Lily wheels slowly around. She looks at me, and then she looks at the clock above my head. I glance back over my shoulder. It’s a big, oversize clock, the little hand pointing at the Roman numeral six. School starts before seven for her, which is ridiculous if you ask me. What high schooler is up and functional at seven in the morning? It’s black outside when Lily leaves for work, the only saving grace being that she’s home before three o’clock, hours before me. I don’t envy her in the mornings, but I do when afternoon comes.
“I have to go,” she says, “or I’ll be late. I’ll tell you tonight, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. “Love you.” Lily leaves. I move to the front of the house to watch her headlights pull out of the garage and off down the street.
The day gets away from me. For the next eight hours, I don’t think again about Jake Hayes or what Lily was going to say to me about running into him.
NINA
Jake never came home.
It’s all I can think about.
I stayed awake until after two in the morning, grading papers, or trying to anyway, but I didn’t get through all of them. I had my phone beside me the whole time, in case he tried to call or text. He didn’t. I wanted to call or text him again, but I’d already sent three texts and left the voice mail. I told myself that he would call when he was ready to talk. I didn’t want to make things worse by annoying him. He didn’t come home for a reason and that reason was me. He didn’t want to see me. He didn’t want to talk to me. I messed up, but Jake is notorious for holding grudges. I worry what happens if he doesn’t forgive me.
Now it’s third period and the kids are energetic and overexcited. Someone in the foods lab started a fire by accident that just triggered the alarm. The fire department came and we had to go outside. It was all relatively quick. We couldn’t have been outside for more than fifteen minutes, but now that we’re back in the classroom, there’s a frenetic energy to the room. Only some of the kids are in their chairs. The rest are moseying around the room, taking their time getting back to their desks, going the long way so they can stop and chat with friends.
“Let’s focus, people,” I say, clapping twice, though I myself am anything but focused. I’ve practically given up on teaching for this period, maybe for the day, and if it wasn’t for the student teacher at the back of the room watching me, I’d put on a movie and be done with it. “We only have a few minutes to get through the rest of these notes.” Third period is one of my regular English classes. They’re good kids but not as driven, not as conscientious or well-behaved as my honors kids. I have to ask three times for them to get back to their desks and another time for them to be quiet. It’s a wasted effort. No sooner are they quiet than the bell rings.
The kids bolt from the room for their next class. I head straight for my phone in the top drawer of my desk to see if Jake has called. At the same time, the teacher from next door, Ryan Schroeder, pokes his head in. “Sounded like a circus in here.”
I’ve already pulled my phone out of the drawer. I look at it. My face must give away my disappointment. I hear Ryan but I can’t look at him and I can’t answer him because I’m so upset by the blank screen. It’s just the home screen image, a photograph of Jake and me. Ryan gives me a minute, and then he asks gently, “Is everything okay, Nina?”
Jake hasn’t called. My heart sinks and I fire off one more text, telling myself this is the last one I’ll send until he calls me back.
Please call me, Jake. I’m so sorry. Let’s talk about it. You were right. I was wrong. I miss you. I love you.
Jake would have had to stay at a hotel last night. He isn’t the type to impose and sleep on a friend’s sofa or something like that, not to mention that he isn’t the type to air his dirty laundry. He’d much rather splurge on a nice room and room service. I think about him enjoying room service while I stayed up, grading papers and worrying about him all night long. I’m practically dead on my feet now, just trying to get through this day, but already worrying about what happens if he doesn’t come home again tonight. For how long will he freeze me out, and refuse to acknowledge my calls and texts?
I wonder, though, what he would have done for clean clothes. Would he have gone home this morning after I left for work to change? Would he have gone to the store and picked up something new, or would he have just worn scrubs from the hospital? It’s not only clothes either. Jake would have needed toothpaste, deodorant. If I get home and they’re not there, I’ll know he’s been by the house when I wasn’t home.
I said things the other night that I didn’t mean, the worst one beingIf you hate it here so much, then why don’t you just leave?
As they say, be careful what you wish for.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you?Jake had asked. We were in the bedroom, standing on either side of the bed, squared off. I should have said no, that I wouldn’t like that at all, that I’d hate it actually, but instead I’d stayed silent, glaring. He took my silence as a yes. It wasn’t the first time we ever fought, but it was the first time it escalated to that level. Fighting about the time I spend with my mother has become something common between Jake and me. It used to be that he didn’t want me to spend any time with her—he wanted me all to himself, and I’d be lying if I said some part of me didn’t find pleasure in this—but when her health began to fail, I couldn’t exactly neglect her, nor did I want to. She’s my mother.
“Nina?”
I come to. I snap out of it. That mental image of my husband’s angry face disappears and is replaced with Ryan’s empathic face. He’s stepped into the classroom now, and he studies me with his dark eyes, his head cocked and curious. He asks again, “Is everything okay?”
My student teacher still sits at the back of the room, scribbling away in a notebook, pretending not to listen. Despite being twenty-one or twenty-two, legally an adult, he’s a boy in a man’s body, with close cut blond hair, dreamy green eyes, newly emergent facial hair and a forgivable amount of acne. The kids like him, though he could just as easily be one of them.
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” I say, shaking my head. “I got distracted. What were you saying?”
“The fire drill,” he says. “I said it sounded like a circus in here.”
“I’m so sorry.” I apologize again. “The kids were so wound up. I didn’t have it in me to fight them, not when the period was so close to being done.”
“Hey,” he says, “you don’t have to be sorry. I was just checking that they didn’t have you tied up somewhere.” Ryan laughs. I force a smile, but I still feel embarrassed that he could hear the mayhem all the way next door, even though my door was closed. My student teacher must think I’m an idiot. I should have made more of an effort to quiet the kids, if not for me then to set a better example of classroom discipline. I glance down at my phone again, in case I somehow missed a notification. It’s not lost on Ryan. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Yes, fine. I just need to run and see Lily, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course not. Not at all.”
Ryan steps aside so that I can leave, brushing past him on the way through the door. I don’t have a class fourth period. I tell my student teacher I’ll be right back, and then I head to Lily’s room, which is in the math hall. It’s still passing periods, and the hallways during passing periods are mobbed with kids. They’re elbow to elbow and practically impenetrable, even for a teacher. High schoolers are also adult-sized. Aside from the way I’m dressed, it’s sometimes hard to tell us apart. Even at five foot seven inches, I look just like any other student. They don’t make room for me to pass in the hall.
Once I get to Lily’s room, I peek in the open door. Unlike me, Lily has a fourth period class. There is about a minute left of passing periods and maybe only a third of the desks are filled. The kids are still out in the hall, chatting with friends. They like to cut it close.