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The Wiz might have been carved in stone, except for the tiny muscle rippling along his jaw.
Kyle vaulted over another conversation chasm. “Jack Sullivan, Senior, was mighty impressed, too, I understand.”
“Is that so?”
Emily winced. She supposed that “impressed” was one way to describe sputtering, splotchy-faced outrage.
Actually, the member of the Sullivan clan who was the most enthralled, the most entranced, the most impressed by The Great and Powerful Wiz was impressionable thirteen-year-old Emily. She would sit in her spot at the Sullivan dining room table, swinging both feet, quietly devouring Jack’s civics class quote of the day and the delicious debates that followed like servings of dessert.
She’d never taken her turn in the classroom of the man behind the uproar. Shortly after Jack’s graduation, her parents had moved from the tiny mill town of Issimish to shorten Dad’s hour-long commute to his job in Seattle. And her fascination with the infamous Mr. Wisniewski had tangled with her fantasies into a knotty teenage crush.
Joe shifted his attention in her direction. “Is that so?” he asked again in that soft, dangerous voice.
“Yes, it is.” Time to focus on her goal, stiffen her backbone, and turn on the charm. She smiled her best Innocent-Your-Honor smile. “Quite an impression. In fact, that’s what brings me here.”
JOE CLIMBED THE STAIRS to the second floor of Caldwell’s main building that afternoon and headed toward his room. He shoved his hands into his pockets, silently cursing the unnatural alignment of crater-plowing asteroids, planet-destroying supernovas, galaxy-sucking black holes and all other cosmic disasters that had sent Ms. Emily Sullivan into his path, not to mention his classroom.
God. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was chirpiness. Emily Sullivan could give chirping lessons to a million yellow puffballs carpeting a commercial chicken incubator. And, as if her own big-blue-eyed version wasn’t bad enough, she’d gone and spread it like a virus, infecting the male portion of the Caldwell High faculty within minutes of bouncing into the conference room. She’d had them eating out of her fluttery little hands—right after they’d finished tripping over their tongues at her long-legged, short-skirted entrance.
Ed Brock, senior class adviser, had never been so animated about homecoming plans before Emily piped up with a few suggestions. Russell Strand, head math geek, almost choked in his own bow tie when she giggled a wrinkle-nosed giggle over one of his DOA puns. And the football coach couldn’t speak at all for a few moments after Emily’s blond curls brushed over his cheek as she reached to collect her complimentary season pass.
Even the female faculty members weren’t immune to Emily’s enthusiasm, applauding her proposal for a benefit debut performance of the annual spring play. Joe hated contagious enthusiasm almost as much as chirpiness, especially when it was the fund-raising kind. Most fund-raisers were a big waste of time, as far as he was concerned. They played havoc with scheduling, burned holes in the ozone layer and brought in approximately seventeen cents per hour of mental and manual labor. And now he was stuck with trying to round up student volunteers for the theatrical benefit.
Stuck. Stuck with a student teacher he hadn’t expected and didn’t want. Stuck with the administrative duties for a social studies department chair sidelined with complications from a difficult pregnancy. He was tempted to dump his student teacher on his chair’s long-term sub. It would be his personal social chemistry experiment: mix one part ignorance and two parts incompetence. No danger of an explosion—the school board had sputtered along for years on a similar formula.
He popped another couple of pain relievers and slipped through his classroom door, hoping to turn the lock for a few moments of peace and privacy. But Ms. Sullivan had already invaded this space, too. There she was: probing.
He watched her bend over to read the caption of a faded political cartoon pinned to the bottom edge of one of his bulletin boards. And he tried, he really did try not to notice the way that short skirt slid up the backs of those long, shapely thighs, or the way one of those blond party streamers slipped across her forehead to tease the tip of her turned-up nose.
God. Even her hair was chirpy.
Because he resented having to roll his own tongue off the floor and back into his mouth, he growled a bit more than usual. “There must have been an incredible flood of last-minute student teachers this year. I thought the university avoided placing them in out-of-the-way districts like Issimish, especially when there are so many more options closer to Seattle.”
“That’s right.” She straightened and turned to face him. “I was the one who suggested Caldwell. I asked my university adviser to pull some strings to get me assigned here. Specifically, to work with you.”
“Why?”
She twisted her hands together. “Because of what you did to my brother.”
“Jack?”
“Yes.”
Joe pulled his hands out of his pockets. “What did I do to Jack?”
“You inspired him.”
“No.” Joe felt something like panic welling up inside. “I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.” She took a step forward. “You changed his life. For a little while, anyway. But you did.”
He frowned and moved away from her. Around behind his desk, where it was safe.
She followed, facing him across its scarred oak surface. “You encouraged him to think, for the first time, his own thoughts, to question all the ideas that had been handed to him.” She ran a finger along a crooked gouge. “It may have been a brief deflection, but it was an important one. I think it was very important—downright momentous, in fact—that Jack took those first wobbly steps off the family’s well-beaten path.”
