Trophy Life by Lea Geller

Author:Lea Geller [Geller, Lea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503904200
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2019-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

-18-

On Monday morning, the boys were still jittery. I was sure some of them had eaten candy—and only candy—all weekend. When you ban Halloween candy in school, you just have to assume that your students are going to spend every second they can, both in school and out, scarfing it down with abandon.

Of course, my four boys had reason to squirm. Caleb and Guy stopped by my desk after class. Caleb’s green eyes were darting around, looking at the door, at me, then the door again.

“Any news, Ms. Parsons?”

“I’m going now,” I said. “The meeting hasn’t happened yet. Before class, I went to see Principal Jerk—I mean, Burke”—the boys smiled—“and he was in his office meeting with the math team.” I stood up. “I’m going to find him now.”

I left the boys and walked down a flight of stairs to Gavin’s office. The office was empty and the lights were off. I panicked. Could he be meeting with Guy’s parents now? Had I missed my chance to find him? When I could convince my feet to unroot themselves from the floor, I spun around and ran straight into Adam. I stumbled backward.

“Hey,” he said. “You OK?”

“I need to find Gavin,” I said. “It’s important.”

“I just saw him setting up for a meeting in the conference room on the ground floor,” Adam said. “Everything all right?”

“Kind of.” I didn’t think the meeting would be happening so soon. I thought I’d have time to plan for it, to think about what I was going to say. Hell, I at least wanted to be wearing a clean shirt. I looked down and saw a clump of Grace’s cereal clinging to the hem of my blouse.

“He’s meeting with some parents now, and I think I need to be in on it,” I said.

“Word of advice,” Adam warned me. “Try not to interrupt him. Even if he is saying literally the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard, let him finish. He goes nuts when someone cuts him off.”

“Good to know,” I said. “I’ll try to keep that in mind. Wish me luck,” I called as I ran down another two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Sure enough, I looked through the wall of glass along the conference room and saw Gavin sitting with a couple who could only have been Guy’s parents. I wanted to stand and stare for a few minutes, but I didn’t have a few minutes to spare, so I reached into my bag, grabbed a handful of sweet potato puffs, swallowed them whole, and charged into the meeting.

Gavin looked up as I pushed myself through the door. “Agnes, can I help you?”

“Hi,” I said, trying to give myself time to think and swallow the puffs. I looked at the couple at the table and addressed them directly. “I’m Agnes Parsons. I teach your son.” I ran my tongue over my teeth to remove all traces of food.

“Agnes,” said Gavin, with far less patience in his voice, “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but this meeting isn’t open to teachers.

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