Page 2 of John Wilder Gets Schooled
“Good job,” I said and set her down again.
Mrs. Moore set Gracie’s bright new kindergarten backpack on the porch, followed by the sports bag I’d packed on Friday night for the weekend. The sports bag looked suspiciously saggy.
“Did you remember to pack Mr. Peanut Butter?” I asked.
Gracie gasped and bolted back inside the house to grab her stuffed frog, and Mrs. Moore looked even more sour and disapproving. Like, I got it, but we were already running late, so what the hell was another few minutes? And I didn’t want to deal with an upset Gracie tonight if Mr. Peanut Butter wasn’t there at bedtime.
I’d bought the stuffed frog for her second birthday. She’d named it Mr. Peanut Butter, and hell if I knew why. The way littlekids’ brains worked was random and wild, and it made me laugh. Made me a little sad too, because it seemed like something most people lost as they grew up, and I’d miss the ways Gracie was funny and weird right now when she got older.
And here it was. The “my kid is having her first day of kindergarten and I’m having an existential crisis about it” moment I’d been waiting for, right on cue. But then Gracie came running out of the house again, Mr. Peanut Butter tucked under her arm, and she looked so goddamn happy and excited that all I could do was grin at her.
“Okay, let’s get this show on the road,” I said, and she raced toward my truck. I picked up her bags and nodded at Mrs. Moore. “See you Friday.”
She stared after Gracie, something longing in her gaze, but whatever sympathy I felt for her—and granted, it wasn’t a lot—died the moment she glanced at me and her expression soured.
She shut the door in my face.
I kept my smile plastered on my face as I turned and headed for my truck, because I didn’t want Gracie to know what I thought of her grandmother. I lifted Gracie into the truck, tossed her bags in with her, and clipped her into her booster seat.
Goose Run Elementary hadn’t changed much since I’d been there. It was K-5, and after that they sent the kids to Park View for middle school and Mecklenburg for high school. I didn’t remember it as being so small, but last time I’d been here I’d been that way myself. Cassidy had handled all the enrollment stuff a few months back, and I’d just signed what I needed to sign. Then she’d gotten the news about her scholarship, and suddenly I was the hands-on parent. Which was great. I wouldn’t have it any other way, just…
“Daddy,” Gracie said as we idled in the parking lot, “are you going to stop the truck?”
I turned off the ignition.
It was just that the small cluster of buildings suddenly scared the living shit out of me.
I knew what people around town said about me. The times I’d met other parents at birthday parties or the park or shit like that, I’d seen the way they looked at me, like what ishedoing here? Some kids Gracie’s age had parents old enough to bemyparents, and I just looked like a fuckup to them. Cassidy got some of it but not as much as me because she was the good girl who got pressured into sex, and I was the golden boy who turned out to be an asshole because I dumped her when she was seventeen and pregnant. Like I’d been a hypocrite the whole time, and my villainous mask finally got exposed, instead of what it was: we were both young and made a mistake together, and now we were both doing our best to be parents to our daughter. And it wasn’t like we were the only teen parents in Goose Run—hell, we weren’t even the youngest—but our families were from the good side of town, and we’d been brought up right, and we were supposed to get married. Our parents had the paperwork ready and everything.
And I said no.
That was what people remembered now. That I was the one who went against our parents, and God, and said no.
Worst night of my fucking life. Worse even than when Cassidy had told me she was pregnant. Because I might have felt the ground dropping away from under my feet when she’d broken the news, but the night a couple weeks later when I’d refused to marry her? That was when cold, hard reality had broken my fall.
My parents had kicked me out, Mom crying and Dad spitting Bible verses at me—the ones about children obeying their parents, mostly. Hearing them was nothing new, but the anger behind them was. If it hadn’t been for my best friend Danny, I wouldn’t have had any place to go. He and his grandma took me in. They were from the wrong side of town. And now I was too.
I glanced across at Gracie. She was watching me with a worried look on her face, and I forced a smile because I didn’t want to make her think there was anything scary about kindergarten.
It was weird, thinking back to how terrified I’d been the dayCassidy told me she was pregnant. At the time I’d thought my world was ending. And it had gotten upended a little, it was true, but there was nothing I’d do differently now. Well, okay, maybe I’d wait a couple years before having a kid, but the point was, choosing between the life I’d planned and the one I was living was a no-brainer, because my world might have gotten shaken up, but who cared about that when Gracie was my entire universe?
“You’re gonna have so much fun today!” I told her, and she grinned at me.
Had I cried on my first day of school? I didn’t remember. Maybe I hadn’t. But I bet I was nowhere near as brave as Gracie was, because when I got her out of the truck, she didn’t even wait for me to hold her hand. She just put on her backpack, squared her little shoulders, and began to stride toward the school like a motherfuckingboss.
Flipping.
Motherflipping.
I was trying not to swear as much, even in my head, but it was a hard habit to break.
“Hey,” I called to her. “Hey, slow down a second.”
Gracie stopped and looked back at me, clearly exasperated. She held out her hand. “Hurry up, Daddy!”
I hurried up.
A sign pointed us in the right direction of the kindergarten classroom, and there was another one on the door. The one on the door was painted in different-colored letters on yellow craft paper and said, “Happy first day of school!” Theiwas dotted with a smiley face and I pictured the teacher who made the sign as perky and young and sunshiney.
