18. Georgia

EIGHTEEN

Georgia

Friday night was one of those… grey-out nights. Not quite blackout, but not fully coherent, either. After debriefing with Tamika ( that girl is a tank ), listening to the voice recordings on my phone, and remembering flashes of imagery and snippets of conversation, I can piece enough together to know that Oliver and I probably had a Moment, with a capital M. But it’s Secret, with a capital S. I do remember that.

However, the fundraiser is next week, so we’ve had to have meetings in his office to prepare. Every day. We must. It’s crucial to the success of the fundraiser. Every day. Sometimes, for hours a day.

“…so you’ve reached out to the carnival rental place, and they’re all set for next week?” Oliver is asking me, his gaze lingering unhappily on my perfectly breezy and shapeless sheath dress.

“Yep. They’re all set. Deposit is fully paid, too. We’ll need to give them a check on the day of, so put that on your to-do list.”

“Oh, right. We need two signatures for a check, too. Let’s just do that now.” He stands up and unlocks his meticulously organized filing cabinet, pulling out a binder labeled “Checkbook” (with a professional label maker, mind you, not haphazardly scribbled across the front in Sharpie).

I watch his hands, deeply veined and strong, write the check in perfect cursive. He signs and then hands the check to me. “Sign underneath mine, please.”

My chicken scratch looks comical under his signature. His is so annoyingly neat that you can read every individual letter in his name. Mine is a stylized G with a long, flowy tail. Unable to resist, I make the small dot above the ‘i’ in his name into a tiny heart.

His mouth is pressed into a flat line, unimpressed. “This check is no good now.”

“What do you mean?”

“My signature has been tampered with. It’s no longer valid.” He writes the word “VOID” in huge letters across the check, rips the check in half, and fills in a new one.

I like this about him, I’m surprised to realize. It’s not annoying as I originally thought. His dedication to rules and strict organization makes me feel secure. Settled, somehow. Calm.

But I can’t lose myself, so I sign the new check and add a heart on top of my name instead.

“What are you doing?”

“I have an ‘i’ in my name, too.”

“But you don’t have a heart on your original signature.”

“This is my signature, Oliver. Deal with it.”

Frowning, he puts the check in the envelope. I watch his pink tongue dart out as he licks the adhesive gum on the flap. The entire thing. Not awkward at all, as we hold eye contact through the entire process. Jeez Louise, how long is that flap, anyway?! The longest, largest envelope flap in the universe. I shift in my seat, not having to check my underwear this time. I know on a cellular level that I am wet.

He places the sealed envelope in a folder on his desk labeled “Fall Festival” (yes, with a label maker). He puts everything away in its appropriate place, sits, and leans back in his chair.

“I think that’s it for the day,” he says.

“Yes. Um, no. I mean, yeah. Okay. Cool,” I say, not moving.

He raises an eyebrow. “Want some coffee?” he finally asks.

I shake my head like a dog, hoping to show “no”, but really clearing the image of his tongue licking that stupid fucking envelope from my brain. “It’s like, four p.m. I’ll never sleep.”

Shrugging, he presses the “Brew” button on the coffeemaker.

“It won’t affect your sleep?” I ask the strip of tan skin peeking out from under the collar of his shirt.

“It doesn’t really affect me. I don’t sleep much, anyway.”

“You’re not one of those people who sleep with a sleep tracking smart watch that tracks every heartbeat, REM cycle, and wet dream you have every night?”

He laughs. “No, but I wear one when I exercise.”

“Let me guess. That’s every day at the crack of dawn?”

“You got it.”

I tap my foot. We sit in silence for a beat, listening to the coffee brew. “Tell me a story.”

He smiles. It seems private somehow, as if he doesn’t mean for me to see it. “What do you want to hear?”

“What’s your most embarrassing story?”

“In life?”

“No, at work. No, actually, I changed my mind. I want to hear a different story. I want to hear your origin story, Batman. Why are you the Doogie Howser of the NYC DOE? How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“That’s young for a principal.”

“A bit, I suppose.”

“So let’s have it. How’d you end up here, Oh Great and Wise One? Who hurt you? Tell me, and I’ll decide whether the condescension and the arrogance are forgivable.”

“I thought we’ve moved past that.”

“Maybe you have.”

“All right, that’s fair. Well,” he says, loosening his tie and giving me a better view of his throat, “it’s not very exciting. But I’ll oblige. I was born and raised in Fort Greene. Before it got all,” he waves his hand towards the outside vaguely, “gentrified. It didn’t use to be like this. We never had much money growing up. Both my parents were public school teachers, back when it was the NYC ‘Board of Education.’ They were always tired.” He shakes his head.

“Anyway, I didn’t have some childhood dream like many teachers do, like, ‘I always knew I wanted to be a teacher.’ I graduated from college with a useless degree and moved back to Manhattan because all of my friends were moving there. We all got a place together. A four bedroom, one bathroom, veritable frat house. They were all working in finance in some capacity, and I knew I wanted no part in that. Which is funny now, considering the budget I am now responsible for managing.”

“Is it a lot?”

