“We have science first thing in the morning. I hate science.”
It was like a dagger to my heart. Hate science? Nooooooooo…
“What’s wrong with science?”
“Miss Lehrer is so boring. And her voice drives me nuts.”
That I could understand. The woman sounded like she had sucked a lungful of helium every time she spoke. It was as if Minnie Mouse had morphed into was a science teacher, and she worked at Whitaker Elementary. At the parent teacher conference, I had thought she was punking me at first.
More importantly, she obviously didn’t know what she was talking about, a lot of the time. I had asked her about her curriculum, and it was clear to me that she was going to be doing a lot of reading the night before she taught a lesson. But even that would have been ok if she had shown any interest in the topic. Last year she had been the library assistant, and I definitely felt that proximity had been a major factor in her hiring.
“Science is cool, dude! Think of all the books we get from the library. And the experiments we do at home. That’s all science.”
“Yeah, but school science isn’t as fun as home science.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Macdara goes to Red Pine School,” he told me. “She likes it a lot. She likes science there.”
Red Pine was a private school. Where the annual tuition was more than I had ever grossed annually. And it was a little ironic that Whitaker Elementary was no longer good enough for actual Whitakers.
Luke was an actual Whitaker. No! I was determined to put him out of my head. If I hadn’t been so tired from all that had gone on in the past few days, I would have thought about him for much longer than the hour I wasted on him while trying to go to sleep the night before. Hour or two. But no more wasting time dreaming about Luke Whitaker.
“Well, I’m sure Red Pine is a nice school for Macdara,” I said. “Do you have your equipment bag? Did you pack your suit in your duffel?”
“Em, you asked me that like five times already! Yes!” But I noticed that he snuck a peek in his duffel to make sure that he had really put his swimsuit in there. We had been down that road before.
“I just don’t want you to have to swim naked, pal. Can you imagine? The girls would riot if they saw your cute little buns.”
“Aunt Emily!” But he started to giggle, and forgot about his dumb science teacher for the moment.
I was off to the NGS, still sucking down my coffee, and not thinking about Luke Whitaker at all. I opened up on Monday mornings and as the only grocery store in town, we were usually busy. Well, we were the only grocery store besides Art’s Market, but no one in their right mind would go to Art’s where once a woman had found a rat in carton of oatmeal. Several years ago now, but still. Busy was good, because it kept me from worrying about everything, and it kept me from thinking about Luke. Luke. Luke.
The NGS was not a scanner, self-checkout kind of place. It was not even a moving conveyor belt for the food kind of place. I rang up each item, talked to the customers, and took a short break when Martha came in at ten. She had justdropped Frankie off at his Monday outing at the Whitaker Community Center. They had some great programs for adults with special needs. Luke was a Whitaker. Luke. Darn it!
I was so busy not thinking about him, I nearly missed that the actual man himself was in my line. The only line, because the other one never had a cashier and the register actually didn’t work anymore. Oh, sweet Mary. But I played it cool, and did not at all wonder if I still had any lip gloss left on from when I applied during my break.
“Hi,” he said, sliding a pack of gum to me.
“Hi.” I smiled at him, then grabbed the gum. “Is this it?”
“Uh, yes. But I have something for you outside.”
Martha had been hovering about an inch away since she had seen Luke Whitaker in the checkout line. “I’ll take over, honey,” she told me. “Go ahead outside with Luke.”
“Thanks, Martha.” I swear that every eye in the place followed us out.
He walked to the back of his car, and popped the back door to pull out a bike wheel. “Here you go. It’s hard to ride on just one.”
Mutely I took the wheel. “How did you end up with this?”
“Your old tire was flat, so I brought it home to patch it. But it was in pretty bad shape, so I got you a new one.”
“You did? For me?” To say I was flabbergasted would have been an understatement. “Wow, thank you. Thank you!” I hugged the wheel to my chest. It was so nice of him! A new tire! “And thank you for the ride home the other night. I think I was pretty incoherent and I don’t remember if I toldyou that.”
“You did. It wasn’t a problem, I was glad to do it. How did you get here this morning?”
“Martha loaned me her Bronco.” I gestured at the blue truck.
