus. Finally, at 8:25, the warning bell rang to give the students five minutes to find their homerooms. I took a deep breath, propped open the classroom door, and stood beside it, ready to begin my new career.
The first two periodswent by in something of a blur, but an okay one. I didn’t butcher anyone’s names too badly, they all seemed curious about their new teacher, and only one kid in second period looked like a potential class clown. By third period, I had the pace down enough that I was able to give them the last ten minutes of class to take a Harry Potter sorting hat quiz to identify which Hogwarts house they belonged to, then find the taxonomy for their mascot.
I slipped behind my desk and took my first deep breath since I’d opened the classroom door, and the faint scent of the peonies tickled my nose. I hadn’t even had a chance to thank Ian for them yet, or the breakfast either. I’d do that on my lunch break.
They were too pretty to resist, and I leaned forward to sniff the one closest to me, but as my nose grazed the petal, I caught a deeply unsettling movement from the corner of my eye. The immediate sense of wrongness told me exactly what I would see when I turned my head. I had a sixth sense for spiders, and there it was: one largeish white spider which was somehow even more horrifying than the brown ones that regularly lurked in my house. But it was so much worse than I expected because there was also a stream of small ones. So many small ones. Dozens. Hundreds? I froze, but a small squeak came out of me, enough to turn the heads of the students nearest my desk as the first of the tiny, white peony-spawned devil spiders skittered toward me across the desk.
I shoved back from it with a yelp and plastered myself against the wall, watching in horror as still more baby spiders tumbled from the peony and spread out on my desk.
“Miss?” asked the young man nearest my desk whose name I couldn’t remember in my frozen brain. “Everything okay?”
I tried to answer him, but my mouth only moved in silence, no words coming out. I managed to point a shaking finger toward my desk. He and the two other boys closest rose and came around to investigate the problem.
“Whoa,” one of them said.
“What’s wrong?” asked a girl in the class, her voice nervous.
“Spiders,” the other boy announced.
“So many,” the first one said in awe.Justin.His name came back to me.
“A buttload of spiders.” That was...Kyle?
I swallowed and tried to pull myself together. “Don’t say buttload, Kyle.”
