Rock Bottom Girl

by Score, Lucy

  I spotted my Mean Girl Angela at a table with six other sleek brunettes. They were all in coordinating blouses and plaid skirts. She shot me a glare.

  I waved cheerily back at her and wondered if this desire to embarrass her publicly was what parents felt on a daily basis.

  14

  Jake

  Ah, that industrial cleaner smell on the first day of school. Everything was clean, sanitized, and the air quality was high. There was a buzz in the building. Kids excited to catch up with friends. Teachers anxious for a regular paycheck.

  It would be all downhill from here.

  I surveyed my new fourth period American History class and prepared to dazzle them.

  The teaching of history was, traditionally, one of the most boring things ever invented. We white-washed our country’s doings, painted a bunch of white dude schmucks as heroes, and swept everyone else’s good deeds under the rug of gender and race.

  When Hamilton came out, I fucking cried. Okay, it was only a tear. Still counts. But if I ever see Lin Manuel Miranda on the street, I’m gonna kiss that guy on the mouth for what he did for American history. With the popularity of the musical, some of the curriculum shackles fell off. This district in particular—our superintendent was a huge Hamilton fan—embraced the idea of teaching real history. As long as my students could still pass the tests.

  I picked up the plastic tote I used every year and began my trip up and down the aisles collecting cell phones. I wanted every ounce of their attention. I also didn’t want them capturing me burping the first line of the Declaration of Independence and putting it up on Snapchat or whatever the fuck.

  “Let’s talk about why you are going to end up caring about American history,” I began. I could feel the freaking eye rolls and embraced them. “Quick. Someone gimmie the definition of insanity.”

  “Making us learn history.” A blasé motherfucker in the back row smirked, his size fourteen sneakers stretched out insolently into the aisle. On the spot, I made it my mission for the semester to turn him into a history freak.

  “Funny guy, Chuck.” He blinked when he realized I knew his name. “But that’s not the definition I’m looking for.”

  A girl in the front row waved her hand. She wore glasses and one of those thick headbands to keep her curly hair scraped back from her face, a total Hermione. “Chelsea,” I said, snapping my fingers at her.

  She blushed. I was aware of my manly appeal, but I ignored reactions from the under thirty crowd. “Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results,” Chelsea said primly.

  “Bingo.” I pulled the five-dollar Starbucks gift card out of my pocket and tossed it to her.

  Her face lit up like Times Square billboard, and the rest of the class, including Size Fourteen Chuck, sat up a little straighter.

  I dropped fifty dollars a month on gift cards just to keep these guys engaged. I didn’t need every single one of them leaving here with a burning passion for American history, but they would sure as hell know shit.

  “We study history so we don’t make the same mistakes over and over again. So we can grow. Do better.”

  “Mr. Weston, man, aren’t we already the greatest country in the world? Why wouldn’t we want to keep doing the same stuff?” This kid’s dad still drove around with a MAGA sticker on his Maserati.

  “What makes us the greatest, Perry?”

  He looked confused like he was walking into a trap. It totally was.

  “Our military.”

  “Our military that leaves roughly 40,000 veterans without a roof over their heads?”

  “Okay. Then wealth.”

  “Qatar, Singapore, Brunei. Hell, the U.S. doesn’t even crack the top ten richest countries list. I know what you’re going to say: education. Twenty-one percent of our adult population reads below a fifth-grade level.”

  Perry was searching for some random Fox News “fact” to back up the line.

  “Let me tell you a secret, something no history teacher has ever told you before. Are you ready?”

  They were all leaning forward in their chairs.

  “You’ve been lied to your entire educational career. But guess what? You’re old enough for the truth.”

  Kids loved salacious gossip. They loved scandal. And thankfully, American history was chock full of both.

  I taught American history. Black history. LGBTQ history. Feminist—or womanist—history. I taught what actually happened to get us to where we are today. If someone did something or said something that contributed to turning this country into what it is today, I taught it.

  “You know that Thomas ‘All Men Are Created Equal’ Jefferson fathered six children with his slave, Sally Hemmings. But did you know that before President George Washington fought the British, he fought for the British? How about that he was in love with his best friend’s wife? Did you know that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who launched the women’s rights movement, said some really racist crap?”

  I dumped the phone bin back on the desk I rarely sat at.

  “We’re going to learn real history this semester. If you know what really happened, who the real heroes are, then you can go be better Americans. Because maybe we’re not the greatest country in the world. But we’ve still got potential. Our strength comes from our diversity, our willingness to change, to fight inequality, to explode scientific advancement.”

  They were all sitting there blinking at me like I’d lost my damn mind. I loved it.

  “So…” I rubbed my palms together. “Let’s get ready for your first assignment.”

  Groans went up, and I heard the whispered “But it’s the first day,” complaints. Poor babies. Summer was over. It was time to embrace it.

  “Break up into teams of four or five. You’re going to work together to write a gossip blog exposing the truth behind any of the historical figures on that list.” I pointed at the board. “Due on Friday.”

  They hopped to, shifting their desks around.

  This little exercise did more than get the students excited about history. It showed me who had friends. Who was left out. Who was willing to get creative and put some effort into the assignment.

