into his palm, and extending them toward her. “What you really need is chocolate.”
Boom.
“We’ll go out to Bernie’s for broasted chicken, and then we’ll split the chocolate volcano for dessert. With vanilla bean ice cream. And whipped cream.”
He looked so hopeful this would be the peace offering she’d embrace. Fix-It Man strikes again. Rescues brokenhearted damsel and gets his favorite meal in one fell swoop.
“LucyMyLight?”
She pushed out her diaphragm as if preparing for a high note. Hold. Hold. Exhale. “I think I’ll go take a shower. If you want to bring home chicken from Bernie’s, that’s fine. I don’t feel like being out in public right now, though. Okay?”
“Rumors are flying, huh?”
She hadn’t thought of that. But yes, they probably were. The budget conscious would cheer the school board’s decision. All the smart people would be in an uproar. Did she just think that completely judgmental thought? Yes, she did. Today wasn’t the day to work on a better attitude. Today was the day to spend an inordinate amount of time in the shower, the music in the bathroom cranked full blast, like the water, and later succumb to a chocolate coma. She’d beat back chocolate guilt with a fire poker if necessary. Two. One in each hand.
***
“Help has arrived,” Charlie announced, rustling thin plastic and thunking around the kitchen.
Lucy sat on the front edge of the couch, planted her palms on her thighs, and tried to stand. Her second attempt succeeded. Halfhearted effort accomplishes nothing. She had a poster in the music room that confirmed it.
Charlie looked up from where he’d laid out their supper on the granite island. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“It’s that bad, huh? I haven’t seen that sad-looking sweatshirt since the stretch when Sam wasn’t sleeping through the night.”
“You mean the eighties?”
“Stubborn son of yours.”
“Ours.” She paused. “Mostly yours.” She picked at the loose, crispy skin on a chicken thigh. “Did you bring—?”
“Yes.” Charlie smiled.
“Mashed potatoes?”
Crestfallen. There was a word for the expression his face made. “No. I thought . . . under the circumstances . . . you’d want fries with that.”
With silent apologies to all the hardworking people whose job it is to ask, “Want fries with that?” Lucy let her mind drift to the suffocating smell of overused cooking oil embedded in the fabric of her color-defying sweatshirt. Not that a burger joint would let her wear her own clothes to a new job. She’d be assigned a uniform. Something in a shade not even close to complimenting her skin tones.
“Lucy? Are fries going to be okay? I really don’t want to go back.” He sliced along the chicken’s sternum and pulled off a hunk of white meat.
She leaned her elbows on the table. “You’re too good to me.”
“Well, yes. That’s a given.” He winked.
“That you would even consider going back for mashed potatoes . . .” She thought the hot shower had pelted all the tears out of her. But no. They had friends.
“Hey, hey, hey, Luce. I’m not that wonderful.” Charlie moved to stand behind her chair and started a boxing manager’s version of shoulder massage. The pressure he applied showed it was to relieve his own tension, not hers. Bless him.
She sniffed back tears and patted his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be okay. Just not right now.”
“You’ll find another job.” His imitation of Perky Life Coach fell flat, like two-week-old amorphous road kill.
“It wasn’t a job. It was my life’s work.”
The RIF letter had probably eaten through her purse like acid by now. She loved that purse. Chicken, she did not love. Not tonight. She’d lost her taste for chocolate, too. That couldn’t last long without dire consequences.
She’d been riffed. The term stabbed like a cross between fired and assassinated.
RIF. It once meant Reading is fundamental. An excellent thought. Reduction in force turned the acronym sour, biting. RIF. Could she live the rest of her life avoiding those three letters?
The name Charlie used two of them. Not that he could help it.
***
The worst Monday in the history of Mondays. Perhaps in the history of days.
She’d slogged through the weekend, dodging despair, awkward questions, and piles of bitterness like tiptoeing through a heavily used dog park. Avoiding church seemed counterproductive, though tempting. But arriving late and leaving early kept it from turning into a sympathy-fest, a party she couldn’t handle yet. Too soon.
Then dawned the inevitable Monday. Lucy didn’t have to wonder who among her teacher friends had heard the news and who hadn’t. Their eyebrows told the story. Neutral eyebrows? Hadn’t yet heard. Pinched together with a slight head tilt—even without a word spoken—signaled a wave of sympathy that became an undercurrent riptide by midday. Survivor guilt kept some from talking about it. They’d received contracts, not RIF letters. Others expressed their sympathy in rib-dislocating hugs. Like Charlie’s.
If it hadn’t been frowned upon by the administration, she would have stayed in her room to eat lunch. Lucy considered breaking the rule this one time. What was the worst they could do? Fire her? It was the closest she’d come to laughing in days.
But she’d vowed to behave herself to the end. Two more weeks of classes. No vindictive actions. No tantrum-like rebellion. No cement in the toilets or graffiti on the walls. No letters to the op-ed page of the local newspaper. No anti-school-board picketing or bucking-the-establishment T-shirts. No coasting. No phoning it in or phoning in sick.
“Résumé polished and ready to send out?” Ania Brooks slid onto the one blank square foot of Lucy’s desk.
“At my age? Your chances of finding another teaching position are a lot better than mine. Age does make a difference.” Lucy snagged a piece of music too near the clear zone. “And right now, applying to substitute teach feels like the difference between running a karaoke machine and composing a symphony.” The words felt coarse in her mouth. Some of her favorite teacher friends subbed. Bright, skilled educators willing to rewrite their schedules when needed. What was wrong with her?
Ania flipped her thick, loose black braid over her shoulder. “Don’t be so sure. About my flood of opportunities.” The younger woman picked at loose threads of her fashionably tattered jeans.
Wait. Tattered jeans? Not exactly school policy for staff. Lucy retrieved her insulated musical score lunch bag from the bottom drawer of her desk and pointed with it toward the spot where Ania’s bare knee showed through. “Dress code no longer applies to you?” She feigned the voice Principal Rust might use.
“Contract
