Authors: Stacey Wiedower
Paul walked backward for a few steps, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his keys as Jess's car rounded the corner toward the school's exit. "Dancing, maybe." He smiled. "We'll see."
He turned and headed toward his black pickup as Erin opened her car door. "I'll call you."
* * *
That Thursday, Erin was humming to herself as she entered the line for the cafeteria salad bar. It had been a really good week. The night before, she and Sherri had spent hours surfing travel blogs and reading TripAdvisor reviews to plan their Paris itinerary. Before that, she'd spent about an hour on the phone with Paul, and the next night they were going out for dinner and drinks and who knew what else. Her mind had been drifting to the "what else" all day.
It had been almost nine months since she'd broken up with Noah. The self-imposed celibacy she'd maintained since then hadn't bothered her up till this point. Now, though…
"Oh, sorry," she said after walking into the person in line in front of her, a guidance counselor she didn't know well. She heard a snicker and glanced back to see two sophomore girls whispering to each other in line behind her. One, a student she'd had last year in freshman algebra, glanced nervously in her direction, and the other girl laughed.
Erin shook her head. She'd had no idea, when she was fifteen, how very
young
that was. She wondered what they were giggling about. Fifteen-year-old boys, no doubt. She ladled low-fat raspberry vinaigrette onto her spinach salad, moved down the line to the cashier, and paid for her lunch.
On the way to her classroom, where she planned to get some grading done while she ate, Erin passed another cluster of giggling girls in the hallway. This time, a couple of them whispered behind their hands as she walked by, and their laughter grew louder as she continued down the hall.
Okay, that's weird.
It almost seemed like they'd been talking about
her
. She was clearly being paranoid.
Fifteen minutes later she was grading and chewing, deeply immersed in quadratic equations, when Dave burst through her doorway. Angie Russell walked in after him and closed the door behind her. Erin barely had time to raise her head before Dave was beside her desk, thrusting a folded newspaper underneath her chin. "Have you seen this?"
"Have I seen what?" She craned her neck back to focus on the object in Dave's hands. It seemed to be a copy of the school's student paper, the
Northside Page
. "What's this?"
He dropped it onto the desk in front of her and pointed to the classified ads. He tapped on one at the center of the page. "Read."
She stared at him for about a second with her mouth open, then bent her head to read. It took her a few more seconds to figure out which ad Dave had pointed out. When she did, her fingers flew to her lips. "Oh, God."
"Oh, God is right," Dave said. "I swear I didn't say anything to anybody."
Angie nodded her agreement behind him. "Me neither, I promise."
The ad, tiny but damning, read:
Wanted: Hot guys to go out with one hot mathematics instructor. Tall, dark & experienced salsa dancers preferred. For details, visit www.30firstdates.blog.com.
For one critical second, Erin thought she might pass out. The classroom around her dimmed, her head felt like a lead weight was pulling it down, and tiny slivers of shimmering light danced before her eyes. The students in the hallway suddenly weren't three or five or even fifty in number. They were a microcosm of the 600 or so teenage girls who'd be slut-shaming her on Snapchat and Twitter and Instagram by the end of the afternoon, if they weren't already.
"Who—" she started to ask, but her voice trailed off. She'd been wondering what student could have found out about the blog and done this to her, but no, she knew exactly who'd done this. She mouthed the word rather than speaking it aloud. "Jess."
Dave nodded gravely. "That's my best guess. I saw her a few minutes ago in the teacher's lounge, and she looked like the hellcat that ate the damned canary. Seemed pretty stoked about it, too. What'd you ever do to her?"
Angie harrumphed. "I'll tell you what she did. Jess has been panting over Paul Moreno since he walked through the doors for new teacher orientation. She's freaking jealous, that's what."
Erin's mind raced ahead of her, away from Jess to Paul, to their plans the next night. "Oh, no," she whispered miserably. Her head dropped into her hands. How could she face him? Especially when, if she knew Paul at all, he might never show his face around her again?
