10

Rachel arrived at work just in time to see Lee’s shabby four-door rattling into the space next to hers.

“A bit early for the riffraff to be showing up,” she called as if she fully expected him to hear her over the sound of his clunky car and through both sets of car doors. Even if he couldn’t hear her, he seemed to understand her intent. He rolled his eyes as he put up his sunshield.

In the time it took Rachel to angle her crutches out and heave herself from her car, Lee had shut off his engine—ignoring the various hisses and pops that emitted from under the hood—and had walked over to lean against her car. His hair, still wet from a shower, clung to his head. The awful beard, already drying at the tips, bushed out from his face. It was not a flattering look. Rachel loved it. It was so quintessentially Lee.

Lee said nothing but observed Rachel as she balanced on her left foot. She had traded her shoulder bag for a bright purple backpack. She swung it around behind her and worked her arms through the loops before jamming her crutches under her arms and rocking back a step. She then indicated with a grand sweep of her hand that he could shut the car door for her at any time.

“I could have gotten that for you,” Lee said grumpily, indicating the backpack.

“What, this?” Rachel adjusted the straps to make it more secure. The tighter she wore it, the less it threw off her balance. “That’s OK. You’re headed over to D Wing anyway. My room would be out of your way.” She smiled and pivoted toward her wing, only to look up in surprise when Lee fell in step beside her.

“I can’t take a few seconds to get the door for you?” Lee asked, frowning. At least, she assumed he was frowning. It was hard to tell under all that hair. But he sounded as if he were frowning.

Lee always did hate mornings. As a student, he had slouched into homeroom like one of the undead: glassy eyes, vacant stare, pallid complexion; full of moaning, grunting, and dire predictions about life in general and that day specifically. By mid-morning he would begin to look a bit more human. By lunch, he would be more or less functional. By afternoon, he was downright obnoxious.

Although Rachel and Lee had been colleagues for two full years, she currently had no way of gauging if his days still followed a similar trajectory. With him stationed out in D Wing, she and the rest of the staff rarely saw him—which was just how he liked it. Yolanda Martinez kept fairly close tabs on him, however. Word on the street was that she trusted neither his tender years nor his unruly beard.

“It still feels weird to me that you have your own access code,” Rachel told Lee as he thumbed the keypad and swung the door back, holding it wide for her to pass in ahead of him.

“Me too,” he grunted as she crutched around him into the dim interior. He came through the door behind her and the two started down the hall. “I keep waiting for someone to tell me it’s all been a big mistake.”

Rachel loved these silent, pre-homeroom moments. If she were to stand still enough, she felt that she might hear the building breathe. During certain seasons, a soft, buttery sunlight slanted through the windows and bathed the halls in a golden glow. Those mornings were the best. On mornings like those, Rachel loved walking the quiet length of the halls, sipping her coffee and savoring the calm before the storm. The clear light and the still air were usually enough to make her forget her problems, if just momentarily. Granted, her list of problems didn’t generally include a broken bone, a potential stalker, and a murderous psychopath on the loose, but lately life had been nothing if not unexpected.

Using the key she wore on a band around her wrist, Rachel unlocked her classroom door and stepped back to let Lee open it for her. He then stepped past her, flipped on the lights, and set his coffee down on the desk.

“May I help you with something?” she asked.

“No.” Lee rolled his eyes heavenward. “I came to help you.” He spoke as if addressing someone with a particularly low IQ. He walked over to the windows and opened the blinds to let in the pale morning sun.

“Did Yolanda pass around some sort of signup?” Rachel asked, annoyed. She was keeping up. She was. “Why didn’t she just ask me if I needed help?” Rachel crutched stiffly over to her desk, leaned her crutches against the wall, and wrestled the purple backpack from her shoulders, letting it thunk onto the desk with more force than she had intended. Lee’s drink jumped. A bit of coffee sloshed through the plastic lid onto the stack of papers beside it.

“Drat.” She mopped at the coffee with her sleeve before it soaked through the entire stack.

