Tart

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“Yes. Of course I am,” I answer innocently.

A bony, middle-aged woman in enormous pink glasses files in with a handful of disgruntled others in tow. “Well, she wasn’t here,” the woman tells Ruth. “She must have just—”

“It’s fine, Ruth,” I say. “It’s an exercise I like to do on the first day. Nothing to worry about.”

She hesitates for a second; her dark eyes linger on my face, and I feel my stomach knotting up painfully. Then she nods and smiles pleasantly. “Happy first day, then.”

She disappears. And suddenly it’s just me. And them. With no lesson plan. The woman in pink glasses is staring me down like a babysitter who just watched her ward tell a bald-faced lie to the clueless mother. “All right, then. Let’s see. Why don’t we start by learning each other’s names?”

“Where’s the syllabus?” Pink Glasses asks.

“Syllabus?”

“Yeah. You know. Piece of paper. Says what we can expect, how to get an A, all that. Frankly, I’m just shopping around.”

“I see.” There’s an awkward moment of silence. I clear my throat. “Well, frankly, I don’t offer a syllabus until after the first week. So, as I was saying—”

“Why not?” Pink Glasses again. She reminds me of a praying mantis, folded at hard angles into the too-small chair. Her real eyebrows have been completely plucked, and she’s painted new ones into high arches above the rims of her glasses, Wicked Witch style; she would be terrifying if she weren’t so annoying.