Page 31 of Rock Bottom Girl

They hopped to, shifting their desks around.

This little exercise did more than get the students excited about history. It showed me who had friends. Who was left out. Who was willing to get creative and put some effort into the assignment.

I thought of Marley sitting on the bench in the front office. I hoped she had some creativity, some effort to put forth. Because that would make her even more interesting.

15

Marley

Half of my first day was officially behind me without any major trauma. Punishing my nemesis’s teenage son, having Jake Weston witness me in my principal office shame, and being warned to take my students’ safety more seriously notwithstanding.

It was lunchtime, and I planned to respond to my family’s texts in the sanctity of my dungeon-like office.

Dad: I bet you’re the best gym teacher the district has ever seen! LOL!

I really needed to finally break the silence and tell Dad that LOL does not mean lots of love.

Mom: Hope you’re having a great first day! I’m making pancakes from that box mix you like tonight to celebrate!

Zinnia: Best of luck today.

I was just getting ready to compose a cheerful thank you when my phone buzzed again.

Floyd: Come on. I’ll take you to lunch in the teacher’s lounge so you can finally peer behind the curtain.

As a student, I’d assumed that the teachers ate their teacher food and discussed appropriate teacherly things. That is until one day I’d gotten a hall pass to get my geography book out of my locker and walked past the lounge to hear the Spanish teacher telling a punchline with the f-bomb in it to a shop teacher and an algebra teacher who laughed so hard I thought she was going to spit out her tuna sandwich.

After that, I never looked at them in the same two-dimensional, just-an-educator way again. And now I was being granted behind-the-scenes access? I grabbed my bagged lunch and headed for the door.

The teacher’s lounge that Floyd led me to was on the other side of the school. There was a closer one to the gym, but Floyd insisted this one was better. He opened the door to raucous laughter, and I stopped short. Mrs. Gurgevich, my ancient English teacher from seven thousand years ago, was unwrapping what looked like jalapeno poppers at one of two battered tables.

She lifted her gaze to me. Her gray hair was pulled back in the severe bun I swear she slept in. The glasses, giant acetate frames, looked like the same ones she’d had when I was a student. The skin on her cheeks sagged in a fascinating, rippled texture. Her lips were painted a pearlescent pink that never seemed to smudge or smear.

She was wearing polyester slacks and an ivory cardigan set. She’d had one in every color of the rainbow and rotated them out with brown, black, and navy pants.

“Everyone, this is Marley Cicero, the new gym teacher,” Floyd said, pulling out the chair next to Mrs. Gurgevich. He hefted his lunch tote onto the table. It was the size of a tailgating cooler.

“Well, well, Ms. Cicero. Back to grace our hallowed halls again,” Mrs. Gurgevich said.

Was that a smoker’s rattle I heard?

“Don’t bust her balls, Lana,” Floyd said, elbowing Mrs. Gurgevich in the arm.

Lana?Mrs. Gurgevich had a first name? And a sexy one at that.

“Hello, Mrs. Gurgevich,” I said weakly. “It’s nice to see you again.”

She gave me a brisk, no-nonsense nod. Floyd thumped the seat next to him. “Come on, Cicero. Take a load off.”

I sat and opened my lunch sack, finally noticing that there were other teachers in the room. Two of them were loudly debating a Fortnite strategy by the refrigerator. There was a round table with three women who were chewing in silence and scrolling through their phones. One by one, they called out introductions, names, and positions. And I retained zero of them. I was going to need a yearbook or something if I was expected to remember kids’ names and teachers’.

“Well, hello, everyone! How’s your first day?”

My heart beat out a frantic SOS as a short, curvy bouffanted blonde strolled in on four-inch heels.

Amie Jo Armburger.

She looked as though time had frozen her in the 1990s. Which, in Culpepper, had been the equivalent of the late eighties. We didn’t get the trends here until a decade after things were popular. Her hair was big, her makeup was thick, and she was dressed like my childhood Office Barbie in a pink pencil skirt and suit jacket.