Miss Maple and the Playboy

by Cara Colter

  The demure little schoolteacher made Ben Anderson feel challenged, the first interest he had felt in what the guys cheerfully called “the hunt” for a long, long time. Or maybe, he told himself wryly, he was looking for a little diversion from his sucks-to-be-you life.

  Whatever it was, he now had a secret agenda that was making it very hard to focus on what she was saying about Kyle.

  A contract for Kyle to sign. With goals and challenges and rewards.

  “Mr. Anderson,” she said, ignoring his invitation to call him Ben. “Your nephew has been held back once and has dismal test scores. He won’t do his homework, and he doesn’t participate in class discussions. But I think he reads at a college level and with complete comprehension.

  “If I implement this plan for him,” Miss Maple continued sternly, “it is going to take a tremendous amount of work and commitment on my part. I need to know you will be backing me at home, and that you are willing to put in the same kind of time and commitment.”

  Ben had been around long enough to know he should be very wary of a woman who tossed around the word commitment so easily.

  He threw caution to the wind. “Why don’t we discuss your plan in a little more detail over dinner?” he asked.

  Miss Maple looked completely uncharmed. In fact, she looked downright annoyed.

  He felt a little annoyed himself. Women didn’t generally look annoyed when he asked them out for dinner. Delighted. Intrigued. He thought he should be insulted that the fifth-grade teacher didn’t look the least delighted about his invitation or the least intrigued by him.

  She was probably trying to be professional, trying to backpedal since he had seen her blush when he’d flexed his muscle. She wasn’t as immune as she wanted him to think.

  “I’m afraid I don’t go for dinner with parents,” Miss Maple said snippily.

  Despite the fact he was amazed by her rejection, Ben assumed an expression that he hoped was a fair approximation of complete innocence. “Miss Maple,” he chided her, “I am not Kyle’s parent. I’m his uncle.”

  There was the little blush again, but Ben was almost positive it was caused by irritation, not the flexing of his forearm.

  “I don’t date the family members of my students,” she said tightly, spelling it out carefully.

  “Date?” Ben raised a surprised eyebrow. “You misunderstood me. I wasn’t asking you on a date.”

  Now she had the audacity to look faintly hurt!

  The problem with a woman like Miss Maple, Ben thought, was that she would be way more complicated than the women he normally took out. Challenge or not, he knew he should cut his losses and run for the door.

  Naturally, he did nothing of the sort.

  “I just thought we could get together and go over your plan in more detail.” Ben looked at his watch. “Kyle hasn’t eaten yet, and I’m trying to get him into regular meals.”

  That was actually true. His nephew was alarmingly small and skinny for his age, a testament to the Bohemian lifestyle Carly had subjected him to. At first he had resisted Ben’s efforts to get him to eat good food at regular intervals, but in the last few days Ben thought he noticed his nephew settling into routines, and maybe even liking them a bit.

  He found himself sharing that with Miss Maple, who looked suitably impressed.

  “He’s had it tough, hasn’t he?” she whispered.

  Ben could see the softening of the stern line of her face. It made her look very cute. Time to pounce. If he asked her for dinner again right now, she’d say yes.

  But he was surprised to find he couldn’t. Instead he could barely speak over the lump that had developed in his throat. He couldn’t even begin to tell her just how tough that kid had had it.

  Even though he knew he was capable of being a complete snake, Ben found he could not use Kyle’s tragic life to get what he wanted.

  Which was a date with Miss Maple. Just to see how it would end. But he’d leave it for now because, whatever else he might be, he had a highly developed sense of what was fair. She genuinely cared about Kyle. That was obvious. And nothing to be played with, either. His nephew had had few enough people care about him without his uncle jeopardizing that in search of something as easy to find as a date with an attractive member of the opposite sex.

  Yes, he needed to think the whole thing through a little more carefully.

  So, naturally, he didn’t. He found himself giving her his cell-phone number, just in case she needed to consult with him during the day. At least that was putting the ball in her court.

  She took it, but reluctantly, as if she sensed what he really wanted to consult with her about was her after-school activities.

  Kyle came back in the room, clutching his new book to his chest.

  “How long can I keep it?” he demanded rudely.

  “It’s yours,” Miss Maple said gently. “I ordered it just for you.”

  Kyle glared at her. “I’ve read it before. It’s stupid. I don’t even want it.”

  Ben had to bite back a desire to snap at his nephew for being so ungrateful for the kindness offered, but when he looked at Miss Maple, she was looking past the words, to the way Kyle was hugging the book. She said, not the least ruffled, “You keep it anyway. Your uncle might enjoy it.”

  Ben looked at her sharply, to see if there was a barb buried in the fact Miss Maple thought he might enjoy a stupid book, but nothing in her smooth expression gave her away.

  He felt that little flutter of excitement again. He recognized it as a man with a warrior spirit exploring brand-new territory, where there was equal opportunities for success or being shot down.

  “I like the tree,” Ben said, thinking, Flattery will get you everywhere.

  “Thank you,” she said. “We made it last year as our class project.”

