Learning Curve. Terry McLaughlin
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backbone, and turn on the charm. She smiled her best Innocent-Your-Honor smile. “Quite an impression. In fact, that’s what brings me here.”
JOE CLIMBED THE STAIRS to the second floor of Caldwell’s main building that afternoon and headed toward his room. He shoved his hands into his pockets, silently cursing the unnatural alignment of crater-plowing asteroids, planet-destroying supernovas, galaxy-sucking black holes and all other cosmic disasters that had sent Ms. Emily Sullivan into his path, not to mention his classroom.
God. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was chirpiness. Emily Sullivan could give chirping lessons to a million yellow puffballs carpeting a commercial chicken incubator. And, as if her own big-blue-eyed version wasn’t bad enough, she’d gone and spread it like a virus, infecting the male portion of the Caldwell High faculty within minutes of bouncing into the conference room. She’d had them eating out of her fluttery little hands—right after they’d finished tripping over their tongues at her long-legged, short-skirted entrance.
Ed Brock, senior class adviser, had never been so animated about homecoming plans before Emily piped up with a few suggestions. Russell Strand, head math geek, almost choked in his own bow tie when she giggled a wrinkle-nosed giggle over one of his DOA puns. And the football coach couldn’t speak at all for a few moments after Emily’s blond curls brushed over his cheek as she reached to collect her complimentary season pass.
Even the female faculty members weren’t immune to Emily’s enthusiasm, applauding her proposal for a benefit debut performance of the annual spring play. Joe hated contagious enthusiasm almost as much as chirpiness, especially when it was the fund-raising kind. Most fund-raisers were a big waste of time, as far as he was concerned. They played havoc with scheduling, burned holes in the ozone layer and brought in approximately seventeen cents per hour of mental and manual labor. And now he was stuck with trying to round up student volunteers for the theatrical benefit.
Stuck. Stuck with a student teacher he hadn’t expected and didn’t want. Stuck with the administrative duties for a social studies department chair sidelined with complications from a difficult pregnancy. He was tempted to dump his student teacher on his chair’s long-term sub. It would be his personal social chemistry experiment: mix one part ignorance and two parts incompetence. No danger of an explosion—the school board had sputtered along for years on a similar formula.
He popped another couple of pain relievers and slipped through his classroom door, hoping to turn the lock for a few moments of peace and privacy. But Ms. Sullivan had already invaded this space, too. There she was: probing.
He watched her bend over to read the caption of a faded political cartoon pinned to the bottom edge of one of his bulletin boards. And he tried, he really did try not to notice the way that short skirt slid up the backs of those long, shapely thighs, or the way one of those blond party streamers slipped across her forehead to tease the tip of her turned-up nose.
God. Even her hair was chirpy.
Because he resented having to roll his own tongue off the floor and back into his mouth, he growled a bit more than usual. “There must have been an incredible flood of last-minute student teachers this year. I thought the university avoided placing them in out-of-the-way districts like Issimish, especially when there are so many more options closer to Seattle.”
“That’s right.” She straightened and turned to face him. “I was the one who suggested Caldwell. I asked my university adviser to pull some strings to get me assigned here. Specifically, to work with you.”
“Why?”
She twisted her hands together. “Because of what you did to my brother.”
“Jack?”
“Yes.”
Joe pulled his hands out of his pockets. “What did I do to Jack?”
“You inspired him.”
“No.” Joe felt something like panic welling up inside. “I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.” She took a step forward. “You changed his life. For a little while, anyway. But you did.”
He frowned and moved away from her. Around behind his desk, where it was safe.
She followed, facing him across its scarred oak surface. “You encouraged him to think, for the first time, his own thoughts, to question all the ideas that had been handed to him.” She ran a finger along a crooked gouge. “It may have been a brief deflection, but it was an important one. I think it was very important—downright momentous, in fact—that Jack took those first wobbly steps off the family’s well-beaten path.”
Joe didn’t want to be held responsible for anyone’s first wobbly steps, or for anything momentous. And he really didn’t want to be a human detour sign. Not unless it meant he could make Emily Sullivan disappear.
She turned back to the bulletin board and pointed at the curling slips of yellowed paper. “I’ll bet some of these headlines are the same ones you pinned up on your bulletin board the first year you taught here. The same ones that were here when Jack was sitting in this room.”
“I’m not big on redecorating. If you want the bulletin update job, it’s yours.”
Joe regretted the offer the moment he heard himself make it. It sounded like he was knuckling under and accepting the situation. But what else could he do? There she stood with those big blue eyes and those tousled curls and those odd little curves at the corners of her mouth that made her look like she was smiling even when she wasn’t.
She couldn’t be smiling all the time. Could she?
And what had he been regretting and resenting before he got sidetracked? Oh, yeah—there she stood, in her newly assigned spot, expecting some newly assigned duties. “There.” He waved in the direction of a particularly ragged display. “If you decide to stay, and if I decide you can—and that’s a couple of big ifs—there’s your first assignment.”
Emily laughed. Joe watched her nose scrunch up and felt a throat-constricting kinship with Russell and his bow tie.
“I wouldn’t dream of touching these bulletin boards,” she said. “They’re absolutely you. Look at this.” She walked over to one and then turned, crooking a finger in invitation.
Joe didn’t want to deal with overt invitations. Or covert invitations, or invert invitations, or any other kind of invitation that would lure him too close. “I know what’s on my walls.”
“Come on and take a look.” The finger kept curling, tugging at him with hypnotic pale pink nail polish. “Please.”
He scuffed across the room and leaned down to squint at a faded editorial on Ford’s pardon of Nixon. It was hard not to notice her fresh, floral scent competing with eau de chalk dust and essence of floor wax, but he thought he was doing an admirable job of blocking it out. “Yeah. Ford. Nixon. So?”
“There’s nothing here about Nixon going to China. I checked.”
“Try a little word association with just about anyone you meet. Nixon, Watergate. Nixon, crook. Not Nixon, China.”
Emily straightened, smiling her tilt-edged smile. “That’s my point, exactly.”
“Glad you made it. I’d be even gladder to get it.”
She leaned in a bit and lowered her voice. “You are, and I quote, ‘a corrupter of innocent young minds.’”
“Jack Senior, right?”
He thought he saw her wince before she nodded. “Yes.”
“You asked for this teaching assignment to upset your father?”
“Actually, my father finds my choice of a student teaching assignment…fascinating.” She linked her fingers under her chin and gazed up at him with something that looked suspiciously like admiration. “I want to inspire students, the way you inspired my brother. I want to watch you in action, to