Chapter Two

I've never been so happy to hear a bell ring.

"It's over!" I say, closing my laptop and stashing the notebooks and lesson planning binder in my desk.

My teacher's bag sits lonely in the corner. It will hold nary a craft, laminated sheet, or vocabulary list. There will be no new Christmas name tags made this week. Only spiced cocktails and pumpkin pie with perfectly crafted adornments.

After searching for the smart board remote and finding it in a succulent plant, I turn off the cartoon Thanksgiving episode for which two kids sprawled on the carpet have turned into vegetables.

"Okay, friends!" I stand and clap my hands. "That's the final bell. I don't know what's going on, but the green bus must be running a little late today."

Everleigh rolls to her stomach. Her paper turkey crown crinkles. "I want to go home."

"Trust me, we all want that," I say.

"Where's the bus?" Maverick groans, knocking over his open water bottle.

"Testing my patience." I snatch his water and her backpack and herd them, like sheep, to the classroom door. My lanyard bounces off my chest, and turkey earrings swing back and forth. "We're going to walk up the hallway and see what's going on."

A fifth grader runs past me to carline. Any other day I would have told him to slow down. Today, I couldn't care less. In fact, I encourage his running. I would like to beg off out of here at a run myself.

Mrs. Dicesare points her finger at me. "Cute outfit, again, Miss Rose," she coos. "If that's what you wear to school, I can't imagine what your normal clothes look like, girl."

I smooth the shoulders of a brown turtleneck and rest a hand on the waistband of warm, plaid pants. "You can find every item I own in old J.Crew catalogs," I call over my shoulder.

"Vintage?" she asks distantly.

"Cheap!" I correct. I buy second-hand items and shop at Marshalls, not because I love the thrill of the hunt and like bucking trends, but because I'm poor .

A familiar shape appears at the top of the hall.

"Ah ha!" I cheer. "There's Mr. Jones. Run, children. Run to your freedom!"

They take off running, immediately to be scolded, so I offer a faint, "Sorry about that. Happy Thanksgiving."

Back in my classroom, I shut the door behind me and exhale. It's so quiet. It's my favorite sound in the world – the quiet of a room that is usually buzzing with noise. I turn off the lights and close the emergency curtain over the sliver of a window. If I time this right, I can be out of this building in –

"Wow," says Noelle.

I clasp a hand to my heart and spin around. "Shit, you scared me."

"Why are you still here?" she asks, closing the door behind her. She hoists a bag up to her elbow, jacket folded over her arm, keys in hand. Her bun remains intact, her Thankful For Pie shirt immaculate and her shiny new engagement ring confronting. She has a speck of red glitter on her elbow.

I glance at the clock. "It's 3:02."

"That's two minutes longer than we need to be in this building."

If it weren't for Noelle, I wouldn't know how to leave my classroom at a decent hour. There's always more that I can do, that I dread doing, that I've been conditioned to feel like I should do without pay.

We started our first year of teaching together. When year two began, she grabbed my wrist and said, "We get paid little more than minimum wage for forty hours of work, Vienna. Put the dry-erase marker down."

I grab my purse, water bottle, coffee tumbler, phone, gifted cookies and empty teacher bag. I squeal, "I feel like my soul is singing."

She snorts. "Calm down, girl. It's only a week. They do expect us to come back."

I struggle to get around my desk. "I know. Today, a week feels like a month, but by next Sunday it will feel like an eye blink."

"Don't talk about the end, it doesn't exist. All I see is Darryl and I on the beach in Miami, not a damn leaf in sight." She smiles. "Our hotel is so expensive that if I even so much as hear a child, we get to move rooms. And you better believe I'm going to expect an upgrade."

As we make our way to the back door, I pick up a pencil from the floor and put it in the art corner. I notice a journal on the writing desk instead of in the appropriate basket. I forgot to turn off the lamp in the reading nook. As I do that, I grumble, "I should erase the board."

"Leave it, Vienna!" Noelle demands, her hand on the door. "There's no time! If we don't get out of here, someone's going to remind me that I agreed to tutor or ask us to make copies of a Santa Claus worksheet."

"Okay, okay, leaving it."

However it pains me, I close and lock my back door, shaking off what I left behind. The crunchy leaves and cool breeze do a lot to shift my mood. It's rarely chilly in Atlanta this time of year. Last Thanksgiving, I wore shorts.

She holds her hand in front of my body. "Stop. Do you feel that?"

"No, what?"

Her eyes flash. "Adulting. We're about to go adulting."

I laugh and groan, "Speak for yourself."

We head for the parking lot after a fifth-grade teacher who is practically running.