He eyes me. “It’s a lot more than you think a public school would ever function on. Anyway, I messed around for a little, bartending in the East Village. There was this group of teachers who would come into my bar for happy hour every Friday. They were wild. I mean, you know, obviously,” he says, giving me a look .

“The way they partied every week, you would think they just got home from war. Which now that I think about it,” he says, tilting his head, “is not too far from the truth. The stories they would trade, the simultaneous hate and love they felt for teaching. I respected the hell out of them. I thought they were the coolest people in the city. I got to talking to one of them about teaching, and he told me about the New York City Teaching Fellows. I applied and got in that year.”

I smile, loving hearing about this. “I’m a Teaching Fellow, too.”

“It’s a strong program. My first placement was teaching in a fourth grade Integrated Co-Teaching classroom in Brownsville. I was the special education teacher. I spent seven years working as a teacher at that school, and to this day, it was the most demanding job I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

I nod, commiserating. “I understand. My first placement was in a middle school in the Bronx. That school taught me everything.”

“It felt like hell for us definitely, but those teachers, my old coworkers, were some of the smartest, most intelligent, hardest working people I’ve ever met. They, like you said, taught me everything. I learned how to be an excellent teacher there. The teachers ran that school.” He pauses, reminiscing.

I watch his handsome face, thinking about how much I appreciate him saying that. Remembering his humble beginnings, respecting the hell out of teachers, the ones doing the dirty work. I like that he actually got his hands dirty, that he isn’t one of those administrators who cruised to the top without knowing what the bottom felt like.

“Many times, in Title I schools, staff turnover rate is high. People learn quickly that it isn’t the right fit for them,” he says.

I look at him closely for any sign of judgement, of arrogance, relieved when I don’t find any.

“That was the case for the administration at that school,” he continues. “We had new assistant principals and principals every year. After maybe my fifth or sixth year of teaching there, ripping my hair out every time any progress we made as a school was erased every time we got a new administrator, I decided to get my administrator’s license myself. The superintendent at the time knew who I was and made me the assistant principal as soon as I graduated. I spent two years as AP before I was made principal of that school.”

I narrow my eyes at him but keep my mouth shut. This, I’m not so sure about.

He clocks my expression, his own hardening. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘White-passing man’ swoops in and saves the poor Brownsville school. I certainly struggled with a lot of feelings during those years. But I had a strong team, and an idea that is surprisingly novel to most administrators.”

“Which was what, Sir White Passing Savior?” I push back.

He glares at me. “It was to work with and alongside the teachers, as if they were your teammates. Trust them. Teachers and administrators should agree on all major school decisions and school rules and enforce them uniformly across the board, so that there is consistency from to room to room.”

“That seems pretty obvious to me.”

“You would think, right? But in my experience, most administrators view the position as one of power. At least that was the case for the rotating cabal of administrators coming in and out of that school. They don’t want to do any actual work. They just want to be in charge. They want to rule. ”

“So the secret to your success is… collaborative leadership?”

“Among other things. Communication is another. Making sure we meet basic needs, like food and shelter security, before asking students to learn.”

“And organization,” I say, turning the stapler on his desk on its side and shifting it slightly .

“Organization is crucial,” he says, staring at it. “Clearly delineated and consistent teacher rating and classroom environment rubrics—co-created with teachers, of course. Well-written, well-thought out plans ,” he says, with a look. “School goals, unit plans, lesson plans, all that.”

“And that’s why you find it difficult to work with me. Because I’m a mess,” I point out.

“You are chaos personified, Georgia,” he tells me with a small smile, picking the stapler up and adjusting it to its original place. “But that doesn’t mean you should change. Maybe it’s time for me to make you your own little box on our evaluation rubric.”

“Good luck,” I tell him. But on the inside, I am blooming.

He smiles that secret smile. “I think it’s your turn.”

I make a big, exaggerated yawn. “You don’t want to hear about my origin story. It’s boring as hell. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher.”

“Okay. What would you be doing if you weren’t a teacher?”

I run my tongue across my teeth, thinking. “Good question. A party planner.”

He nods. “I can see?—”

“—for pets.”

He stares at me.

“Bubble wrap quality control.”

He blinks.

“A fortune cookie writer.”

“Hm.”

“Professional line stander.”

“Something tells me you’d be awful at that one.”

I think about it. “You’re right,” I admit.

“Tell me my fortune cookie,” he commands.

I pause.

Do I lean in to whatever is happening? This Thing, with a capital T? It must be a Thing, if Oliver had to tell me that had to be a secret. Is this what I want? To be someone’s secret? I think about this man. Serious, sturdy. Someone who makes me want to rip my hair out but also feels like a weighted blanket on a cold day.

I decide to lean in. “At the farmer’s market this Saturday, among the ripe and inexplicably non-red tomatoes, someone beautiful awaits—if you know when to look.”

He cracks first, eyes crinkling at the corners, front tooth on full display. “And when should I look?”

I shrug. “Fortune cookies are meant to be mysterious.”

“Right,” he murmurs, nodding. His eyes dart down to my mouth, then meet mine again. “Ten o’clock sharp.”