Page 32 of Rock Bottom Girl

“Marley Cicero?” Amie Jo’s raspberry glossed lips parted in the perfect O. “Well, bless your heart. I heard you were back living with your parents after you got fired and dumped. You poor thing.” She batted seventeen-inch lashes and pretended to look concerned.

The entire lounge shut up and opened its ears. All eyes pinned me down.

It was good to know that she was consistent. Still a shitty human being out to make herself feel better by belittling everyone else in her path. It was familiar territory for me, and it no longer scared me. “Ally Jo? Is that you?” It was mean. I knew it was mean. But she really was a horrible human being.

“Amie,” she corrected. “But I wouldn’t expect you to remember that. We ran insuchdifferent crowds in high school.”

Our graduating class had 102 students in it. Ninety-six percent of us had known each other since preschool.

“Really?” Floyd piped up. “I heard you two had quite the history. Didn’t she date and dump your husband?”

There were a few titters of laughter from the cell phone table.

“It’s nice to see you again, Amie,” I interrupted, intentionally dropping the Jo. “What do you teach?”

She flounced into the room in a cloud of suffocating perfume and dropped her bento box on the table across from Floyd. My eye caught on the diamond the size of a cafeteria tray riding her hand. I wondered if her left bicep was significantly larger than her right with all the hefting it had to do.

“Only the most important subject we offer: home economics and life skills.”

Mrs. Gurgevich snorted and dragged a popper through her puddle of raspberry jam.

“Oh?” When I’d taken Home Ec, I’d learned how to burn brownies and balance a checkbook.

“I’ll have to tell my husband, Travis Hostetter, president of Hostetter Cadillac and Trucks, that I ran into you today. Why just yesterday, we were talking about you. Travis said, ‘Amie Jo, whatwasthe name of that girl I dated before I fell in love with you?’”

I had a pet theory that narcissists had an overwhelming desire to hear their own names and tended to use it themselves in conversation. So far, Amie Jo was proving my hypothesis.

I gave Floyd a look that clearly asked what the hell was wrong with theotherteacher’s lounge. But he was too busy shoveling his second bologna sandwich into his beard.

“Everyone surviving?”

I looked away from Amie Jo’s Aqua Net masterpiece to see Jake standing in the door, a curious aluminum foil triangle in his hand.

“Hey, Jake,” everyone said.

His gaze skated to me, and I saw his lips quirk. “How’s the first day, Mars?”

“Hi, Jake,” Amie Jo purred with a flutter of those spider lashes. “You’re looking nice and tan. Our pool’s still open if you ever want to go for a dip.”

Well, well, well. It looked like Amie Jo was still holding on to a bit of a high school crush despite being married to Travis Hostetter,president of Hostetter Cadillac and Trucks.

“Thanks.” Jake took the seat at the foot of the table next to me and unwrapped two neatly stacked slices of pizza. Amie Jo pouted.

Floyd sang something under his breath that sounded like “evil queen.”

“How’s the first day?” Jake asked me again, his voice lower.

I gave a shrug and finally unwrapped the sandwich my mom had made me. White bread, marshmallow fluff, and peanut butter. I needed to take over my parents’ kitchen. Their culinary skills had frozen sometime in the mid-eighties. “Good, so far.”

“No troublemakers?” he pressed. Amie Jo’s pale blue eyes burned into my flesh.

Shaking my head, I answered, “Nope.”

I pulled a box of animal crackers and another of raisins out of the bag. It was the breakfast of junior high champions unconcerned with diabetes and belly fat.

A yellow sticky note fluttered out.

Have the best first day in the history of first days. I love you.