“I know. I just wanna make sure you’re okay.”
“Yeah, well… I’m not. So, might as well pile on.”
“Come on, Walker. Let’s not catastrophize before we know all the details.”
I let out a gust of air. “I’ll try.”
* * *
“Augustus, come on in,” Carla said, her expression guarded.
“Not going to lie, you don’t look like you have good news for me,” I said as we sat down, just to get it out there.
She drummed her fingertips on her desk. “Unfortunately, you’re right.”
“But the investigation showed that the anonymous complaint was baseless.”
“That’s true.”
“Then why do I get the feeling you’re about to tell me I lost my job?”
She held up her hands. “We’re not at that point. Not yet.”
“Not yet? I’ve got school starting in a few weeks. What are we…?”
She shook her head. “As things currently stand, you will not be starting the school year.”
“But what about my classes? Who’s gonna cover those?”
“GCHS won’t be offering a woodworking class this semester, and they have a substitute coming in for your geometry classes.”
“A substitute?” I asked, immediately worried for students like Leo. He’d passed my class, but he was definitely not unique in his difficulties with geometry, which required a lot of memorization.
“I know it’s not ideal?—”
“Not ideal? What is going on?”
“Your mother’s lawyer called the district yesterday—” she started.
“What the hell?”
“Your mother has admitted that she was the anonymous source, and she threatened to go to the news if the district let you continue to teach.”
“The news? With what story? She didn’t even have a name to go with her accusation.”
“Looks like she came up with one. Leopold Haynes.”
My jaw dropped.
“Leo was a student of mine, and I’ve worked with him at Lupe for over a year now. What did she say about him?”
“Your mother is saying that you were working with Oswald Cavanaugh to set up an illicit tryst between Leo and an adult in another town.”
“That is literally the opposite of what we did,” I said, remembering with a rock in my gut the way Ozzie and I had joked that evening when Oz had come in to have his tire fixed.
We’d done it to rankle her. She hadn’t said anything at the time, and I hadn’t thought any more of it. Apparently she’d been waiting for the right moment.
“I’m going to need more details if you want to counter this.”