“First of all, everybody can see that you need help,” Lee said.

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Your classroom’s dirty, you’re behind on grading, you’re barely making it to classes on time, you have black circles under your eyes, and your hair looks ridiculous.” Lee ticked these off on his fingers. “Also, your desk is a wreck.” He walked to the storage closet, rummaged around, and came back with a roll of paper towels.

Rachel took the roll from him, ripped off a handful of paper towels, and began mopping at her desk. “My hair always looks ridiculous.”

“It’s worse than usual.”

“Yes, well, I’m letting it air dry this morning. Don’t worry—I plan to fix it before the kids come in.” Rachel pulled an elastic band from her wrist, worked her hands through the explosion on top of her head, and scooped the entire mess into an untidy ball. Around this, she looped the elastic band several times. She tried not to cringe as she felt a halo of small curls spring free to wave around her face. “There,” she said, frowning, determined to brazen it out. “My hair’s fixed. Now stop being mean.”

Lee scrubbed his hands over his face vigorously, leaving his beard, eyebrows, and the front half of his damp hair sticking out. “Fine. Right. Whatever.” His gaze flitted to the clock. “I have fifteen minutes. Tell me what you most need done.”

He thoroughly swept the floor, straightened and wiped down the desks, and cleaned a spider’s web from the corner behind Rachel’s desk. She didn’t mention that taking care of the spider’s web had been on her to-do list since Christmas.

“Thanks, Lee,” Rachel said as he picked up his messenger bag and prepared to leave. Having taken time to sit down, calm down, and let the blood drain from her leg, she now felt a bit guilty about having snapped at him. Poor Lee. He’d already been treated badly by enough people in his life without having to put up with more irrational behavior. “You’ve always been such a good boy.”

He rolled his eyes and turned to go, muttering under his breath.

“You forgot your coffee,” she reminded him.

Lee turned back and lifted a bushy brow, pushing up his square glasses.

“That coffee’s for you.”

Unfortunately, the early bell had just rung. Two girls from Rachel’s homeroom class arrived just in time to hear Lee say that he had brought Rachel coffee. They went round-eyed as they sidled past him, giggling their way toward their assigned seats.

“Thank you, Mr. Martin.” Rachel spoke in a brisk tone, shooting the girls a quelling look.

For a moment they looked daunted, but then Lee grinned slowly and tipped Rachel an outrageous wink. “My pleasure, Miss Cooper,” he smarmed. The girls’ eyes widened. They launched into fresh fits of giggles.

Rachel closed her eyes and briefly considered throwing her stapler at Lee. She repressed the impulse. Throwing things at boys was standard flirting among teenagers, and such an action from her, while providing temporary satisfaction, would have proven counterproductive in the long run. Besides, given Rachel’s track record, she probably wouldn’t have managed to hit him from across the room.

~*~

Chris caused quite the commotion in fourth-period English when he refused to admit that Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy. “What are you guys talking about? It’s totally funny.” He half-turned in his desk to confront the rest of the class goggling at him in amazement.

“It’s funny?” Shayla stiffened.

Carl lifted his round face from the papers he had been sorting and peered out through smudgy glasses. “Mercutio’s pretty hilarious,” he admitted. “But only if you like dirty jokes.”

Shayla pursed her lips and glared at him. He fiddled with the papers nervously.

“Mercutio’s an idiot,” Denise said, entering the fray. She swung a hank of dark hair over her shoulder and shot Chris a narrow look.

“A funny idiot,” Chris said, nodding to Carl, who nodded back. “And Romeo’s hilarious. Especially the way he talks to Juliet.”

This brought gasps of outrage from the girls.

Denise narrowed her eyes.

“He’s not hilarious,” Shayla said, tugging at her braids.

Chris crossed his legs in the aisle, leaned back, and settled in, the light of battle dawning in his dark eyes. “He is too.”

“What’s so hilarious about Romeo?” Rachel interjected, interested. Trust this class to take the Romeo and Juliet discussion into uncharted territory.

