Page 3 of July (New Orleans #7)

“It’s hot, Miss Mailor,” one of her students said and ran his hand over his forehead like there was actual sweat there, which there wasn’t.

“We’re almost done with the walking tour of the Square. Then, we’ll take the bus back to school,” she replied.

“I did this field trip last year,” another student said.

“What did you learn last year?” Willa asked him.

“That he’s on a horse,” the boy said and pointed at the statue of Andrew Jackson, who was, indeed, on a horse.

“Why is he on a horse?”

“He likes to be on horses.”

“Why isn’t he in a car?” Willa countered.

“He could only buy a horse?” the boy replied with a lift of his ten-year-old shoulder.

“Did you learn last year that they didn’t have cars when Andrew Jackson lived?” she asked.

“How do you get around without cars?” another one of her students asked her. “How did he get to school?”

“Cars didn’t exist back then. People used horses to get around. Not everyone had horses, though, so you had to walk everywhere.”

“Like, to school and to the store with your mom?”

“Exactly,” Willa said with a smile.

“I have a bike. Why didn’t they take a bicycle?” another student asked her.

“They didn’t exist, either,” she answered. “The bicycle wasn’t invented until later. Well, there was a kind of bicycle, but not the kind you’d ride today, so it was horses, carriages that the horses would drive for them, or walking, for the most part, when Andrew Jackson lived.”

“Not even a bicycle?”

“Nope. Now, imagine you’d have to walk everywhere. How would you feel?” she asked.

“Tired,” the first student replied.

Willa laughed. She loved being a teacher.

She’d always only wanted to teach kids. Currently, at her overly large public school, she was teaching both fourth and fifth-grade classes because there was a shortage of teachers due to budget cuts.

There was also a shortage of a paycheck.

Willa was thirty years old and had just enough money each month to pay her rent and bills, but not much more than that.

Sometimes, she had to decide if she could afford to buy what she needed at the grocery store to get her through the week or if she was going to get another few packs of markers for the kids in her classes.

This was the life of a teacher in America, so while Willa loved her job, she hated the other parts that often came along with it.

On top of the small teacher paycheck that she received every couple of weeks, she also worked part-time at the state museum in the Square she was currently showing to the kids who were in her summer school program.

That part-time job was enough to pay for those markers, and occasionally, she allowed herself to get takeout, but the rest went to her student loans.

She had only been able to swing this field trip because it cost nothing but the gas in the school bus.

They were walking around for about an hour or so, and then, she’d take the kids back for pickup by their parents.

In order to get a better job in a private school system, she’d needed more than just her bachelor’s degree, though, so she had worked hard in her master’s program to graduate near the top of her class.

She’d done that while also working a full-time teaching job, so she had the experience now and the educational pedigree that should get her in the door.

Joining a private school hadn’t specifically been part of her plan from the moment she’d first discovered that she wanted to be a teacher, and she didn’t want to leave her kids here behind, but there was a bigger paycheck there and more supplies and funds overall, so she had recently started looking into a few schools that had openings.

The three schools she was thinking about applying for all offered scholarships for children in need as well as gifted students, which made her feel a little bit better about possibly leaving her students behind should she get a new job.

Willa’s lease would also be up in three months, and according to the paperwork she’d just gotten in the mail, the management company would be raising the rent by ten percent, so she would barely be able to afford her studio apartment, which sometimes had hot water and, other times, didn’t.

She could ask her parents for a loan, but they were on a fixed income themselves and had already helped from time to time with her student loans.

She couldn’t ask them for anything else.

There was her sister and brother. Her sister had gone to law school, and at thirty-five, she wasn’t a partner yet but was on track at her decent-size firm, billing enough hours to pull in the kind of money each year that Willa could only dream about.

Her brother was thirty-three and was an electrical engineer at an oil company.

He was gone a lot, working on one oil rig or another, and he made good money doing what he did, spending hardly any of it.

She knew she could ask either of her siblings, and they’d loan or just give her the money, but the smug look on her sister’s face would be too much to take.

Her brother would just tell their parents and her sister, causing her dad to scramble to throw money into her account, worrying she was about to be homeless, and she would have to deal with the smug look on her sister’s face either way.

It was pride. It was all pride, and Willa knew it, but she couldn’t seem to get past it.

Instead, she focused on her students and continued to show them around on their little walking tour.

There were only nine of them, but she was always worried she’d lose one in the crowd of tourists, so she kept both eyes on them at all times, even when she was explaining things.

When they were ready to head back to the bus, she pressed the button at the crosswalk and waited, keeping those eyes glued to the kids who were now tired and hot and ready to go back to the classroom.

“Miss Mailor?”

Willa looked down and saw Juni looking up at her expectantly.

“Yes, Juni?”

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“We will be back at the school in fifteen minutes. Can you hold it?”

“No,” the girl replied.

Willa looked around for the closest available bathroom that would allow her to watch the kids outside while Juni went in.

She would normally have a teacher’s assistant on this trip with her, but due to the budget cuts, that program during the summer no longer existed, and the rule was that if there were fewer than ten children, a teacher could take them by themselves.

She didn’t like that rule and thought it should be one teacher and at least an assistant for this many kids, but she didn’t want the kids to miss out on the field trips because of something they couldn’t control.

She found the bathroom, kept one eye on the kids, and opened the door to look inside.

There were two stalls, and both were empty, so she let Juni go in.

One of the other girls followed, needing to go as well.

“Can I go, too?” one of the boys asked.

“Yes, when they’re done,” Willa replied.

