Chapter Thirty-Nine

Nick stepped through the school doors halfway through second period. The hallways were deserted.

He took it as a positive sign that Liza had called him. If he gave a warm enough apology, maybe she’d let him back into his classroom with a reprimand.

The glass doors to the office closed behind him, and Gloria, the secretary, told him to take a seat. He waited. The bell rang. Kids poured out and filtered back into classes. Only ten minutes later did Gloria tell him to go in.

He found Liza sitting at her desk, pushing a form into a file and letting a pair of reading glasses slide down her nose.

“Mr. Foster.”

Nick inclined his head and took a seat.

She laid her hands on the desk in front of her. “It gives me no pleasure suspending a teacher, particularly one with a long-standing reputation.” She stopped, inspecting him, probably to see if he bought her line. He didn’t. “Would you like to say anything for the record?”

For the record? What did that mean? “As you know by now, Ms. Grambling, I left my class to protect a student. If it had been anyone else, I would have followed ordinary procedures. But I was worried about how fragile Sierra Wright was. She was unable to face the police and school authorities at the time. I agreed to give her a few days to prepare herself, but I informed her mother immediately.”

Liza stared at him, unmoved.

He dug deep, trying to find an apology that would reach even her. “I’m sorry. I violated procedures. I left a mess on your hands. For that, I’m truly sorry.”

She tapped her fingernails on the desk. “I appreciate your candor. Unfortunately, you left more than a mess. You broke the law.”

He stared at Liza. He’d been accused of acting without thinking through the consequences a time or two, but he had never broken the law. “I didn’t intend for the assault to go unreported. I delayed the report until Monday for the girl’s mental health. That’s all.”

“Yes, and that delay was a serious lapse. If the Cantu boy had carried out his threat against Sierra Wright in the intervening seventy-two hours and the authorities hadn’t been notified, our school would have been liable, not to mention skewered in the media.”

He hated that what she said made sense. But there was no way for him to make Liza understand that something more important than the school’s name had been at risk—Sierra herself.

Liza’s face remained a stone mask, and Nick wondered why he was here. She didn’t want an apology. She showed no inclination of putting him back to work.

She pulled out another file, this one with his name on the label. “At the board meeting next week, I’ll be recommending termination of your contract for ethical misconduct.”

Nick saw white heat. Ethical misconduct? That term was reserved for teachers who hit a student. Or who slept with one.

If the district accepted her recommendation, not only would he never be able to work at this school, he wouldn’t be able to teach anywhere. A long, empty future stretched out before him. He wouldn’t be able to work with youth in any capacity.

“Would you like to make any other comment for the record, Mr. Foster?”

She was a superb actress. She didn’t let a hint of her victory show. He’d never once realized who he was up against. Up until this moment, he’d thought her clueless, maybe a little power hungry. It never occurred to him she was this full of venom. If she simply wanted him gone, she could have him transferred next year. There were only nine weeks of school left.

He looked at her until she finally had the grace to look away. “For the record, I’ll be in touch, Liza.”

As he strode out, he heard her heels tapping into the office behind him. That was a sound he could happily live the rest of his life without hearing again.

 

The next morning, Nick sat on the windowsill with his Bible.

It was 8:00 a.m. The tardy bell would be ringing. This was how Nick defined his days now: by what he wasn’t doing. He wasn’t teaching first period. He wasn’t leading his classes through the last novel of the year, The Contender. And he wasn’t helping his kids set goals for next year. Someone else was pushing his classes through practice tests for the state evaluation next week.

It was a poor way to live, measuring himself by what he wasn’t doing.

He pulled out Jason’s business card. His old army friend was now a partner in a law firm downtown. Jason told him if he’d really violated the code of conduct, Liza was probably within her rights. “But don’t give up hope, Nick,” he said over the phone. “Just because she’s technically within her rights doesn’t mean we can’t make a good fight.”

A good fight, but not a sure fight. The district cared more about the black and white of the code than about a kid who’d already faced one trauma too many.

What would he do with himself if he weren’t teaching? The thought of pushing papers in an office gave him hives. He’d prayed for Liza to be softened. He’d prayed for his job to be restored. But he’d learned long ago that wanting something so much it hurt didn’t earn an answered prayer. Sometimes all it earned was a sacrifice on God’s altar.

“Our Father who art in Heaven,” he began to pray.

Not as I will, but Thy will be done. Nick shook his head, as if he could make the intruding words go away. There was nothing he wanted to pray less than the Gethsemane prayer. But if Christ had needed to take the harder path for some better purpose, who was he to ask for an easier route?

He moved from the windowsill to the carpeted floor. Nick closed his eyes, feeling an ache so deep he didn’t know where it ended. Sacrifice his job? He didn’t know if he could do it. Crouching on his knees, he tried to let go of the career that had been the focus of his life for a decade and a half.

“I don’t know how to be anything else, Lord, but you can have my job. You can have it. My hands are empty.”

He reached out his hands as if Christ needed to see how empty his hands were. But he came up with closed fists. He’d lost his job. And he’d lost April. Beautiful, artsy April who’d somehow charmed his old man into telling his story but didn’t seem able to tell her own.

He forced his hands open. “I don’t know how to let go,” he groaned. “I only ask this one thing, Father: if I’m losing my calling, let it stand for something.”

His fingers uncurled. He touched his forehead to the floor, and he would stay there, in the position of submission, until he knew he could leave his job in heaven’s power.

“Not my will. Yours,” he said in a grated whisper. “I will submit. By Your grace, I put it all in Your hands.” His words submitted, but his body said otherwise. The muscles in his arms clenched and shuddered in protest.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined putting his classes in God’s palms, hands capable of marking off the heavens and weighing the mountains. For good measure, he imagined putting his old man in God’s hands. And last, he put April there.

“I submit to Your will. By Your grace, I submit to You,” he prayed over and over again.

He collapsed onto the floor facedown and spread his arms like a cross. He didn’t move until every thought belonged to God and every muscle released its tension.

It had been a long time since Nick had prayed body and soul like this. It had been a long time since he’d had the time or felt the need to. Noon passed and the afternoon light had dimmed when, exhausted and spent, he lifted himself from the floor.

He sucked in a deep breath and let God’s calm work its way through him. As he made his way downstairs, his prayer still whispered the refrain in the back of his mind. I submit to Your will. By Your grace, I submit.