  I thought of Marley sitting on the bench in the front office. I hoped she had some creativity, some effort to put forth. Because that would make her even more interesting.

  15

  Marley

  Half of my first day was officially behind me without any major trauma. Punishing my nemesis’s teenage son, having Jake Weston witness me in my principal office shame, and being warned to take my students’ safety more seriously notwithstanding.

  It was lunchtime, and I planned to respond to my family’s texts in the sanctity of my dungeon-like office.

  Dad: I bet you’re the best gym teacher the district has ever seen! LOL!

  I really needed to finally break the silence and tell Dad that LOL does not mean lots of love.

  Mom: Hope you’re having a great first day! I’m making pancakes from that box mix you like tonight to celebrate!

  Zinnia: Best of luck today.

  I was just getting ready to compose a cheerful thank you when my phone buzzed again.

  Floyd: Come on. I’ll take you to lunch in the teacher’s lounge so you can finally peer behind the curtain.

  As a student, I’d assumed that the teachers ate their teacher food and discussed appropriate teacherly things. That is until one day I’d gotten a hall pass to get my geography book out of my locker and walked past the lounge to hear the Spanish teacher telling a punchline with the f-bomb in it to a shop teacher and an algebra teacher who laughed so hard I thought she was going to spit out her tuna sandwich.

  After that, I never looked at them in the same two-dimensional, just-an-educator way again. And now I was being granted behind-the-scenes access? I grabbed my bagged lunch and headed for the door.

  The teacher’s lounge that Floyd led me to was on the other side of the school. There was a closer one to the gym, but Fl
oyd insisted this one was better. He opened the door to raucous laughter, and I stopped short. Mrs. Gurgevich, my ancient English teacher from seven thousand years ago, was unwrapping what looked like jalapeno poppers at one of two battered tables.

  She lifted her gaze to me. Her gray hair was pulled back in the severe bun I swear she slept in. The glasses, giant acetate frames, looked like the same ones she’d had when I was a student. The skin on her cheeks sagged in a fascinating, rippled texture. Her lips were painted a pearlescent pink that never seemed to smudge or smear.

  She was wearing polyester slacks and an ivory cardigan set. She’d had one in every color of the rainbow and rotated them out with brown, black, and navy pants.

  “Everyone, this is Marley Cicero, the new gym teacher,” Floyd said, pulling out the chair next to Mrs. Gurgevich. He hefted his lunch tote onto the table. It was the size of a tailgating cooler.

  “Well, well, Ms. Cicero. Back to grace our hallowed halls again,” Mrs. Gurgevich said.

  Was that a smoker’s rattle I heard?

  “Don’t bust her balls, Lana,” Floyd said, elbowing Mrs. Gurgevich in the arm.

  Lana? Mrs. Gurgevich had a first name? And a sexy one at that.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gurgevich,” I said weakly. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  She gave me a brisk, no-nonsense nod. Floyd thumped the seat next to him. “Come on, Cicero. Take a load off.”

  I sat and opened my lunch sack, finally noticing that there were other teachers in the room. Two of them were loudly debating a Fortnite strategy by the refrigerator. There was a round table with three women who were chewing in silence and scrolling through their phones. One by one, they called out introductions, names, and positions. And I retained zero of them. I was going to need a yearbook or something if I was expected to remember kids’ names and teachers’.

  “Well, hello, everyone! How’s your first day?”

  My heart beat out a frantic SOS as a short, curvy bouffanted blonde strolled in on four-inch heels.

  Amie Jo Armburger.

  She looked as though time had frozen her in the 1990s. Which, in Culpepper, had been the equivalent of the late eighties. We didn’t get the trends here until a decade after things were popular. Her hair was big, her makeup was thick, and she was dressed like my childhood Office Barbie in a pink pencil skirt and suit jacket.

  “Marley Cicero?” Amie Jo’s raspberry glossed lips parted in the perfect O. “Well, bless your heart. I heard you were back living with your parents after you got fired and dumped. You poor thing.” She batted seventeen-inch lashes and pretended to look concerned.

  The entire lounge shut up and opened its ears. All eyes pinned me down.

  It was good to know that she was consistent. Still a shitty human being out to make herself feel better by belittling everyone else in her path. It was familiar territory for me, and it no longer scared me. “Ally Jo? Is that you?” It was mean. I knew it was mean. But she really was a horrible human being.

  “Amie,” she corrected. “But I wouldn’t expect you to remember that. We ran in such different crowds in high school.”

  Our graduating class had 102 students in it. Ninety-six percent of us had known each other since preschool.

  “Really?” Floyd piped up. “I heard you two had quite the history. Didn’t she date and dump your husband?”

  There were a few titters of laughter from the cell phone table.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Amie,” I interrupted, intentionally dropping the Jo. “What do you teach?”

  She flounced into the room in a cloud of suffocating perfume and dropped her bento box on the table across from Floyd. My eye caught on the diamond the size of a cafeteria tray riding her hand. I wondered if her left bicep was significantly larger than her right with all the hefting it had to do.

  “Only the most important subject we offer: home economics and life skills.”