  It must have shown on his face that he thought that was a slightly frivolous use of school time, because she said haughtily, “We use it as a jumping-off point for all kinds of learning experiences in science, math and English. ‘What is learned with delight is never forgotten.’ Aristotle.”

  After they left the school, Ben took Kyle for a burger.

  “Your teacher didn’t seem that old to me,” he said. Of all the things he could have picked to talk about, why her? A woman who quoted Aristotle. With ease. Whoo boy, he should be feeling warned off, not intrigued.

  Kyle didn’t even look at him, he was so engrossed in his new book. “That’s because you’re not eleven.”

  Leave it. There were all kinds of ways to make conversation with an eleven-year-old. How about those Giants?

  “She didn’t seem all that ugly, either.”

  The burgers had arrived, and Kyle was being so careful not to get stains on his new book that he barely would touch his dinner.

  “Well, you haven’t seen her face when you don’t hand in the homework assignment.”

  “It would be good if you handed in the homework assignments,” Ben said, thinking Kyle was lucky to have a teacher who was so enthusiastic and who actually cared. He remembered “the plan.” “If you do it for a month without missing, I’ll get us tickets to a Giants game.”

  Kyle didn’t even look up from his book.

  On the way home they stopped in at the hospital to see Carly, but she was sleeping, looking worn and fragile and tiny in the hospital bed. Pretty hard to interest a kid whose mom was that sick in a Giants game, Ben thought sadly. Still, he didn’t know how to comfort his nephew, and he felt the weight of his own inadequacy when they got home and Kyle went right to his room without saying good-night and slammed his bedroom door hard. Moments later Ben heard the ominous sounds of a musical group shouting incomprehensibly.

  He suddenly felt exhausted. His thoughts drifted to Miss Maple and he didn’t feel like a warrior or a hunter at all.

  He felt like a man who was alone and afraid and who had caught a glimpse of something in the clearness of those eyes that had made him feel as if he could lay his weapons down and fight
no more.

  The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson

  Once, when I was little, my mom told me my uncle Ben was a lady-killer. When she saw the look on my face after she said it, she laughed and said it didn’t mean he killed ladies.

  It meant women loved him. Now that I live with him, I can see it’s true. Whenever we go anywhere, like the burger joint tonight, I see women look at my uncle like he is the main course and they would like to eat him up. They get this funny look in their eyes, the way a little kid looks at a puppy, as if they are already half in love, and they haven’t even talked to him.

  I know where that look goes, too, because I’ve seen it on my mom’s face, and I’m old enough to know simple problem math. Love plus my mom equals disaster. It probably runs in the family.

  I like diaries. I have had one for as long as I can remember after I found one my mom had been given and never used. It had a key and everything. Having a diary is like having a secret friend to tell things to when they get too big to hold inside. I stole the one I am using now because it has a key, too, and I didn’t want anyone to laugh at me when I bought it, though afterward I felt bad, and thought I could have said I was buying it for my older sister for her birthday. Which is a lie because I don’t have an older sister. I wonder which is a worse bad thing, telling a lie or stealing?

  There’s lots of things people don’t know about me, like I don’t really like to do bad things, but it kind of keeps anyone from guessing that I’m so scared all the time that my stomach hurts.

  My mom is going to die. She weighs about ninety pounds now, less than me, and I can see bones and blue veins sticking out on her hands. There’s a look in her eyes, like she’s saying goodbye, even though she still talks tough and as if everything’s going to be okay and she’s coming home again. Anybody, even a kid, can see that that’s not true.

  Not that I feel like a kid most of the time. I feel like I’ve been looking after my mom way longer than she’s been looking after me.

  Not that I did a very good job of it. Look at her now.

  My mom is not like the moms in movies or storybooks. She drinks too much and likes to party, and she falls in with really creepy people. Her boyfriend right now is a loser named Larry. He doesn’t even go visit her in the hospital unless her welfare cheque has come and he needs it signed. Uncle Ben moved her to the hospital closer to us, so, gee, Larry would have to take the bus and transfer twice. At least he never hit her or me, which is different than the last one, who was a loser named Barry. That is the sad poem of my mom’s life.

  Here is another secret: even though I am scared of her dying, I am scared of her living, too. I try not to let my uncle know, but I like it at his house. It’s not just that it’s nice, even though it is, it’s that everything is clean, and he always has food, even if it’s dorky stuff like bananas and apples and hardly any cookies or potato chips.

  I feel safe here, like I know what’s going to happen next, and there aren’t going to be any parties in the middle of the night where people start screaming at each other and breaking bottles and pretty soon you hear the sirens coming.

  It’s weird because one of the things I’m scaredest of is that my uncle won’t like me. What will happen to me if he sends me away? And even though that makes me so scared I want to throw up, I am really mean to him. My mom was always mean to him, too. Whenever he turned up, even though he always had groceries for us, she’d yell at him to get lost and it was too late and we didn’t need him, and then as soon as he left, she’d slam the door behind him and say, “Why can’t he ever say he loves me,” and cry for about a week. Which is kind of how I feel after I’m mean to him, too.

