“Christianna?” Mom nudged.
May as well swallow the bitter pill. “Silas is out of the picture for good.”
Mom scoffed. “Surely, you can work things?—”
“He’s married,” I yelped and barreled on before she could comment. “He and Lemon are together now. And he looks really happy.” He had. Even after finding out that I was the principal, there’d been a gleam in his eye that I’d never seen before. A sparkle that said he’d live in a trailer by the creek with Lemon if he had to. If this job didn’t work out. No. He’d live in an un-air-conditioned tent.
Lemon had gotten my “trailer.”
I resisted the urge to crack my forehead on the desk again.
“Miss Thornbury?” A teenage girl called from the main office adjoining my smaller one. School had ended an hour and a half ago. The only people left in the building were the janitors and the girls’ volleyball team.
“Principal Thornbury?” A second female student called.
“Mom, I have to go.” I pressed end, knowing she’d shoot me a text telling me how hurtful I was being. I may have been avoiding her more than usual since I left Laramie.
I walked to the door and poked my head out. Oh, it was Anna, Silas’s niece, and another girl about the same age.
I waved even though they’d already seen me. “I’m here.”
I smoothed my hands down the front of my faux leather pencil skirt. Normally, I wouldn’t be nervous about two teens approaching me, but I’d practically had a nervous breakdown in front of Anna at the beach. There was no telling what she’d told her friend. Or what they’d spread to other students. So yeah, my nerves were on high alert.
Anna strode through the office with more confidence than I felt at that moment. More confidence than I’d possessed as a freshman in high school. If there were any residual hard feelings from the beach, she hid them well.
“Hi, Anna.” I offered her a gentle smile.
She studied me for a moment with a quizzical brow, as if my presence answered a question for her. I’d seen her earlier in the cafeteria, but I was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed me. At what point in the day had she realized I was the new principal?
Gathering from both of their tiny, tight spandex shorts, they were on the volleyball team.
“I’m Principal Thornbury.” I offered my hand to Anna’s friend.
She eyed it like I might give her some kind of disease,but gave me a dead-fish handshake. “Brooklyn.”
Okay.
Anna’s phone was in her hand and she glanced at it as if to gain courage from something on the screen. “I think we have a problem,” she said. Then she brushed a stray piece of mocha-colored hair out of her eyes. This girl was the kind of pretty I wish I’d been at her age. Heck, the kind of pretty I wished I were now. Sophie had been a blonde with blue eyes. But Silas had said Anna’s father was Italian. I could see Sophie in her—the cheekbones, the smile. But her complexion was tan, and she had dark eyes with lashes most women would kill for. If she never put on a speck of makeup, it wouldn’t matter.
“What’s going on?”
Her chocolate eyes were wide and worried. “Ms. Whorley, our coach, just quit. Like walked right out of practice.”
My forehead crunched. “Why would she do that?”
Brooklyn let out a loud sigh. “Because she does nothing. She’s the definition of mid. Told us to play Queens and sat on her phone for the first hour and a half of practice. Just like every other day. So when Coach Byrd?—”
“That’s the varsity coach,” Anna interjected.
Brooklyn plowed on. “Got fed up with it, he started coaching?—”
Anna lifted a hand but didn’t wait for her friend to stop. “Because we’re his future pool of talent, you know? In a year or two, we’ll be his varsity team.”
Brooklyn continued, a geyser of monotone words. “That got Whorley off her phone real quick. But she still didn’t start coaching. Instead, she glared at Byrd for like ten minutes. Like how dare he. And of course, he ignored her because, like I said,” she shrugged, “she’s mid. So then she told him she did not have to be treated this way. She did not get paid enough for this. And stormed out of the building.” Brooklyn made duck lips. “Lame AF.”
I snapped two fingers and pointed at her. “Watch it. I know what thatmeans.”
Brooklyn shrugged. “Sorry.” She didn’t look sorry though and I couldn’t tell if she was an apathetic punk or if it was her personality to be this vanilla.
