Learning Curve

He turned as Matt Zerlinger, a senior in his Government and Current Events classes, motioned with his chin toward Emily. “Heard you got a student teacher this year. That her?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.”

Matt grinned. “Shit happens.”

“Yeah.” Joe sighed. “And because I have a student teacher, and I need to set a better example, I have to warn you to watch the language in the halls, Matt.”

Matt’s smile widened. “This is going to be fun.”

“Shit,” said Joe.

“Oh, that reminds me.” Matt cast a glance down the hall. “Dornley was looking for you.”

The athletic director. Probably looking for another sucker to coach another orphan team. “Damn.”

“Yeah. Just thought I’d warn you.”

Joe clamped a hand over Matt’s shoulder as they headed toward the stairway. “In addition to running interference for Dornley, I see you’ve registered for two periods with me. What’s the angle?”

“An awesome recommendation for Berkeley.”

“So, you’re going for it.” Joe squeezed Matt’s shoulder before dropping his hand back into his pocket. “Is Walt going to come through with the funding?”

Walter Mullins was Matt’s latest stepfather. Matt’s mom went through husbands like she went through bottles of cheap vodka, but Walt seemed to have some staying power.

“I’ve been working on him,” said Matt, “but it’s too soon to tell. Gonna have to hit the scholarship scene pretty hard.”

“Let me know what I can do to help.”

“Count on it.” Matt shrugged his backpack higher on his shoulder. “Walt says since this is all your idea in the first place, the least you can do is find a way to help pay for it.”

Joe knew it wasn’t wise to get too attached to a student, but Matt had snuck under his emotional radar as a scrawny freshman using his wits to keep pace with the upperclassmen on a backpacking trip. Matt was still a little on the scrawny side, but once he filled out the gangly frame and ditched the lab tech look, the womenfolk would start paying more attention. “Hey, two smart guys like us should be able to come up with some college funds.”

“Yeah.” Matt scrubbed the toe of a stiff new Birkenstock against the floor. “Wonder if that hot new student teacher would be of any assistance.”

“The student teacher’s name is Ms. Sullivan. And she’s not going to seem so hot after she starts handing out detention slips and essay tests.”

“I don’t know.” Matt shook his head. “Hot is hot.”

“She’s too old for you, Matt.”

“I don’t want to date her. I’m just going to enjoy the scenery. Besides,” he added, “the student betting pool is placing the best odds on Walford to make the first move.”

Real pros, those student bookies. “He’s married.”

“Yeah, but it’s kinda shaky right now. His wife went to Boise to visit her mother right after the Fourth of July picnic, and she hasn’t come back yet.” Matt shook his head. “And he’s enough of a loser to hit on the hired help.”

Hitting on the hot new student teacher—the worst kind of power play. And where power was involved in a relationship, it opened the door to some pretty ugly things, with exploitation heading the list. Good thing Joe kept reminding himself of the potential for disaster. Good thing bright and bouncy Emily Sullivan wasn’t his type.

The first bell sent Matt jogging back to his locker and Joe trudging toward the stairs. He tried to focus on his first period class, but all he could come up with was visions of wide blue puppy eyes and the student bookies branding his forehead with an L for Loser.

EMILY WAS SURE that most people never realized how much energy it took to be energetic.

She turned down Main Street shortly after a late lunch at Al’s Pizzeria, so tired she was afraid she’d lose the steering wheel tug-of-war with her battered, bullying ’92 Chevy pickup. It was a good kind of tired, though. The kind that carried a kick, with sparks of self-satisfaction snapping beneath the layers of exhaustion.

She had moved a mountain of texts up a mountain of stairs, had overseen a pile of photocopying and a fist-bruising stack of stapling. There had been enough paperwork to tie up the State Department in a red-tape bow, enough crises to keep a soap opera afloat for a season and no chance for a coffee break. Her back hurt almost as much as her feet, and she suspected her bladder had stretch marks.

But there had also been dozens of shy smiles and friendly greetings. Her welcome to campus had been so warm, so energizing, that if someone asked her, at this very moment, to shift her growling truck to light speed, she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

Cast in the afterglow of all this goodwill, the heart of Issimish sparkled. Main Street’s shop windows reflected the polish and flair filtering down the interstate from Seattle’s suburbs. Even the town’s rough and rowdy origins were getting a stylish makeover, something a little more quaint and a little less quirky.

