The One I'm With by Jamie Bennett

Author:Jamie Bennett [Bennett, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Katrina looked appraisingly at my feet. “Are those new, Ms. March?”

“Uh, yes.” I looked down, too, as I squatted next to her little chair. I had done some online shopping in my depression after Scarlett’s party and these new shoes were the result.

“I really like that color,” she said, and nodded.

Good to have the five-year-old’s seal of approval on my footwear. Katrina always noticed my accessories.

She leaned forward and picked up my necklace. “Is this the one with the pictures?”

I nodded. “Do you want to look again?” I opened the locket to show her the tiny photographs inside. “That’s my dog, Maisie, and that’s my dad.”

Katrina gently touched the picture of him with her little finger. I was glad to note that the finger wasn’t wet, as kindergarten hands often were for a variety of reasons I usually didn’t like to think about. “Your daddy looks like you,” she told me.

“I know.”

“My daddy looks like me. I like it.” She smiled at me.

“I do, too. I like to see him in myself.” I smiled back.

“Your dog is cute, too.”

“Thank you. Katrina, I love talking to you, but now it’s time to get back to silent reading, please.”

She nodded glumly and went back to her book. I was all for a little procrastination, but I did have limits.

Jolie was waiting for me after school to walk over to our lower school faculty meeting. “I’m really looking forward to this,” she said, and yawned, hugely. “Got your quarters ready?”

I jingled my purse. It was weighty with the plastic bag full of the quarters I collected for our faculty meetings. We held our stashes in our laps, and every time we heard one of the administration’s favorite words or phrases, we took turns quietly sliding our coins into a paper bag that we hid under the conference table. “Authentic:” yep, that was a quarter. “Whole child,” “best practices,” “restorative justice:” clink, clink, clink. We hadn’t exactly decided what we were saving up for; I thought maybe we’d give it to an educational charity, or maybe the college fund that Jolie kept trying to start for her daughter. Or maybe, Jolie thought, we’d blow it on drugs and booze. It was probably either going to be college for Nola or liquor for us.

By the time the meeting was over, Nola was $6.50 closer to going to college, or we had half a cocktail. “Not bad tonight,” Jolie noted, weighing the paper bag in her hand as we walked down to the parking lot. “Shirley managed not to say ‘competencies’ or ‘paradigm.’”

“She said ‘collaborative learning’ twice, though. That one’s like nails on a blackboard for me.” I remembered all the deadly group projects I’d had to do at Starhurst. Working with other students generally sucked, in my experience.

“What are you up to after this?” she asked me. “What’s happening at home?” She made kissy noises and looked at me hopefully, but I shook my head.

Since Scarlett’s engagement party, the equivalent of nothing had happened between me and Brooks, not in the romantic sense.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.