“That’s the girls’ bathroom,” he noted, pointing at the open door Willa was holding so that she could keep her eye on the girls inside and the other kids outside.

“There’s no one in there, so you’ll be okay,” she said.

Fifteen minutes later, seven of the nine kids had used the restroom and washed their hands.

Willa was exhausted, but she counted all nine of them and walked them back to the crosswalk.

Ten minutes after that, they were on the school bus, and she sat in the front row after making sure all of the kids had settled in.

When their bus driver closed the door, Willa sighed and closed her eyes for a second before the bus pulled out of the parking lot, and they were headed back to the school.

“Willa, can I talk to you for a second?” the assistant principal asked her just as Willa had ushered the kids into the classroom.

“Of course,” she replied. “Can you all work on your math until I get back?” she said to the kids.

A few of them muttered that they would, which would have to be good enough. Willa left the door open and walked into the hallway, meeting the assistant principal, a bald man with a Santa belly and twenty-five years of experience in education.

“Is everything okay?” she asked him in a low voice so that the kids wouldn’t hear.

“Yes, everything’s fine. I just wanted to let you know that the summer program you wanted didn’t get approved at the school board meeting last night.”

“It didn’t?” Willa said, disappointed. “Why not?”

She’d asked the administration for an after-school care program that she would work along with a few other teachers.

It wasn’t to volunteer; they’d expect to get paid, but they had all come together and built the presentation to highlight the possible money the school could make from the plan as well.

The teachers would all get paid per hour, and the school itself would be used, but the parents would pay a per-hour rate that would be higher than the rate the teachers were getting paid to be there, so there wouldn’t be extra expenses.

It was a way for them to make a little extra money, and the students would have somewhere safe to be after school for a few hours.

Many of the parents couldn’t pick up their kids with the shortened summer school hours, and they’d asked for something like this instead of paying a higher rate for a daycare or having to get someone to pick their child up after classes.

Willa had thought this would be a win-win-win.

“The liability,” he replied. “Not all of our teachers are certified in some of the things daycares are required to be certified on, and this would be a daycare, just on school grounds. It’s also more hours for the kids to be at the school, which means more of a risk.

They didn’t want to pay for the certifications or deal with any issues should a kid get injured after school hours. ”

“But as long as we have at least one certified teacher there at all times, we’d be fine. We would just have to make a schedule to make sure we always have that.”

“And what if one of those teachers is sick or decides to no longer work for the program? The board didn’t want to do it, especially for a shortened summer program.”

“We needed it for the summer program.”

“I’m aware.” He sighed and ran a hand over his bald head, which was his tell.

Willa knew he was just as frustrated as she was about this.

He’d been at this school for over fifteen years and had seen the money dwindle to next to nothing, giving the kids fewer opportunities and losing him teachers who could no longer pay to work here, which was what it felt like every time she had to buy her own supplies just so the kids could learn.

“I hate this, too. I promise, I did the best I could with the presentation. You can appeal the decision.”

“They don’t meet until next month. The summer program will be over by then,” Willa replied.

“I know. I wish there was something else I could do.”

“I know you tried. Thanks for letting me know, at least. I should get back to the kids.”

“Of course.”

She tried to shake off her disappointment when she reentered her classroom because she didn’t want her students to notice it, and people often discounted how perceptive kids could be at this age.

“How is that math coming along?” she asked them.

“I don’t like math,” Freddy said.

Willa chuckled and walked over to his desk, where she knelt down next to him and helped him with his times tables.

An hour later, parents were arriving at the parking lot, and she watched all her kids go to their homes.

Juni stood off to the side, waiting for her mother to pick her up, but another teacher was watching her, so Willa went back inside and sat down at her desk, pulling out the homework she needed to grade.

Summer school was a little easier since she didn’t have that many kids.

Normally, this school didn’t even offer summer classes, but there were too many students registered with the two main schools that did offer it, so they got the overage.

That only told her that the school system was failing these kids.

Pulling out their science homework first, she saw Juni’s on top.

Willa had no idea why this little girl was in summer school.

She was bright. She asked questions when she had them, typically got most of the homework questions right, and had done well on the tests they had had so far.

On this assignment, she’d gotten nine out of the ten questions right.

Willa marked the one wrong and gave her some feedback before she moved on to the next assignment to grade.

Soon, she was done grading all of them, so she got into her car and headed home, where, one by one, she unlocked three locks on her door.

Her neighborhood wasn’t awful, but she was an untrusting and single woman, so she didn’t like taking chances.

Once inside her apartment, she dropped her bag on her kitchen table, where she always kept her bouquet of fake flowers.

They were bright yellows and pinks and blues and gave her a reason to smile every day.

She even dusted them to keep them looking fake fresh.

“Junk. Junk,” she said to herself as she sat down and sorted through the mail she’d grabbed on her way in. “Bill.”

Willa opened that one and read the amount she owed the water company. She sighed and dropped the bill on the table, choosing to deal with it later. When her phone rang, she sighed again when she saw who was calling.

“Wally,” she said.

“Why do you still insist on calling me that?” her sister asked.

“Because you hate it,” she replied.

“Real mature, Will.”

“You can use my nickname, but I can’t use yours ? Not fair, Wallis.”

“You like your nickname,” Wallis noted. “Anyway, want to grab dinner tonight?”

Willa stared at her kitchen cabinets, which were closed, but she knew they were stocked with ramen and maybe a box of rice.

“Your treat?” she asked, hopeful.

“If I’m buying, I’m picking the restaurant.”

Willa smiled. Her sister had great taste in food.