But I didn’t anticipate this much paperwork piling up on my desk. For all the ways being a teacher is fun and seems like a good gig with summers off, I realize now how tough it actually is.
“Didn’t anticipate the paperwork, huh?” Robert reads my mind, sitting in one of the chairs meant for bad kids during trips to the teacher’s desk.
“It’s a lot, but I don’t mind it. I get why it’s necessary.” And even if I don’t, I’m not going to tell my boss that.
“Eh, sometimes it is. Sometimes there is so much red tape in this job that it makes me want to gauge my eyeballs out. Just remember how much you love creating games and playing sports while mentoring those kids, and you’ll be a great teacher. I think the students really have taken to you, Callum.”
My smile is too big to be understated. “Thank you, it means a lot. For a long time, I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do. I’m still trying this one on for size, but I think the fit is just right. Hopefully, I can pass that learning along to my students someday.”
“I think you already might be. I saw how you handled Alex and Graham fighting over who would be quarterback the other day.”
Alex is more methodical in his approach to the game, which led to him being the better pick for our gym class game of football. But Graham, on the other hand, has legs as speedy as the Road Runner. I put it in terms they could understand: Tom Brady vs. DeAndre Hopkins. Once I could frame it in a professional athlete sense, they wanted to take on their respective roles and we avoided a lot of petty drama.
“Eh, it’s nothing. They’re all pretty good kids. I was that age not long ago. I know how turbulent it can be.” I chuckle.
“Turbulent is right. It’s like World War II whenever someone breaks up with their one-week crush.” Robert rolls his eyes. “But it’s a good gig. We have fun here. You’d be a great addition to our staff, if you’re in the market for a job after graduation.”
Holy shit. My whole body electrifies, like I’ve just been given the key to a kingdom. Those are the words every soon-to-be college graduate wants to heart. That they might have a job lined up. Job searching and applying is one of those grueling, feared tasks because there is so much rejection. Especially for kids of my generation, who have loans and are starting way behind the starting line in terms of where our parents were.
But in the same breath that I’m jumping at the chance to put in a solid word with Robert so that I can interview, my mind immediately flashes to the one and only woman I shouldn’t be thinking about.
I told Bevan that I couldn’t wait to graduate and get out of here so I’d never have to see her again. Except every time I think of my future, I wonder where she’ll be in relation to my job. How fucked up is that?
The night at Lotso’s comes back to me, of us standing just inches apart in the dark. Of me almost reaching for her, admitting that I wanted to reach for her. Calling her baby. Fuck me, I’m in way over my head.
By the time I leave the school, the cleaning crew has come in and is on one of those big machines that buffs the floors in the hallway. Half the lights are off, and most of the cars have left the parking lot. This is what teachers talk about when they say that the day doesn’t end at three p.m. There are lessons to plan and paperwork to get to the district on time. I have to evaluate my kids and fill out incident reports. My superiors, like Robert, expect self-evaluations once a month and then there are the district-wide surveys to fill out.
All in all, I’m fucking exhausted. My course load this semester is wiping me out, but I’m determined to stay on track to graduate. I can’t imagine being at Talcott another year, especially if none of my friends are. I know I went almost radio silent on them after Bevan and I broke up, but spending time in the house again reminds me just how close we all are. We’re a dysfunctional family, and it doesn’t work if I don’t graduate with them.
When I get home, the TV is blaring from the living room and the whole house smells like popcorn. Which makes my mouth water, because I forgot to bring an afternoon snack and haven’t even had dinner yet.
Taya and Amelie sit huddled on the couch watching some show, and don’t even acknowledge me when I come in. Amelie has been moody lately, which is completely out of character for her, but it makes sense since Gannon flew to LA a week ago. He is in the midst of filming stuff for the show he was cast on and has been back and forth since the beginning of last semester.
“Hey, guys.” I wave as I head for the stairs, and they give back two non-syllabic grunts.
When I get up to my room, the bed, floors, and my desk chair are empty. It looks like someone has ransacked the place. Wait, no, it looks like someone has cleaned it. Sure as hell wasn’t me, since I’m a bit of a tornado. I leave my clothes in piles until they’re so bad that I’m forced to straighten things up. The only time the floor in my room was ever visible was when Bevan and I were dating.
It hits me, and I whirl around to my closet. Each room in this house is nearly identical, save for Gannon’s third floor attic room. Compromised of dull beige walls that each one of us have covered in posters or pictures, a queen-sized bed with no headboard, furniture pulled from random places or connections we have, and a tiny closet with a pine wood door that creaks every time you open it.
And when I throw my closet door open, my hamper is missing.
My stomach is still rumbling and I drop my backpack on the floor even though I should unpack the textbooks I need to study from. But my curiosity is on the hunt, and I have a very real suspicion I know what’s going on.
“Where did my hamper go?” I ask the girls when I get down to the first floor again.
They are still sitting on the couch eating popcorn and watching some Netflix show they’re entranced in.
On the TV, some reality star screeches after a guy does a body shot off of her.
“Think I saw Bevan take it to the basement,” Taya says absently, waving me off like I’m interrupting the most important moment ever.
“Huh?” I say to myself more than them, because she and Amelie are already ignoring me.
When Bevan and I were a couple, she would always do my laundry. Not because I made her, but because I think it made her feel like … a wife? If that makes any sense. It was the one thing she didn’t mind doing, washing and folding, that showed she cared about me. She started doing it after I dyed more than half my clothes pink freshman year in the dorms and kept on with it. I never asked her to, and if she’d stopped, I never would have questioned it, but it was just our routine.
Heading for the basement, I cringe. This place is usually reserved as the game location during parties, but on a regular day, I never come down here. It smells like stale, cheap beer and something akin to condoms, which makes me want to vomit. I also have never been a fan of basements and Bevan knows that, which is possibly why she always did my laundry.
“You didn’t have to do that.” My voice echoes in the cavernous space as I spot her standing at our ancient laundry machines.
“Are you going to run up the stairs in a second? I swear I saw a clown cackling over there in the corner.” She busts me.
I shiver with a creepiness that makes my skin crawl. “Don’t even fucking say that. I’m two seconds from bolting.”