  He bought all new stuff for my room at his house, and he let me have his supercool TV set and stereo. I never had new stuff before—a brand-new bed and sheets that were so new they felt scratchy the first night I slept in them. It made me want to cry that he bought them just for me, and that he left the television set in there, even though he doesn’t even have one in his own bedroom. It kind of made me hope maybe I was staying for good, but I am old enough to know that hope is the most dangerous thing. Maybe that’s why I acted mad instead, and told him how lame the cowboy were.

  My uncle Ben used to be a marine. He’s big as a mountain, and he’s probably killed all kinds of people. Maybe with his bare hands. I can’t be a crybaby around him.

  At my new school everything is new and shiny, and you don’t have to go through a metal detector at the front door. The library has lots of books in it, but I’m trying not to care about that too much, either, in case everything changes. You don’t want to put too much faith in a place with a corny name like Cranberry Corners. It’s not even real. Do you see any cranberries around here?

  It is the same with Miss Maple, like she is too good to be true. She does really nice things for me, like the book tonight, but it makes me wish I was little and could just climb on her lap and cry and cry and cry. See? There’s that crybaby thing again.

  Have you ever seen those movies where people live in a big house on a nice block, with a golden retriever and the kind of yard my uncle builds? All flowers and fountains and that kind of stuff?

  Miss Maple is the mom in that movie. You can tell by looking at her, when she gets married and has kids there will be no parties where things get smashed in the night!

  No sirree, she will have baked cookies and would serve them warm with milk before bed. And then a nice bath, every single night, whether you are dirty or not, and then I bet she would get right in bed with her kid and read him stories about something lame like turtles that talk.

  She would have stupid rules like brushing your teeth, and saying please and thank you and not being tardy, and that’s why I act like I hate her, because she is the mom I wanted and sure didn’t get, and I feel guilty for thinking that when my own mom is going to die.

  I told my uncle she was old and mean and ugly because it would have been so much easier for me if that’s what she had been. Plus him being a lady-killer and all, I didn’t want him to ever get anywhere near her. Because who knows what would happen next?

  I like knowing what is going to happen next. Even though it is supergross to think of your uncle and your teacher liking each other, I had an ugly feeling that it was a possibility. I am always thinking of possibilities, trying really hard not to be surprised by life.

  I guess I should never have given him the note from her, because it was worse than I imagined when they saw each other. I know that look. It usually happens just when my life is getting good, too. Just me and my mom, then that look between her and the latest loser and it’s a straight downhill slide from there. Not that my uncle or Miss Maple are losers, but I still think if it runs in the family, I’m doomed.

  I can probably scare her off my uncle. Sheesh. He comes with a kid. The most rotten kid in her class. She’s no dummy. She can do math, too. But what if he decides to have her and get rid of me?

  This is the kind of question that makes my stomach hurt. I will just keep her from ever wanting to get mixed up with us.

  I wonder if Miss Maple will scream if I put a frog in her desk?

  I saw one, a really big one, at Migg’s Pond, which is behind the school and out of bounds, except for the science-class field trip. We didn’t go on field trips in my old school.

  And just thinking about that, how to capture that frog, instead of my mom lying alone in a hospital, and whether or not my uncle is going to keep me, or whether my uncle and Miss Maple are going to progress to the making-eyes-at-each-other stage, eases the ache in my stomach enough that I can go to sleep, finally.

  But only if I leave the light on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BETH Maple heard a slightly muffled snicker just as she was sliding open her top desk drawer looking for a prize for Mary Kay Narsunchuk, who had just won the weekly spelling bee.

  During the whole spelling bee, out of the corner of her eye, Beth had seen Kyle O. Anderson looking absently out the win
dow, seeming not to pay attention, unaware his mouth was silently forming every letter of every word she had challenged the class with, including the one that had finally stumped Mary Kay, finesse. But every time she had called on him to spell a word, Kyle had just frowned and ducked his head.

  It was an improvement over last week’s spelling bee. Whenever she had called on Kyle that time, he had spelled a word, all right, but never the word he’d been given. When the word was tarry, he spelled tarantula, when she gave him forte, he spelled, or started to spell fornication. She had cut him off before he’d completed the word. Thankfully, no one in her grade-five class seemed to have any idea what that exchange had been about.

  But Kyle was being suspiciously well-behaved for this spelling bee. At her most optimistic she hoped that meant his uncle had talked to him after their meeting last night about the plan, and had implemented the reward system at home.

  It was probably that momentary lapse, thinking about Kyle’s uncle, that made Beth react slowly to the snicker as she was opening her desk drawer. Her brain shouting “Beware” did not get to her hand in time. Of course, her brain could just as well have been warning her off the gorgeous, full-of-himself, Ben Anderson, as the contents of her desk drawer!

  A blob of green exploded from the desk, and collided with her hand, unbelievably squishy and revolting. Beth did what no grade-five teacher should ever do.

  She screamed, then caught herself and stuffed her fist in her mouth. She regarded the largest frog she had ever seen, which sat not three feet in front of her on the floor, glaring at her with beady reptilian eyes.