Nelly desperately wanted to be involved in that, and she wanted to pretend that she wasn’t so tired that she was struggling to stay awake.
“Miss Bushnell?” one of the students closest to her desk whispered to her.
She realized that the classroom had been quiet for a while.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting the coffee to her lips and taking another sip. It was almost time to go home—she would be wired until midnight. Or…the way she felt, she would be hard-pressed to go to the meeting without taking anap first.
She looked around the classroom. “Everyone, figure out how many questions the person you corrected missed and then give them their paper back.”
She continued on with math class, embarrassed that a student had noticed her inattention. She prided herself on keeping her personal feelings completely separate from anything that had to do with school.
She had to remember that just a few moments later, when Roland McBride arrived to collect Robert from her classroom.
She pasted a smile on her face and remembered that Robert had given her an excuse to leave slightly early for a dentist appointment.
Apparently his uncle was taking him to the dentist appointment.
She could be nice, she could be kind, she could interact with this person that she intensely disliked.
She walked over, as she would with any other parent, and greeted him. “Good afternoon. Robert will be ready in just a moment. We were just a bit late with math class today, and we’re running slightly over. Let him get his things gathered up and put in his book bag.”
“Sure. We’ll just be late for the dentist, that’s all,” Roland said, sounding casual, but his words were anything but. It was a passive-aggressive swipe at her, saying that she wasn’t a good teacher, and she was going to cause them to be late.
“I said I was sorry,” she said, using her best professional teacher’s voice and her best professional teacher’s smile. The kind of smile that she would smile at parents that she knew weren’t doing the best things that they possibly could for their children but were instead handing them off to the school to babysit every day. And who didn’t really give a flip whether their children learned anything or not. Those were her least favorite kind of parents.
Probably it was her physical exhaustion that caused her to work even harder at being cool and collected.
“You always did have trouble being on time,” Roland said. “But at least you got the right student.”
It was a dig at the fact that she had given her valentine to the wrong person. Actually, it really hadn’t been her fault. The only thing she could ever figure out was that she had put Tommy’s valentine in Roland’s envelope, but she never could confirm it. She had been too shy to go to Tommy and ask if he had gotten a valentine from her.
She had given Roland one that basically said “you stink, but have a happy Valentine’s Day anyway.”
It was the nastiest one she could find, which was saying something, because most of the valentines were pretty nice and benign.
“I guess some people just hold onto the past and can’t ever let it go, can they?” she said, her smile not slipping an inch.
“Boy, that’s someone to talk—someone who had a rivalry over a valentine the entire way from third grade to twelfth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, lifting her chin and giving him a superior look.
“I’m talking about the fact that you had your friend spy on me so that you knew every single grade that I got and made sure that yours were higher. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Nelly was aware of her students and their curiosity about the visitor and their conversation even though they were supposed to be practicing their handwriting.
“That is an unfair accusation, Mr. McBride. But you’re used to being wrong, aren’t you?”
“I doubt I’m used to it as much as you are, Miss Bushnell. But wrong, late, whatever.”
She didn’t get to say anything more, because Roland said, “Hey, Robert. Glad you got your stuff gathered together. I’m here to rescue you.”
“We like to encourage our children to enjoy school and not use such language that would make them think that there was something wrong with being here.”
“I’d do that too, but I don’t like to lie to kids,” Roland said.
She wanted to stamp her foot in frustration. She really, reallyloved Robert, and he had so much potential. Roland was going to ruin it all because of some stupid competition.
But even as she thought that, she knew the competition was all her fault.
