“Some old guy was trying to get you into private meetings?” he asked me, and snorted again.
“For mentoring,” I reiterated. I said the word slowly to make my point. “It’s important for a lot of jobs.”
“I got a job.”
I stared at my sister. “What? You did?”
She nodded and Boyd smiled at her. “I’m going to work for his parents. I’m learning all about snowmobiles and boats.”
“She’ll be on the rental side, not the repair side. That’s what I run,” he added, and I stared at him.
“You do?” I had thought that he was jobless, but he was nodding and so was she. And I had pictured him living with his roommates in something that was closer to a pigsty, worse than our former motel room, but this apartment was very nice. They had half-sized appliances but I bet that they all worked, and they had a bathroom with a shower so they didn’t have to worry about using buckets to get clean. There were definitely floors, which had been an issue in one of the places that I had considered renting.
And here was my sister, feeling happier and gainfully employed. “Good for you, Willow,” I told her, and I wasn’t only referring to her job. I was glad for her about everything. She looked at me and smiled, as if she understood what I was saying.
I hung out with them for a little while and I tried to engage with Boyd, which led to him acting wary—but I really was trying to be nice. I didn’t want to stay for too long, though, so that I was some kind of pathetic parasite on my sister, interrupting the good thing she had going. Anyway, I also needed to leave so that Everett and I could have dinner together before I had to go to my next job. There was a narrow window when he was at the house and I was too, and I wanted to maximize it. I said goodbye and went home to prepare a very nutritious meal.
“That’s so good,” Everett said a little later, after he’d taken a bite of the dinner I’d made. He closed his eyes. “I didn’t know that turkey breasts could taste like this. Could we make it again on Thanksgiving?”
“Sure,” I said happily. I’d been searching for recipes and trying new stuff. It was a lot more fun to cook when you weren’t worried about a picky eater (Willow) and you also didn’t have to worry about how much everything cost. “Thank you,” I said. “Have more.” He was trying to maintain his weight, because the training staff monitored the players and he had lost too much. They were afraid of him losing muscle and all the good things that went along with that, like speed and stamina. So I passed over more turkey and more vegetables, as I asked him about his day and he asked me about mine.
“I heard something strange,” I mentioned, since it was still on my mind. “Something about my cooperating teacher in the fourth grade, the one who didn’t like me.”
“Why the hell didn’t he like you?”
“Because Phil thought that I couldn’t handle a class by myself. He thought I couldn’t manage the kids and be effective with discipline, for example,” I explained.
“I thought you were there to learn how to do that from him.” Everett put down his fork. “Were you supposed to walk in and already have the skills?”
“No. That’s what student teaching is about, because the stuff we did in our college courses wasn’t very practical.” I thought about it. “I guess he was worried that I wasn’t learning enough fromhim, not fast enough. That was why he didn’t want to give me a recommendation but that made it a lot harder to find a teaching job. I don’t mind the cafeteria but I really do want to be in a classroom. And I wish it could be full-time so that I could quit at the motel and at Jannie’s.”
He looked at me for a moment and opened his mouth to say something. But he then closed it, so I continued. “Anyway, one of the women I work with now said that Phil was a lech,” I said. “Do you know what that means?”
“Pretty sure I do. What did he try on you?”
“That was what she asked me too, but he was never like that.” I thought again, though, and a few things did come to mind. “When I first started there, he did stand very close to me. I would back up, he would step forward…one day, we moved all the way across the room. I also had to ask him not to put his arm around me.”
“He was touching you?”
I nodded. “And I did think it was weird that he never wanted to stay after school to meet.”
“What do you mean? He wanted to go somewhere else?”
“He wanted me to come to his house and after I kept saying that I couldn’t, he got a lot colder. He was mad about it but I had class and then I had to work. And it was strange that he wanted me to do that, because I never went over to Sarah Pauker’s house when I was her student teacher.”
Everett put his hand over his eyes. “Damn. Jesus.” He pulled away his palm to look at me. “I’d say there’s a good chance that he was a lech, Zoey. He probably didn’t like it that you turned him down, and that’s why he screwed you over with his recommendation.”
“If that’s true, it’s terrible!” I was outraged and when I looked at my phone, I saw that I was also close to being late. “Maybe I should talk to the principal. Suzanne is the person I told you about when you wanted all the insider information on our schools, the woman who doesn’t like to admit there are any problems because then she’d have to solve them.”
“How much help would she be?”
I wasn’t sure but I had to go, anyway. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as I hurriedly carried my dishes to the sink.
“You get home really late from this job,” he remarked. “Isn’t there an earlier shift?”
“Mine pays better because no one wants it. What?” I asked, because he had also gotten up although there was more turkey left on his plate than I’d had on mine.
“Nothing. See you later.”