Chris turned to face her. He put his hand over his heart and rolled his eyes back in his head, quoting in high falsetto: “It is my lady. Oh, it is my love. Oh, that she knew she were!”

Rachel laughed as she grasped his meaning. The girls looked on in dismay. “I see what you mean,” she said.

Chris turned to explain to the girls. His eyebrows practically quivered with excitement. “It’s like if he were alive today and sat with his buddies at lunch, and this hot girl went by and he said, ‘There goes my girlfriend. Too bad she doesn’t know who I am.’”

“Except she did already know who Romeo was,” Shayla said. “They’d met at the party already. Remember?” She exchanged a smug smile with Denise.

“Everybody thinks Romeo and Juliet is this huge tragedy, but it can actually be sort of funny sometimes. I thought so too when we were reading it.” Ryan spoke up from the back row. His pale face was propped up on one fist, and he leaned forward in his desk.

“Which brings up a good question,” Rachel nodded. “Do you think this play is a comedy, or do you think it’s a tragedy?”

During the ensuing silence, they could hear Mr. Adams’s class goofing off next door.

Carl cleared his throat. “Well, comedies are funny and tragedies are sad, so… I guess it’s sort of both?”

Rachel smiled at him. “Actually, not quite, Carl. It’s a little more complicated than this, but what really separates a comedy from a tragedy is what happens in the end. Comedies come to happy endings, and tragedies to sad ones. But there’s always a mixture of elements. Tragedies aren’t two-hour sob fests, and comedies always have a few dark elements. After all, something has to go wrong; otherwise we wouldn’t have a plot.” She let that sink in.

“So… it’s a tragedy. Right?” Carl spoke for all members of the class who nodded their assent.

“If you think about it,” Rachel continued, “that’s sort of how life works. It’s a mixture. Sometimes it feels like a comedy, and sometimes it feels like a tragedy. I know lately mine has definitely felt like a tragedy.”

She gestured toward her broken ankle. A few of the girls gave her sympathetic looks. The boys laughed.

“What I want you to remember, though, is that no matter how dark or funny a story may be at different points, those elements alone are not enough to determine whether the work is a comedy or a tragedy. It’s what happens at the end that counts.”

~*~

Toward the end of what felt like history’s longest Monday, Rachel’s left leg felt more collapsible than usual. Too bad Coach Donovan wasn’t around to carry her again. She considered calling Lee during her lunch break and asking him to carry her to the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to crutch there.

Rachel had a brief vision of Lee striding purposefully down the hall while clutching her in his arms, her hair blowing out behind them while throngs of adoring students looked on. In this vision, Lee was cleanly shaven, had black hair, and was dressed like Edward Rochester, while Rachel’s bright hair was several shades darker, long, lush, and frizz-free.

She shook her head to clear this disturbing image and reached for her crutches. The day she let the students see Lee carrying her down the hall would be the last day of peace either of them would ever have. Besides which, he would most likely drop her.

The bell to signal the end of lunch rang while Rachel was still in the bathroom. She quickly washed her hands, fueled by the worry that if she did not hurry, she would be late for her next class. She levered her way through the bathroom door and immediately crashed into Todd Perkins.

Taken completely by surprise, Todd tripped sideways over his own feet and fell heavily to the floor. Rachel wobbled, waving her crutches for balance. Unfortunately, as she flailed them wildly, the tip of the left one clipped Todd in the forehead, knocking his head back and sending his glasses skittering across the hall. With a muffled cry, he rolled sideways, arms crossed over his face. Meanwhile, Rachel stumbled forward in three awkward little hops, straining mightily. She managed to get her crutches on the floor and her left foot back in place, but only after she had accidentally kicked Todd in the small of his back with her heavy black cast.

“Oh, Todd,” Rachel said somewhat breathlessly, gawping down at where he lay curled into a fetal position at her feet. “I’m so sorry!”

Todd coughed and groaned under his crossed arms.

