“My fault,” I say, doing a little shuffle to the side. “Deep in a brownie trance.” I hold out the plate. “Want one? They’re life-changing, apparently.”
Her eyes, which looked tired and a little unfocused a second ago, light up. “God, yes.” She takes one from the plate and, without any ceremony, bites off a huge chunk, nearly half the brownie disappearing in one go. She chews for a moment, her eyes closing in bliss. “Oh wow,” she mumbles through the mouthful. “I’m so hungry. I didn’t eat breakfast. Or lunch.”
A joke bubbles up before I can stop it. “Nervous stomach?” I say, trying for a conspiratorial tone. “I was so wound up this morning I almost yakked in my sink.”
She swallows the brownie and a small, tight laugh escapes her lips, but it’s a beat too late. It’s the kind of laugh that’s more of a social obligation than a genuine reaction. There’s a flicker of something in her expression—vulnerability, maybe?—and I have the sudden, intense urge to pry. To ask her what’s really going on behind the cool, competent teacher façade. But I don’t. We’renot there yet. We barely know each other, and every time I think we’re making progress, one of us builds the wall back up. So, I refrain.
Instead, I lean against the wall, trying to project an air of casual confidence I don’t entirely feel. “Well, for what it’s worth, the day went better than I ever could have imagined my first day would.”
Maya raises her eyebrows as she takes another, more delicate bite of the brownie. The gesture is small, but it lands like a punch to my gut. The look says,Your first day? Oh, you’re one of those. A newbie.My insecurity, which had been blissfully dormant, rears its ugly head. I feel a desperate need to correct her perceived assumption, to prove that I’m not some wide-eyed rookie, fresh out of a credentialing program.
“My first day atthisschool, I mean,” I clarify, the words rushing out a little too quickly. “At Pine Island Elementary.”
“Right,” she says, her expression unreadable. “What were things like at your old school?”
My mind goes completely blank. I don’t have an old school. My only teaching experience consists of a semester of student teaching in a sterile suburban district and a handful of substitute gigs. I can’t tell her that. She already seems to look down on people like me, the career-changers who waltz into education midway through life. I heard her comments at the first faculty meeting about the “trier-outers” who think teaching is some kind of quaint, easy job to try out when they want a change from their past career. I don’t want her to think I’m not committed, that I’m not taking this as seriously as she does.
So I scramble, my brain latching onto the only school I know intimately. “It was… different,” I begin, picturing the manicured lawns and ivy-covered brick of my own elementary school. “A private school.” I say, as if that explains everything.
I start describing the place, the lie taking on a life of its own. I paint a picture of entitled pretentious families. “The parents were the worst part. Any time their precious angel got anything less than a perfect score, my phone would be ringing off the hook. It was exhausting. There was no real teaching, just… managing expectations.”
Maya nods slowly, a wry smile playing on her lips. “Sounds about right. Those kids probably don’t amount to much anyway. It’s hard to build character when your parents pave the whole road for you.”
Her comment is meant to be a show of solidarity, a joke at the expense of the rich and privileged. But it stings. It stings with the sharp, bitter truth of my own life. Because she’s talking about me. I’m one of those kids. I’m thirty-seven years old, and what have I really done? I spent fifteen years climbing a corporate ladder I didn’t even want to be on, making money I didn’t need, all to impress a father who’s never once said he’s proud of me. This teaching job is the first thing I’ve ever done that feels real, that feels like it matters. And hearing her dismiss my entire past, my entire identity, as something that “doesn’t amount to much” feels like a judgment on the very core of who I am.
I force a smile, a hollow gesture that feels like it might crack my face. “Yeah, well, I’m glad to be here. At a school with a more… mixed student population. It feels more real.”
“Oh, it’s real, all right,” she says, finishing the last crumb of her brownie. “It’s not without its own problems, though.”
An opening. A chance to salvage this conversation, to steer it back to solid ground. “Oh yeah? What kind of problems?” I ask, my voice a little too eager. “Maybe you could tell me about them over a beer? To celebrate surviving day one?”
The shift is instantaneous. The moment the invitation leaves my lips, her posture changes. Her shoulders tense up, and the open, conversational energy between us vanishes, replaced by aguarded discomfort. She looks away, down the empty hall, as if searching for an escape route.
“Oh, I can’t,” she says, her voice suddenly flat. “I have to… I have to go feed my ferret.”
I know the excuse is, on some level, true. She does have a ferret. But it’s also the most bizarre, conversation-ending brush-off I’ve ever heard. It’s a shield, a flimsy but effective one.
“Right. The ferret,” I say, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “Of course.”
“Yeah,” she says, already backing away. “Well. See you tomorrow.”
And just like that, she’s gone, her footsteps echoing down the hall. I’m left standing alone, holding a paper plate with two cheesecake brownies, the sweet smell of chocolate suddenly cloying. Every single time. Every time I feel like I’m making a little bit of progress, like we’re finding some common ground, one of us says or does something that sends us retreating back to our corners. It’s a frustrating, exhausting dance, and I’m not sure I’ll ever learn the steps.
Chapter Thirteen
Maya
The low, rhythmic click of knitting needles is a comforting sound, a soft metronome in the quiet of the community room of Devin’s clinic. It’s day three of the Chronic Crafters’ Around the Clock Knit-a-Thon, and my hands move on autopilot, looping the soft merino wool around my needles. I didn’t technically lie to Zachary about the charity knit-a-thon the other night. I just… omitted that I was coming tonight, not the night we ran into each other at Get Stuffed.
I’m on the evening shift with Hannah and Alexis. Sterling’s asleep in a carrier strapped to Alexis’s chest, a tiny, warm weight rising and falling with each of her mother’s breaths. Devin and Flick did their shift this morning, and the giant fundraising thermometer Devin drew on a whiteboard shows we’ve already cleared two thousand dollars. The money is for a new pelvic floor therapy clinic she wants to start, a desperately needed service on the island. The goal feels both impossibly far and thrillingly close.
“I still don’t get it,” Alexis says, not looking up from the tiny yellow baby bootie she’s crafting. “He asked you out for a beerafter the first day of school and you said no because you had to feed your ferret.”
Hannah snorts from her side of the table, a cascade of rainbow-colored yarn pooling at her feet. “She has a point, Maya. It’s not the most believable excuse.”
I sigh, my own needles clicking a little faster. “It wasn’t an excuse! Ididhave to feed Frida. And I can’t complicate things with Zachary. It’s already too much.”
“What’s too much?” Alexis asks, finally looking at me. “You share a classroom wall and a landlord. That’s not exactly a sordid affair.”
