blue scarf looped around her neck and the fused glass pendant strung on what looked like an athletic shoelace screamed “art teacher” without Ania having to wear a nametag.
“We’re still under contract for two more weeks.”
“A technicality, my rules-bound friend. Merely a technicality.”
The hitch in Ania’s voice belied her mask of courage. She couldn’t be as cavalier on the inside as she appeared on the outside. Not yet thirty, she was sure to find another position, though. Maybe in a larger public school without the budget woes of Willowcrest.
A school without budget woes. And other fairy tales.
The two recently riffed walked the hallway toward the teachers’ lounge as they had many times. Never this speechlessly.
Was it imagination, or did the level of chaos in the halls decrescendo as they passed? Like freeway drivers reducing speed for the quarter mile before and quarter mile after the state patrol car parked in the median, the students quieted a few decibels then resumed their normal ear-splitting volume.
“Hey, Mrs. Tuttle. Sorry to hear about—”
A rib-jab cut the condolences short. “You tosser!” the jabbing student said.
Ania’s look revealed a need for translation.
“A meme of British expressions is circulating on social media again. The students think we don’t know.”
Ania smiled. “Some of us don’t. What’s a ‘tosser’?”
Lucy lowered her voice. “Idiot.”
“Are you going to call the kid on it?”
“And blow our cover? Don’t worry. I gave him my fierce look.”
Ania’s laughter helped cut through three days’ worth of tension. “On you, Lucy, fierce looks an awful lot like ‘Oh, you sweet child.’ ”
“I squinted.” Even Lucy knew that was a lame defense. She squinted? No wonder the school board had no trouble making her a target.
She stopped herself. Paranoia wouldn’t help. They’d dumped both the arts and music programs. Nothing personal, they’d said. Uh huh.
Two steps into the teacher’s lounge and Lucy knew the better choice would have been to sneak her egg salad and grapes in her room. The lounge erupted with anger over the school board’s decision. Lucy wasn’t ready for anger yet. She held tight to despair.
***
Her students watched her more intently than on an ordinary day, far more intently than they would under normal circumstances this close to the end of the school year.
She’d taught them to watch her hands and facial expressions as she directed, to listen for the breaths she took that reminded them when to breathe. She’d taught them to express the emotion of the song, not how they felt about the person with whom they shared a music folder. Under her guidance, they’d learned to focus on what the music asked of them, often a response contrary to their young nature, their personality, their mood, or how much sugar they’d ingested at lunch.
Now they watched, too, for her reactions to a crashing tympani blow to her life’s plans.
Lucy thought she had an easy out for the day. A way to survive without having to engage her overworked brain. Each class could review the video of last week’s concert. Tradition. The students expected it. She, on the other hand, didn’t anticipate the fortitude it would take to sit through that many replays of her final moments in concert.
The nuances she witnessed on the video hit like memories of a too-recently deceased loved one. Would she have felt the same if her choirs and band hadn’t performed as well as they did, if the audio didn’t resonate now as near-perfection with enough sniffles and coughs and squeaks for her to know it was real?
The parallels to life made her jaw hurt.
Everything seemed too tender to touch—a deep, aching life bruise. Memories of the concert high points, career high points, the tears when especially sensitive young people caught a whiff of gossip about the music and art programs, the condolences of other teachers, the pile of unfinished projects on her desk . . .
The music-themed gifts from students—mugs ad infinitum, pens, coasters, pins, note cards. Handwritten thank-you notes tacked to the corkboard, representing a hundred more in file folders.
She mattered here. The music mattered. It changed people. Including her.
If her heart kept beating until the end of the school day, she’d start packing her personal belongings. Taking them home a few at a time would be less painful, wouldn’t it? You can’t rip a bandage off a wound that’s still bleeding.
***
“Are you still here?” Ania’s voice carried too well in the acoustics of the empty, high-ceilinged music room.
Lucy nestled another resource book—Music and the Young Mind—into the nearly full cardboard box on the seat of her office chair. She reached for another from the top shelf. “Just a few more minutes.”
Ania’s clogs clunked across the tiled floor toward the narrow office. “There’s no such thing as overtime in this business. Or so I’ve heard,” she said, her sarcasm more pronounced than ever.
“Never was in it for the overtime.”
Ania’s floor gazing told Lucy the young woman had more responses than anger in her.
Another book landed in the box. “Did your afternoon go okay?”
“Did yours?”
“No.” Lucy flipped open the front cover of the book in her hand. “Ah. Thought so.”
“What?”
“I thought I’d purchased this one. But I’ve been here so long, I had to check to make sure it wasn’t school property.”
Ania planted her hands on her hips. “After what they did to us, you’re worried about accidentally absconding with one of their books?”
“I want to do this right. Have to do this right.”
“Faith getting in the way of reason again?” Ania flicked the edge of the verse-of-the-day flip calendar on Lucy’s desk.
“They’re not mutually exclusive, my friend.” Lucy deposited another couple of books in the box, enough to reach both the box’s and her back’s limit. She’d been looking forward to her summer pace of exercise. For once, September wouldn’t change her daily schedule. Some people in her position would be grateful. She couldn’t imagine mustering grateful yet. Ever.
As expected, Ania let the faith conversation drop. She sighed with her eyebrows, shoulders, and lungs, then turned and called over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow. If I decide to show up.”
Lucy gripped the back of her office chair. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She could wheel the box-laden chair out to her car. She could move a lot more
