Learning Curve

He shuffled back to his desk and dropped into his chair. “I don’t want to do this, Ms. Sullivan. I’m sorry if you’ve been led to believe differently, but the truth is, I didn’t agree to have a student teacher this year. I don’t work with student teachers anymore. I haven’t for a long, long time. I didn’t even know about your assignment here until a few moments before I met you this morning. And I don’t think this is a good idea, in spite of all your expectations and your obvious enthusiasm.” He slumped lower in his seat and stretched a hand across his forehead. “Or maybe because of them.”

Emily flipped one hand in the air, brushing aside his touching little speech. “Okay,” she said. “I knew coming into this it was going to be a tough sell.” She cleared her throat. “What I’d like you to do is to view my student teaching assignment as an opportunity for a kind of personal and educational renewal.”

“Renewal?”

“A chance to revisit your philosophical underpinnings. To sharpen and highlight the contrast between your views and those of another educational professional—just for the sake of argument.”

“And I suppose the person I’d be contrasted with would be you.” Joe straightened in his chair. An old, familiar feeling was spreading like heartburn through his gut. The kind of feeling he got whenever he pictured William F. Buckley squinting at him from the cover of the National Review. “And just what are these ‘ideological underpinnings?’”

“Let’s see if I remember the legend according to Jack Junior.” Emily raised her hands to tick off the items. “Joseph P. Wisniewski—the P an ongoing and entertaining mystery to your students. Raised at an Oregon commune and Rainbow Family gatherings. Homeschooled, for the most part, with extracurricular activities at antinuke demonstrations. High school years spent in San Francisco, where an early growth spurt grabbed the attention of the basketball coach and landed you a college sports scholarship.”

Emily ran out of fingers and crossed her arms beneath attractively perky breasts. “You joined the Peace Corps after graduation and took up teaching when you got back to the States.”

Dozens of years summarized in less than a dozen sentences. It didn’t matter—he’d lost track when she mentioned the Peace Corps.

Guatemala. Rosaria.

He shut his eyes against the old wounds, and then opened them to confront the new irritant: Emily Sullivan, a living, breathing reminder of what he’d been like when he started teaching at Caldwell. That first year, before the crushing news from Guatemala, before Rosaria’s death. The year he’d been fired up with purpose and filled with enthusiasm.

It was hard to look at her. Hard to look back. But he forced himself to meet her eyes, to smile, to nod. “An impressive performance. I think you managed to hit most of the highlights.”

“Thank you.”

Joe leaned back in his chair, which creaked a warning to keep his voice low and his wits sharp. “So you want me to agree to share my liberal, left-wing soapbox with a…” He gestured for her to fill in the blanks.

“A woman who was raised on Air Force bases and Reaganomics.” Emily leaned down and settled her hands on the edge of his desk. “A conservative Republican.”

“That’s redundant,” he said.

“That’s predictable,” she answered.

He shifted forward and noted the tiny flinch before her smile widened. He waited and watched as her knuckles turned white from her grip on his desk. But she didn’t back off, and she kept her eyes steady on his. He had to give her points for sheer spunk. “Oh, I don’t think you’ve got me completely figured out yet,” he said.

“Good. That’ll just liven things up.” She took a deep breath. “Come on, Wiz. Take me on for a couple of rounds. You’ve got nothing to lose but the right edge of that soapbox.”

He could see the freckles scattered across her nose, and the shards of silver ringing her pupils. One curl slipped forward over one of her eyebrows, and he caught his breath. Such an appealing package wrapped around such repulsive politics. He could reach out and strangle her. Or tip forward just a couple of inches and nibble on those smug, curvy lips. The first would earn him a prison sentence. The second would probably get him fired.

He was sure about one thing. Sexual harassment of a student teacher wasn’t part of his personal politics or his philosophical underpinnings. He leaned back and rubbed a finger across his mouth. “You know, a soapbox can have a pretty slippery surface. And I may have a few surprises left up my sleeve.”

“Sounds like a challenge—or a bargain. Either way, I’m taking it.” Emily slapped her palms against the top of his desk. “That’s the spirit. That’s The Wiz I’ve heard about. This is going to be great, just great,” she said, backing toward the door. “And don’t worry, we can work out the details later.”