A small ring of students had gathered, amazed. The lone voice of Chris rose above their excited babble. “Fight, fight, fight!”

“Don’t be absurd," Rachel snapped, her eyes shooting sparks. Chris folded his hands, bowed, and shouldered his way backward through the crowd.

Denise came to stand next to Rachel and put a hand on her arm. “Miss Cooper, are you OK?”

“Am I OK?” She gaped. “Someone help Todd!”

“I’m all right.” Todd’s voice rose from the floor. He uncurled his arms and rolled onto his back, blinking muzzily. “Does anybody see my glasses?”

“You mean these?” Shayla picked them up and held them out to Todd. One of the stems was now bent at an awkward angle.

~*~

“I hear you’re assaulting kids in the hallway now.”

Rachel looked up from some afterschool grading to see Lee leaning against the doorjamb.

She groaned. “Go away.”

Lee did not go away. He stepped into the classroom, clicked off the fluorescent lights, and reached over Rachel’s head to open the blinds behind her desk, instantly flooding the room with the liquid gold of late-afternoon sun. “I keep telling you to work from natural light whenever you can. It’s better for your eyes.”

“At this point, it’s not exactly my eyes I’m worried about.”

Lee nodded. “It’s your attitude.”

“It’s my stupid leg.”

“Your stupid leg only does what your brain tells it to do. Which apparently involves kicking innocent kids in the head.”

Rachel laid down her red pen and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them, she beheld Lee’s head as a fuzzy blob. She pressed two fingers against her eyelids and then blinked rapidly in an effort to clear the film over her contact lenses. “I kicked him in the back. It was my crutch that hit him in the head. And I can’t believe you already heard about that.”

“News like that travels fast. Even in D Wing.”

Rachel scowled. Lee shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “So. Did you steal his lunch money?”

“I’m going to kick you in the head.” He was impossible.

Lee laughed. He reached out his foot and toed an uneven desk back into line with its row. “Now, Miss Cooper. I thought we talked about this. No more getting into fights.”

“The only fight I waged was one against gravity.”

“Poor Todd Perkins. You kicked him while he was down, too.” He chuckled. “Lynn and Ann would be proud.”

“Lynn and Ann are never hearing about this. Don’t you dare tell.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “You’ll tell them yourself, and you know it.”

Rachel ignored this.

“Did you hear from Ms. Martinez yet?” he asked.

Rachel nodded. “I called Todd’s mom right after it happened, and she just laughed. But Yolanda says we need to schedule a follow-up conference tomorrow to get her and Todd to sign an incident report.” She let out a gusty sigh. “Why is my life like this?”

Lee gave no response, continuing to rock back on his heels and look around Rachel’s classroom. She noted that today his hair looked more rusty than brown.

“Did you need something?” she asked.

“I came to see if you’re almost ready to go.”

She picked up the stack of essays and squared the sheets between her hands. She really did not want to take any grading home tonight. She had only three more essays left to grade, and those could be easily handled in the morning if she arrived early enough. Rachel set down the stack and gave a decisive nod. “Just let me pack a few things.”

Lee had already picked up the purple backpack. “I’m carrying this, though.”

“No need to be so possessive about it. Just let me pack it first.”

She slipped a few items inside, zipped it, and handed it back to Lee. With his right hand, he took the bag. With his left, he reached to help her up.

“Hand me my crutches first,” she said. He did so, and she let him pull her up.

Only three feet down the hall, Rachel once again considered asking Lee to carry her. Out of the corner of her eye, she scanned his torso. The cut of his shirt and the lumpy fisherman’s vest did nothing for him, but he was solid enough. He could handle her weight. Then she envisioned her hair getting caught on some of the art supplies in his nerdy fisherman’s vest.

At the car, she slid into the driver’s seat and pulled both legs in with the help of her hands.

Lee gave her a sympathetic look. “Cheer up, Miss Cooper,” he said. “The week has just begun. Maybe things will get better.”

They didn’t.