had taken a year before she’d stopped crying herself to sleep every night. Once she had, Leslie had made a vow to remain strong for her girls. She’d been on the verge of breaking down more times than she could count, but she was still standing.
And she would continue to do so.
Gabriel Franklin stood before the science lab’s Formica-topped table surrounded by nearly two-dozen wide-eyed fourth graders, who all stared intently at the stack of pennies, nickels and lemon-juice-soaked paper squares in the center.
“So, how many of you think we’ve made a battery here?” Gabe asked as he held a length of copper wire just above the stack of coins. Half the students raised their hands.
He eyed the doubters with an upturned brow. “That’s all? The rest of you think I’m wrong?”
Anthony Radcliff’s freckled forehead scrunched in skepticism. “It’s just loose change and paper towels. How can that be a battery?”
Gabe tsked. “Oh, ye of little faith.”
The crease in Anthony’s forehead deepened. “Huh?”
“Never mind,” Gabe said. “Gather around closer, kids.” He touched one edge of the wire to the penny on the bottom of the stack and the other to the nickel on top. “Now, check this out.”
He connected the wire to an LED bulb and thanked the reliability of science when the bulb flickered and then shone with a soft glow.
The students erupted in cheers and excited howls.
“How’d you do that, Mr. Franklin?” Anika Reynolds asked in an awed whisper. “Is it magic?”
“It’s science,” Gabe answered. “It’s exactly what we’ve been talking about for the past week, taking the negative charge of one metal and the positive charge of another, and connecting them with an acid. The penny is made of what?”
“Copper,” the students replied in unison.
“And the nickel?”
“Silver!”
“And that lemon juice is filled with acid,” Gabe said.
“So, can I make my iPod work with pennies, nickels and lemon juice?” Cassidy Kirkland asked.
“That would take a lot of pennies, nickels and lemon juice, but at least you get the idea.” Gabe clapped his hands. “Okay, back to your seats. It’s time to write up what we all just witnessed in proper scientific-method form.”
He fully expected the grumbles and groans his statement elicited. He was only in his second semester of teaching at Gauthier Elementary and Middle School, but students were students no matter the school, and none of them enjoyed paperwork.
Using the electronic Smart Board that had replaced the green chalkboards he’d grown up with, Gabe went through the scientific method, going over the initial question he’d posed, the research the students had conducted, the hypothesis they all had agreed upon and the multitude of tests they’d run in order to investigate it.
He glanced over his shoulder and grinned at the sight of the twenty-two heads bowed over notebooks, their hands scribbling diligently. He required his students to take notes, even though the Smart Board allowed him to email whatever was written on it directly to their parents, which he also did at the end of every week.
The bell signaling the end of third period rang just as the students were finishing up.
“Remember your final topics for the science fair are due tomorrow,” Gabe called above the bustle of zipping backpacks and desk chairs scraping against the tiled floor. “And if you’re working with a partner, you both will need to turn in forms. It’s not cool to have one person do all of the work, is it?”
That garnered mumbles and a few wisecracks. Also expected.
While the students filed into the hallway, Gabe returned to the rear of the classroom where the small but functional lab was located. He cleared the remnants of today’s science experiment, washing the coins and leaving them to air-dry. Once the station was cleared, he packed up the battered leather messenger bag he’d been carrying around since his freshmen year of college, killed the lights and locked up behind him.
The teaching portion of his day was done. It was time to switch to his second role, interim assistant principal of Gauthier Elementary and Middle School—GEMS for short. The school officially had been renamed The Nicolette Fortier Gauthier Elementary and Middle School after the wife of the town’s founder, but in the eight months that he’d lived here Gabe had yet to hear anyone call it by that name.
A month into his second semester as the fourth-and fifth-grade science teacher at GEMS, the school’s assistant principal abruptly resigned. Gabe had earned his master’s in education administration last summer, which put him in the perfect position to take over as interim assistant principal.
As much as he loved the classroom—seeing the kids’ faces light up when he introduced them to yet another cool science construct was better than sinking a three-point winning shot at the buzzer—he loved this new role just as much. It wasn’t as hands-on as teaching, but the opportunity it provided to affect the lives of an even greater number of students was worth the trade-off. He was in a position to change lives in the same way his own life had been change, but on an even larger scale.
The weight of all those tremendous possibilities being within his control was awe-inspiring. To anyone who had known him back in his early teen years, the idea of Gabriel Franklin even making it out of high school with a diploma would have been unfathomable.
But he was here. This was his life. He’d worked for it, reached for it, had done every single thing right for the past decade to make this happen.
The next step? Make that interim title a thing of the past.
Gabe had come up with a plan on how to do just that and in the past week had begun to put that plan in motion.
Just as he entered the suite of offices that housed the principal, assistant principal, school counselor and secretary, Ardina Scofield thrust a stack of folders into his chest. The secretary, whom Gabe had to admit kept this place running like a well-tuned engine, returned to her computer without a word of greeting. Gabe had learned the hard way that when you moseyed over to Ardina’s bad side it was hell to get off of it. He’d found himself there after accepting an invitation from her to dinner and then backing out.
He should have known better than to encourage her advances, but she had approached him on the same day he’d struck out with the one woman—the only woman—who’d caught his eye since he’d moved to Gauthier.
Actually, to say he’d struck out wasn’t entirely accurate. When it came to Leslie Kirkland, he hadn’t managed to step up to the plate yet. Every time he even thought about broaching the subject of seeing his most dedicated parent volunteer outside of school, something told him to back off. It just never seemed like the right time to approach her.
He was tired of waiting for the right time.
And having dinner
