Cicada Summer by Maureen Leurck

Author:Maureen Leurck [Leurck, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

I nervously waited in the office of Richmond Burton High School, running my sweaty palms down the length of my jeans. I wore my best, least ripped and stained jeans for the occasion, and found an old button-down shirt in the back of my closet that I hadn’t yet used as a rag. I had brushed my hair and pulled out my flat-iron again, thinking my straight hair might offer some level of protection.

The secretary behind the desk gave me a sympathetic glance as I fanned my face again. I cursed my sleeves, wishing I had remembered that high schools were always a little stingy with their air-conditioning.

“Don’t be nervous, honey. They don’t bite,” she said, then frowned. “Usually.”

The door to the office pushed open and Gavin appeared. “Thanks for coming,” he said. He looked even cuter than I remembered. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he wore khaki carpenter pants. His hair flopped slightly into his eyes, and he brushed it back with a flick of his head. I knew that if I had had a teacher who looked like him when I was in high school, it would have been very, very hard to concentrate on schoolwork. The closest thing I had to an attractive teacher was Mr. Sherpa in tenth grade biology, who was in his mid-fifties with male-pattern baldness.

I was incredibly thankful to see Gavin again, especially after Abby’s graduation and all of my confusing thoughts about Matt.

I followed him down the high school’s hallway, feeling very much like a teenager myself. When he had invited me speak to his class, I thought it was one of those nice gestures without any action behind it. We would both nod about it, but it would never actually come to fruition.

Yet he’d called me the day before and asked if I was still interested. I weakly protested, thinking of standing in front of the class and slowly dying a death of sweat and stuttering—in front of a guy I liked—but he insisted. I tried to tell him that public speaking wasn’t my thing, that in eighth grade I almost blacked out during a presentation on the life of Grace Kelly and accidentally muttered a four-letter word when I dropped all my note cards. From then on, college included, I would quickly scan the syllabus on the first day of class, searching for the dreaded words Presentation and Speech. Once, I even switched out of a class in college because it required weekly presentations of current events, something that seemed like the highest level of torture imaginable.

I had majored in Mass Communications at the University of Wisconsin, a subject that seemed safe and comfortable. It was as close to Undeclared as I could possibly get, since I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. And then, after school, I got a job working in marketing for the Grand Geneva Resort, which was a natural progression. Move back home, find work in town.

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