“You’re so weird, Ash.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
I smiled a little. I sort of liked his weirdness. “What’s your last name?”
“Banks.”
“Thank you for the candy, Ashish Banks,” I said.
I turned around to face forward, opened the candy, and began to eat the chocolate edge from around one of the Reese’s before eating the middle part. I always ate them like that, because Mom used to do the same.
It was her favorite candy, too.
Without thought, I turned back toward Ash to thank him. Instead of being able to say something to him, I just smiled.
“I like that, Karla East.” He grinned back. “I like it when you smile.”
I didn’t tell him, but I liked it when he smiled, too.
***
Thank goodness for teachers who pitied the high school experience.
Mrs.Rivers, my AP English teacher, was my saving grace when it came to lunchtime. After the experience in the lunchroom a few days ago, an incident that was spread around to not only students but teachers, Mrs.Rivers told me she had her lunch period at the same time I had mine.
She offered me her classroom so I could eat in there without the possibility of being bullied. I even convinced Ellie to start packing me school lunches so I wouldn’t have to go to the cafeteria at all.
Mrs.Rivers was one, if not the only, teacher that I loved. She was extremely smart and loved reading and writing—the two things I was really into myself.
She was an older lady in her sixties, and she always talked about how much her students meant to her. I figured she really showed that when she invited me into her classroom to eat lunch each day. She didn’t even bother me when I’d eat, either. She didn’t try to talk about the incident in the cafeteria or anything at all. The day she invited me to her classroom, all she said to me was, “I eat my lunch in my classroom at the same time that you eat your lunch. There are free desks if you’d like to join me.”
She didn’t ask if I was OK or if I needed anything. Instead, she’d sit at her desk, I’d sit at mine, and we’d eat in silence. Over the next few days, I noticed she ate the same thing from her lunch bag: a turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese, a Fiber One bar, and a bag of Cheetos. She ate her Cheetos with chopsticks in an attempt to not get her fingers all cheesy, and then she’d wash everything down with an extra-icy Diet Coke. She did all this while using one hand to read a novel.
It was in those moments that I realized Mrs.Rivers was living the dream.
I sat at my desk and ate my food, too. Ellie was always a little extra and would leave a piece of paper in my lunch bag telling me to have a great day, or she’d add some quote that sounded cheesy. The quotes were always by some guy named Fred Rogers. I had no clue who he was, so I’d roll my eyes at each note and put it to the side of my lunch. That afternoon’s note said, “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”
I couldn’t believe how cheesy Ellie was, but then again, it wasn’t shocking that a millennial was corny. I could imagine her making my sandwich in the morning and smiling ear to ear, thinking about how happy the quote was going to make me.
She even signed it, “XOXO —Ellie.”
I was stunned that her dorkiness hadn’t annoyed Dadenough for him to fire her yet, but maybe there were no more nannies in town, seeing as how he’d let go at least five million thus far.
“Geez, are you kidding me?!” Mrs.Rivers randomly remarked as she placed her book down for a second. She stared out with the blankest of stares. Grumbled some. Then grumbled some more before picking up the book again.
That was how I knew a book was amazing—when it pissed you off so much, but you couldn’t help but want to know what happened next. That afternoon, Mrs.Rivers was more animated about her novel than ever before. At one point within the span of five minutes, she went from slamming the book down, to picking it back up, to laughing, to having tears streaming down her face.
That was enough to make me curious. Anything that could move a person to that many emotions within the span of five minutes deserved to be read by all of humankind.
“That good?” I asked as I stared at my teary-eyed teacher.
She closed the book and held it to her chest. “That good.” She smiled. “What’s even crazier is this is my fifth time reading it. I read it every few years to see how much I have changed. That’s the wild thing about books. They hold different meanings to a person based solely on the individual’s current state of affairs. When I read this in my thirties, it didn’t mean as much to me as it does now in my sixties. Words are powerful that way. It’s my favorite book. It’s been my favorite book for decades, and each decade it has become my favorite for different reasons.”
I gave her a half-smile.
I’d never read a book more than once, but I’d wished before that I could read certain books for the first time again.
Mrs.Rivers glanced down at the book, then up toward me.She stood from her desk, walked over to me, and then placed the book on my desk. “Here you go, Karla.”