She thumped over the railroad crossing at the edge of the new industrial park and sped out through orchards lining the old county road, rolling down the window to inhale the ripe tang of a football season afternoon. Houses thinned, separated by acres of bramble-edged fields instead of neatly fenced yards. The pickup’s treads whined over the ragged pavement, their vibrations humming through her in an edgy accompaniment.

Emily planned on keeping the buzz buzzing with a liquid caffeine recharge and the semisweet chocolate bar she had hidden in the back of her kitchen junk drawer. Her schedule until the end of her college term, at Christmas, was a tight one: high school observations in the mornings followed by the lengthy commute to her university classes in the afternoons and evenings. She only had a few hours left to pound out a paper on Piaget due in tonight’s Ed Psych class. And she should record her impressions of day one in her Social Studies Methodology journal before day two hit.

Impressions. Joe Wisniewski, still and self-contained, striking a deceptively lazy pose. Hitching one hip over the edge of his desk, those dark eyes scanning the room for student outlaws. Gary Cooper, calmly lecturing ’til high noon.

Okay, so she was still a bit impressed by The Great and Powerful Wiz, thrilling to his slow grin, or the quirk of an eyebrow, or the rumble of that deep voice. Her adolescent tingles and twinges had matured into, well, more mature tingles and twinges.

There she sat, tucked into the corner of a classroom she’d dreamed of joining at thirteen and clawed her way into at twenty-nine, echoes of her adolescent longings tumbling through her insides while her outsides calmly took notes. Studying his every move, pondering his every word—and wondering what was wrong.

Maybe it was the contrast of her own excitement with Joe’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, maybe it was his laid-back ease and deadpan delivery, but nothing had been quite what she’d expected. He’d been a bit too laid-back, a bit too deadpan, not exactly the inspiring educational model she’d hoped for.

Still, he seemed to have a quiet rapport with his students. And he definitely had a subtle magnetism that tugged at her on every level. Her instincts told her there was something there, beneath the surface, something he was holding back.

But what if those instincts were nothing more than the kind of fantasizing she’d engaged in as a teen? What if this attraction turned into a major distraction? She needed to analyze his effect on her and his other students, not simply sit there and enjoy it. She needed to focus on her job, to evaluate his classroom management style, not get sidetracked by wide shoulders and lean hips.

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She wouldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let it happen. There was too much riding on this assignment: her career, her family’s approval, her own self-esteem. Her future.

She was in charge of her educational experience, not The Wiz. If he didn’t offer the inspiration she’d hoped for, she’d work harder to find it elsewhere. Maybe, with time, she’d find what she needed within herself, wrapped in her own dreams and abilities.

In the meantime, if she had to spend several months observing a subject, it might as well be a good-looking one. “Can I pick ’em, or can I pick ’em?” she asked no one in particular as the truck rattled over a series of potholes.

Daydreaming of dark eyes and a deep voice, Emily pulled into her gravel drive and swerved to avoid clipping the fender of a silver Volvo sedan.

Uh-oh. Mom alert.

Emily frowned. What was on Kay Sullivan’s agenda today? More questions about her daughter’s career choice? Doubts about her living arrangement? A reconnaissance mission to check on the refrigerator’s contents or the dryer’s lint trap?

At the moment, Kay was plucking weeds from the box of overgrown petunias on Emily’s front porch. She straightened and waved. “Yoo-hoo, Emily!”

Emily sighed. As if anyone could miss the tall, slim blonde in a bright red double-breasted dress with coordinating red lipstick and shoes. Kay’s was the only coordinated ensemble in the ragtag front yard—although the brownish patches of rust on the gutters did match the brownish patches of gopher mounds in the grass.

“Hi, Mom.” Emily hopped down from the truck, plotting a way to fast-forward through the visit so she could attack the Piaget project before it reached critical mass. Kay had a languid Louisiana way of drawing out an afternoon chat until it felt like a two-week delta cruise into the Twilight Zone.