Noelle sighs. "Oh, let me guess your plans for the week: Real Housewives, endless baking, online shopping for clothes you can't afford, a good bottle of cabernet and two cheap bottles of cabernet. Crying at dog adoption videos."

"Hey!" I laugh, only offended by the last one. " You send those videos to me."

"I don't like to cry alone." She shrugs. "But all of that is kind of adulting. Like sad, single, soon-to-be middle-aged –"

"Hey!" I snap again as she bowls over in laughter. "I am going to track down Mrs. Whatsherface from the PTA and tell her you want to volunteer for the Winter event."

Noelle stands upright, suddenly sober. "Dear God, don't you dare."

I open the back door to my blue Jeep Cherokee and drop my items on the floor. Resting my hand on the open car door, I say, "Actually, for your information, my lack of adulting this week can be attributed to my sister's request that I join her family at the lake."

"Huh?" She looks up from her phone.

"I decided to go to the lake house."

Noelle shuts the passenger door of the truck beside me. "Oh good!"

"I hope so." I close my door and lean against it.

She cranes her neck past our cars and says, "I DoorDashed a coffee, by the way, so if you see a confused Nissan Altima circling, let me know."

"You DoorDashed coffee when we're minutes from leaving the building?"

"It's efficient." She waves her hands around. " Anyway – why exactly are you so weird about going back there? You never said."

"It's a long story."

"Well, I've got coffee to wait for."

I glance off at the sky and wince. I've only told this story to a nail technician, a drunken girl in the bathroom of a bar, and an old man at a dog park. I begin, "It's just…there was this boy…"

Noelle's head snaps back, her brown eyes narrowed. "A boy at your godmother's lake house. In the middle of nowhere. Was it your brother? How Georgia are you?"

"He was perfect," I muse, ignoring her. The sky looks dreamy when I recollect this part of the summer I never speak of. The black cloud comes later.

I continue, "I was awkward and eighteen. He was not awkward and eighteen, too. We immediately liked each other and snuck off together and spent every possible second alone. We fell in love. Or, I guess it was love, I'm not sure now. I was eighteen, there was a heavy dose of lust. All I know is that I had my whole life ahead of me and he wanted us to spend it together."

Noelle's face tightens, falling with sadness, probably mirroring my expression. "What happened?"

"Obviously we lived happily ever after," I mock. "Can't you see how happy I am? I'm obviously living the dream."

"Seriously. What happened?"

I roll a stone with the bottom of my buckled suede shoes. "My dad and Heddy put a stop to it. Before we did something stupid."

"Like?"

"Like run off and get married at the courthouse. Which was what we were going to do."

Noelle's jaw drops. Her phone screen flashes. "No wonder you love trashy TV, it reminds you of your life!"

"What?" I stamp my foot. "I am not trashy. I'm well-worn."

She steps into the road and waves her arms over her head. The passing librarian thinks we're waving at her. So, I wave back.

Sinking her hip in wait, Noelle calls back, "You almost eloped at eighteen with your brother. That's not okay, Vienna."

"He was not my brother! He was the next-door neighbor."

"How many teeth did he have?" she argues, eyebrows raised.

"Whatever number of teeth adult people are supposed to have. And they were beautiful white teeth. He had these soft, warm brown eyes. And strong, flexible hands. And beautiful…other things."

A silver car slows down in front of us, and she says over her shoulder, "Ooh, now I want to know."

" No ," I shout while she crosses the car to the driver's side window. "You respect the whole story, or you don't get any juicy details."

"How juicy?"

I feel dreamy again. "Love letters. Pickup trucks. Baking in the kitchen. Making out in the lake. Dancing at a bar."

She comes back around with a cardboard tray, and the DoorDash driver honks his horn goodbye. She scoffs, "I'm sorry, but that sounds so redneck. I can't with you. I'm moving back to New York."

"Every time I even think about the lake house, I think of him," I mutter. "It's tainted now. It used to feel like my mother and now all I think about is him . And what my life could have been. How it turned out."

"There's nothing wrong with the way your life turned out, Vee," she says.

My eyes close. I pinch away the pain that lives in my gut. "I just couldn't go back to that house." The storm rolls over all the rainbows I just allowed back in my conscious mind.

Noelle takes my hand. I open my eyes to a warm to-go coffee.

"You got me a coffee?" I awe.

"Darryl's paying for our whole trip, and I know you're going to go broke on box wine this week, so I figured you needed a pick me up."

I pull her in for a hug. "Thank you."

"Hey, don't let your sister boss you around, this week," she says, pulling back. "Okay? And don't let old memories make new memories feel bad." She shakes my shoulder. "Have fun ."

I give her a soft smile, pushing away the tug of old memories. "I'll try."