Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 60219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Getting to know them was part of the fun too. It kept me young, I felt, in a way that I didn’t even feel when I was running around New York being young. I knew so much about what the current generation felt about the world, about politics and fashion, about music and art.
Sometimes, even early in the year, personalities would clash and create stressful moments. Students sometimes weren’t ready to open up and be vulnerable in front of each other on the stage and made teaching theater difficult until they felt comfortable. Until they felt like they belonged. It could be a lot.
But this morning had been good. It had been stressful, as usual, but good. The kids were energetic and excited and seemingly got along well. They were louder than they would be later in the year, owing to still not being in the swing of school again and finally having a class during the day where they were encouraged to connect with their emotions.
Still, I was ready for my break, and when it came, I lay down on the stage for a moment to center myself. I only had a short window to eat lunch, but I needed this. To lay on the hard wood of a stage, staring at the ceiling of the theater and letting myself relax. A minute or so of that and I felt refreshed enough to brave the teacher’s lounge and the inevitable irritable teachers with the coffee that they desperately wished contained whiskey.
I opened the door to the small kitchen and break room, relieved to see I was the first one there, and went right to the refrigerator. My lunch was inside, and I pulled it out excitedly. I had been looking forward to the pasta salad I had made the night before all morning, and when I grabbed the container, I smiled. I turned and shut the door, prepared to go to the normal chair I sat in by the window and eat while I waited for the other teachers to arrive and begin the new year of teacher gossip.
As I turned, however, the door of the breakroom opened, and my eyes shot to it. Sometimes kids would open the door, looking for a teacher or seeing the vending machine inside and wanting to grab a soda that they didn’t allow machines for in the normal cafeteria anymore. But it wasn’t a student.
It was Graham.
My heart jumped into my throat. I froze, nearly dropping the container of pasta salad and having to fumble it between my hands to get control. He froze too, seemingly surprised to see me. Of course, I’d known that he was in town and that he was supposedly working at the school, but I wasn’t prepared to run into him. I could only imagine how surprised he would be to see me.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he muttered, the flicker of a smile on his face. “I… how… hey.”
I laughed.
“Smooth,” I said, “as usual.”
He shook his head and walked farther into the room.
I’d never thought it was going to come to this. I’d never thought I was going to ever see him again, much less run into him in the place where we’d met. I didn’t really know what to do next.
The room was quiet, still empty as the rest of the teachers that also had this period off hadn’t come in yet. He looked around the room, and I noticed he had a bag in his hand, the logo of one of the small restaurants on it. He must have walked over to grab his lunch and brought it back.
“Long time,” he said finally. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
I didn’t feel like I could turn him down, even though I had an incredibly strong impulse to run out of the room and back to the stage where I could hide for a while. But it wasn’t like I could escape without him noticing. He’d seen me already.
I sat at the table I normally did every year, and Graham came to sit across from me. It was funny; in all the time I had worked at Murdock High, only two other people had ever sat across from me on my lunch. One was Principal Runnels on my first day as he was showing me around and checking in on me, and the other was the chorus teacher as we planned the shows each year.
“So, you’re here?” he asked, taking a seat.
“I am,” I said. “I teach theater.”
I didn’t plan on expounding much more, and I tucked into my pasta salad.
“I bet you’re great at that,” he said, opening his bag and taking out a delicious looking chicken sandwich and French fries. Suddenly, the pasta salad I had looked forward to for so long didn’t seem so amazing.