* * *
"Okay, look at page 146, then write the standard form of a quadratic equation and the formula for finding the—" Erin's voice trailed off when the door to her classroom opened. A student office worker walked in, crossed the room, and handed her a note.
She finished her sentence, took the note to her desk, and sat down hard, her heart beating fast. The note was a summons to Dan McCann's office, the principal. She'd been summoned to the main office before for various reasons, most of them involving grade reports or classroom evaluations. But she'd never been summoned directly by Dr. McCann, and she had a strong feeling this request had nothing to do with a student.
Oh, no, no, no. This is not good.
She glanced at the newspaper that was sticking out from beneath a textbook on the center of her desk, sweat beading on the nape of her neck despite the chill of the air-conditioned room.
She put her students to work on the night's homework assignment and felt twenty-two sets of accusing eyes following her every movement as she stood from her desk and walked stiffly across the room.
She moved quickly through the corridors, keeping her eyes on the gray and white tile floor and making a game of trying to step only on the gray ones to keep her mind off what she was about to face. She felt half her age, like a student on her way to detention.
As she rounded the corner that led to the front office, her gaze landed on Paul, who was coming around the opposite corner from the social studies wing.
No! Oh, God.
She glanced up into his face as he approached, but he wouldn't meet her eyes. She swallowed hard as they met at the double doors that separated the administrators' offices from the main hall.
He reached around Erin to open the door for her. Of course.
"Wait," she said, and reached out to touch his arm.
He paused and looked at her, his eyes wary.
"I'm really sorry about the blog post," she said. "I didn't mean for this to get out. I…I guess I've learned my lesson about talking about my personal life on the Internet." She smiled, trying to ease the tension. Paul gave her a sort of weird, pained-looking half smile in return.
"Let's hope it's not a hard lesson," he said, gesturing with his head toward the still-closed door. "Any idea what's about to happen?"
She shook her head. "No. It's about the newspaper ad, I'm sure. Did you see it?"
He guffawed. "Did I see it. Uh, yeah, only eight people have shown it to me in the past thirty minutes. The thing I can't figure out is how anybody knows it's about me. I wonder who the hell wrote it?"
She ignored his question. "People around here really need to get a life."
"Tell me about it." He opened the heavy frosted glass door, and Erin sucked in a sharp breath before she stepped inside the office, as if the room contained no air.
* * *
"So let me get this straight. This
is
about Mr. Moreno, correct?"
Erin nodded, her face drawn in a mask of contrition. "Yes, but Paul had absolutely nothing to do with it. He didn't know I was planning to write the post." That wasn't entirely true, but he hadn't known how damning it would turn out to be. Of course, neither had she.
"Well, Ms. Crawford, I have to say this makes me very unhappy. I'm pretty damn disappointed, to tell you the truth." Dan McCann's murky hazel eyes were gazing straight into hers, and she broke eye contact and studied his OCD-clean desktop.
"Yes." She'd never been in trouble at work before. Never at school, either. In fact, she'd never been anything but a model employee and student.
She glanced back up and looked him in the eye. "I'm really sorry, Dr. McCann. I didn't stop to think about the implications of what I was writing. To be honest, it never occurred to me that anyone outside my close friends here at school would know anything about or even care anything about my blog."
Dr. McCann reached up and brushed a strand of his gray-streaked brown hair across his forehead. He was in his early fifties, with small, round glasses, a stocky build, and a thick mop of dark hair. Erin noticed that he had photos of two dark-haired teenagers on his desk, a boy and a girl.
"Yes, well, I wish I could share who was behind this ad—at this he did air quotes with his fingers—but it was submitted to Leslie Geist anonymously. Not that it really matters. I'm sure it would have been Tweeted or Facebooked or something else before long, anyway. No secrets anymore." He looked straight at Erin. "That's why it's incredibly important, as educators, to be careful what we put on the Internet. I don't even have a Facebook page." He worked the fabric of his lapel between two fingers methodically, appearing to be stalling for time. He surveyed her for a few long seconds and then leaned back in his chair.