  Mrs. Gurgevich snorted and dragged a popper through her puddle of raspberry jam.

  “Oh?” When I’d taken Home Ec, I’d learned how to burn brownies and balance a checkbook.

  “I’ll have to tell my husband, Travis Hostetter, president of Hostetter Cadillac and Trucks, that I ran into you today. Why just yesterday, we were talking about you. Travis said, ‘Amie Jo, what was the name of that girl I dated before I fell in love with you?’”

  I had a pet theory that narcissists had an overwhelming desire to hear their own names and tended to use it themselves in conversation. So far, Amie Jo was proving my hypothesis.

  I gave Floyd a look that clearly asked what the hell was wrong with the other teacher’s lounge. But he was too busy shoveling his second bologna sandwich into his beard.

  “Everyone surviving?”

  I looked away from Amie Jo’s Aqua Net masterpiece to see Jake standing in the door, a curious aluminum foil triangle in his hand.

  “Hey, Jake,” everyone said.

  His gaze skated to me, and I saw his lips quirk. “How’s the first day, Mars?”

  “Hi, Jake,” Amie Jo purred with a flutter of those spider lashes. “You’re looking nice and tan. Our pool’s still open if you ever want to go for a dip.”

  Well, well, well. It looked like Amie Jo was still holding on to a bit of a high school crush despite being married to Travis Hostetter, president of Hostetter Cadillac and Trucks.

  “Thanks.” Jake took the seat at the foot of the table next to me and unwrapped two neatly stacked slices of pizza. Amie Jo pouted.

  Floyd sang something under his breath that sounded like “evil queen.”

  “How’s the first day?” Jake asked me again, his voice lower.

  I gave a shrug and finally unwrapped the sandwich my mom had made me. White bread, marshmallow fluff, and peanut butter. I needed to take over my parents’ kitchen. Their culinary skills had frozen sometime in the mid-eighties. “Good, so far.”

  “No troublemakers?” he pressed. Amie Jo’s pale blue eyes burned into my flesh.

  Shaking my head, I answered, “Nope.”

  I pulled a box of animal crackers and another of raisins out of the bag. It was the breakfast of junior high champions unconcerned with diabetes and belly fat.

  A yellow sticky note fluttered out.

  Have the best first day in the history of first days. I love you.

  Love, Mom

  Jake’s eyebrows winged up in amusement. Embarrassed and touched, I stuffed the note in my shorts pocket.

  Our feet were inches apart under the table. My sneakers near his comfortable loafers.

  “Gurgevich, you coming to poker this week?” Jake asked.

  I blinked.

  Mrs. Gurgevich shifted in her seat. “You can keep your money this week. I have tickets to that nudie acrobatic art show they’re putting on in Lancaster.”

  “Nice. You taking the Harley?” Jake asked.

  I’d entered a parallel universe. One in which Mrs. Gurgevich rode a Harley and went to burlesque shows.

  I ate quietly and listened to the conversations around me. Disconnected, out of place, but not uncomfortable. It was how I always felt in new work situations. But at least I knew this situation was just temporary.

  “Five-minute warning,” one of the teachers announced, and everyone groaned.

  “We better get going, Cicero. It’s a long walk back,” Floyd said, packing up his food pantry.

  “It was nice meeting everyone,” I said. Jake winked.

  “Whew. I thought Amie Jo was going to tear into us about Milton,” Floyd said when we were in the hallway. “She rarely eats in this lunchroom.”

  “Marley, do you have a minute?”

  Floyd’s face drained of color. “Shit. Evil Queen alert.”

  Amie Jo tottered out of the lounge on her heels. Seriously, how did she even teach in those? My feet would have been bleeding by second period.

  “I know you’re new here, but I really think you need to understand that my boys are angels. They are handsome, athletic, po
pular boys, and there is never a reason to discipline them.”

  “He was being a dick, Amie Jo,” Floyd intervened.

  She held up a manicured hand. “Zip it, Floyd. Never. A. Reason.” She poked me with her Barbie Corvette pink talon to emphasize every word. “Got it?”

  I was working up a response somewhere between “get your weird bird hands off of me” and “your son is a moron who’s too entitled to treat people nicely” when the bell rang.

  The hallway instantaneously flooded with bodies and BO. I could hear the staccato click of Amie Jo’s stilettos on the industrial tile floor as she marched back to whatever ring of hell she occupied.

  16

  Marley

  “Lunch duty and parking lot duty?” Floyd asked when I headed in the direction of the student lot. “Somebody hit the jackpot this semester.”

  Grimacing, I bumped the exit door with my hip as I shot him pistol fingers. “Lucky’s my middle name.” The late August swelter took my breath away when I stepped down onto the asphalt. I could bake a frozen pizza on this slab of parking lot.

  Parking lot duty, as it had been mirthlessly described to me, entailed making sure students didn’t light up their cigarettes or run each other over on school grounds. Apparently there was something about liability insurance. I was to report to the top of the practice field hill that overlooked the student lot and yell disciplinary phrases if necessary.

  There was a cute, petite Asian teacher in a flowy skirt and t-shirt already waiting at the top of the hill. I huffed and puffed my way to her.