She sidestepped into the hall. “I have a few surprises up my sleeve, too. See you on Monday—bright and early!” And then she was gone, taking most of the classroom’s oxygen with her.

Joe sighed and slouched deeper into his complaining chair. He closed his eyes and tried to reach that comfortable state of ennui he liked to wallow in right before the start of a new school year. But everything felt like it was trickling out of his grasp. As if Emily Sullivan had ripped all the self-indulgent pleasure out of his back-to-school misery and twisted it into something…something even more twisted than usual.

Ideas crackled through his brain like static. He couldn’t stop considering all the possibilities, imagining all the delights of an ongoing ideological duel with a well-educated, intelligent adversary. The subtle—no, the visceral thrust and parry that could be played out before a captive but fascinated adolescent audience. Hmm. It was tempting. It was intriguing. It was downright stimulating.

But Joe didn’t want to be tempted or intrigued. He certainly didn’t want to be stimulated. And definitely not by some chirpy student teacher in short skirts and big, wide eyes. Eyes with sparkly silver spikes that rayed out into sky-colored irises rimmed by beautiful navy rings….

Stop right there. Get a grip, Wisniewski.

Joe took a deep breath, but regretted it instantly. There, just beneath the odors of musty texts and stale coffee, was a faint trace of something fresh and floral.

Damn. It was going to be a long, long school year.

CHAPTER TWO

BRIGHT AND EARLY. Those two words certainly seemed made for each other, Joe thought as he shuffled through the main hall of Caldwell High at 7:45 a.m. on the first day of school. Sort of like black and blue. Or battery and assault.

He tucked a stack of folders under one arm and rammed his hands into his pockets, focusing on the floor to avoid eye contact. Eye contact could lead to conversation, which often led to dodging requests and other forms of aerobic exercise. And he wasn’t looking for a workout.

Two sleek, high-heeled shoes bounced into his path. By the time Joe’s gaze roamed over sexy ankles, shapely calves and knees that hinted at more interesting items above a no-nonsense hemline, he knew what he’d find at eyeball level: Emily Sullivan, his own personal triathlon.

She beamed up at him, her smile nearly blinding him with white-toothed enthusiasm. He hoped she came with a dimmer switch. “Good morning, Mr. Wisniewski.”

“Is it, Ms. Sullivan?”

“Well, of course! Don’t you just love the first day of school? All the energy, all the possibilities.”

She sighed a happy little sigh and scrunched up her nose, oblivious to the staggering and chest clutching going on behind her back. Her prim sweater set and that twist thing she’d done with her hair wasn’t going to fool the local male population. Might as well go for truth in advertising and hang a flashing neon Hot Babe sign around her neck.

“I was wondering,” she said, “if I could sit in on all your classes today, since it’s a noon dismissal schedule.”

“If you want to. It’s going to be pretty routine, just handing stuff out. Texts, course schedules. Threats.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

There it was, punching him right between the eyes in the first five minutes of the first morning of the school year: one of the many reasons he didn’t want a student teacher, even one who didn’t look like Emily Sullivan. It was going to be a lot of work for him to find work for his student teacher to do. “I could probably come up with something,” he muttered.

“Great!”

Great. It was going to be like training a puppy. An eager, squirming puppy that followed him everywhere, licking his shoes, looking up at him with big, wide puppy eyes no matter how many times he scolded or stepped on it. He hated stepping on puppies, but it usually happened sooner or later, because the damn things always managed to get right under his feet. Crowding him.

Might as well kill two puppies with one stone, so to speak. Give her something to do, far away from him. He pulled the folders from under his arm and chose some prep work. Emily could do it. She could feel useful and needed, a valuable partner on the educational team. She could establish a meaningful relationship with the copier. “Do you know where the copier is?”

“Linda showed me.”

Probably during some female bonding ritual involving office equipment. “Class rosters are inside. Copy the assignment sheets and reading lists, with a couple extra for each class, okay?”

“Okay. I can handle that.” She hesitated, her smile dimming just a bit around the edges. “But do you think I’ll be finished by the time the first bell rings?”

Squish. “If not, we’ll finish up at the break—my prep period is right after that. Don’t worry about it.”

Emily’s beam bounced back. “I’ll see you in class.”

Joe stood rooted to his spot, watching her blond twist bob through the hall, wondering how he was going to get through five class periods of puppy eyes following his every move.

“Hey, Wiz.”