"Unfortunately, Ms. Crawford, I have no choice here but to issue a severe penalty. The faculty handbook is quite clear on this matter, and I'm afraid I have to ask you to go on leave for the remainder of the school year." He paused long enough for that to sink in, and Erin swallowed convulsively. "I have some say in the situation, so your suspension will be with pay. Luckily the year is almost up, so this really isn't as bad as it seems. We'll bring in a sub to administer your exams, and I'll evaluate response to the incident in the coming days. Chances are good you'll be reinstated for next school year."
Erin realized her mouth was gaping open, and she snapped it shut. Then she opened it again. "But I…I thought it was okay for teachers to date one another." She paused, grappling for words. "I, you know, Nick Beckett and Claudia Salamino. They met here at school, and their wedding is in a few weeks." Her voice trailed off, and her face grew hot as she remembered Paul was standing a few feet away. His arms were crossed, and he was shifting nervously from foot to foot.
Dr. McCann nodded. "Yes, under ordinary circumstances, the school's policy states that fraternization between employees is permitted. However, it also states that such relationships must not cause a disruption of any sort to the educational environment. Clearly we have a disruption here."
Paul cleared his throat, and again Erin was intensely aware of his presence beside her. Dan turned away from her and addressed him.
"Mr. Moreno, since Ms. Crawford has made it clear that you weren't involved in this blog situation, you'll not receive the same penalty. You can continue working through the remainder of the semester, but I would ask that you do everything in your power to ensure no disruption occurs in your classroom as a result of the incident."
Paul looked at Erin as he nodded, and she could see the sympathy and guilt mixed in his expression. "Yes, sir."
Erin went limp with relief, sinking back into the brown vinyl of her chair. So she was suspended, but at least Paul wouldn't be punished for her recklessness. She felt dazed, like she'd taken a step toward the edge of the precipice and was now dangerously close to slipping into nothingness.
She watched Paul leave the room in silence, and her mind shouted at her:
You're almost twenty-nine. You have no plan, no boyfriend, and now no job. Paul's never going to speak to you again. What next, Erin?
What next? She had absolutely no idea.
We'll Always Have Paris
"No, it's okay. No. No, I understand, really." Erin bit her lip, frustrated tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks. "Yeah, you too. Bye."
She clicked "end call" and let her phone drop to her chest. She'd been expecting it, but that didn't make it hurt less when she saw Paul's number show up on her screen. Damn the blog. Okay, fine, so she probably wouldn't have asked Paul out if it hadn't been for the blog, but he wouldn't be walking away right now if it weren't for the blog, either.
The blog giveth, and the blog taketh away
, she thought, and stuck her tongue out at nobody.
How is it even possible to be this bad at relationships?
Now she was
scaring
men off. Paul didn't want to be anywhere near her, as if unemployment were contagious. In this case, maybe it was.
"What's wrong?"
Erin jerked her head up. She hadn't heard Sherri come into the room. Erin was sprawled out in a half-seated, half-reclined position on the chaise section of the sofa, a rumpled copy of
People
on her lap and an open pint of Ben & Jerry's on the seat beside her, spoon sticking out of the tub. Her box of stuff from her classroom was still sitting by the door where she'd dumped it when she came in a couple hours earlier.
I'll deal with it later
, she'd thought. It wasn't like her, but she also wasn't used to having time on her hands.
"Oh, Lord. Where to start." Erin moaned and then filled Sherri in on her day. When she got to the part about Paul calling to cancel their date, Sherri grabbed her phone and started tapping at the screen, pulling up a Girls' Guide to Paris restaurant map.
"Let's plan. That'll cheer you up."
Sherri smiled, and Erin couldn't help but smile back. They were leaving June 19—five days after her twenty-ninth birthday, and less than two weeks away.
"We'll always have Paris," she said in her best Bogart imitation, which wasn't very good, but it was what it was.
* * *
June 23: Date 4
Name:
Michel*
Age:
26