Joe didn’t want to be held responsible for anyone’s first wobbly steps, or for anything momentous. And he really didn’t want to be a human detour sign. Not unless it meant he could make Emily Sullivan disappear.
She turned back to the bulletin board and pointed at the curling slips of yellowed paper. “I’ll bet some of these headlines are the same ones you pinned up on your bulletin board the first year you taught here. The same ones that were here when Jack was sitting in this room.”
“I’m not big on redecorating. If you want the bulletin update job, it’s yours.”
Joe regretted the offer the moment he heard himself make it. It sounded like he was knuckling under and accepting the situation. But what else could he do? There she stood with those big blue eyes and those tousled curls and those odd little curves at the corners of her mouth that made her look like she was smiling even when she wasn’t.
She couldn’t be smiling all the time. Could she?
And what had he been regretting and resenting before he got sidetracked? Oh, yeah—there she stood, in her newly assigned spot, expecting some newly assigned duties. “There.” He waved in the direction of a particularly ragged display. “If you decide to stay, and if I decide you can—and that’s a couple of big ifs—there’s your first assignment.”
Emily laughed. Joe watched her nose scrunch up and felt a throat-constricting kinship with Russell and his bow tie.
“I wouldn’t dream of touching these bulletin boards,” she said. “They’re absolutely you. Look at this.” She walked over to one and then turned, crooking a finger in invitation.
Joe didn’t want to deal with overt invitations. Or covert invitations, or invert invitations, or any other kind of invitation that would lure him too close. “I know what’s on my walls.”
“Come on and take a look.” The finger kept curling, tugging at him with hypnotic pale pink nail polish. “Please.”
He scuffed across the room and leaned down to squint at a faded editorial on Ford’s pardon of Nixon. It was hard not to notice her fresh, floral scent competing with eau de chalk dust and essence of floor wax, but he thought he was doing an admirable job of blocking it out. “Yeah. Ford. Nixon. So?”
“There’s nothing here about Nixon going to China. I checked.”
“Try a little word association with just about anyone you meet. Nixon, Watergate. Nixon, crook. Not Nixon, China.”
Emily straightened, smiling her tilt-edged smile. “That’s my point, exactly.”
“Glad you made it. I’d be even gladder to get it.”
She leaned in a bit and lowered her voice. “You are, and I quote, ‘a corrupter of innocent young minds.’”
“Jack Senior, right?”
He thought he saw her wince before she nodded. “Yes.”
“You asked for this teaching assignment to upset your father?”
“Actually, my father finds my choice of a student teaching assignment…fascinating.” She linked her fingers under her chin and gazed up at him with something that looked suspiciously like admiration. “I want to inspire students, the way you inspired my brother. I want to watch you in action, to try to figure out how you do it.”
“No.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. The look on her face was drying up all his spit. “I mean, I don’t know for sure that I do it. If I do do it, I’m not sure how. And even if I thought I could do it, and knew how to do it, I know for sure I don’t know how to show anyone else how to do it.”
Time out. Time to stop right there, before he started making even less sense. But he should definitely stop before her naive enthusiasm—and that soft, dreamy look on her face—made him feel any more stiff and empty, old and dried up.
He shuffled back to his desk and dropped into his chair. “I don’t want to do this, Ms. Sullivan. I’m sorry if you’ve been led to believe differently, but the truth is, I didn’t agree to have a student teacher this year. I don’t work with student teachers anymore. I haven’t for a long, long time. I didn’t even know about your assignment here until a few moments before I met you this morning. And I don’t think this is a good idea, in spite of all your expectations and your obvious enthusiasm.” He slumped lower in his seat and stretched a hand across his forehead. “Or maybe because of them.”
Emily flipped one hand in the air, brushing aside his touching little speech. “Okay,” she said. “I knew coming into this it was going to be a tough sell.” She cleared her throat. “What I’d like you to do is to view my student teaching assignment as an opportunity for a kind of personal and educational renewal.”
“Renewal?”
“A chance to revisit your philosophical underpinnings. To sharpen and highlight the contrast between your views and those of another educational professional—just for the sake of argument.”
“And I suppose the person I’d be contrasted with would be you.” Joe straightened in his chair. An old, familiar feeling was spreading like heartburn through his gut. The kind of feeling he got whenever he pictured William F. Buckley squinting at him from the cover of the National Review. “And just what are these ‘ideological underpinnings?’”
“Let’s see if I remember the legend according to Jack Junior.” Emily raised her hands to tick off the items. “Joseph P. Wisniewski—the P an ongoing and entertaining mystery to your students. Raised at an Oregon commune and Rainbow Family gatherings. Homeschooled, for the most part, with extracurricular activities at antinuke demonstrations. High school years spent in San Francisco, where an early growth spurt grabbed the attention of the basketball coach and landed you a college sports scholarship.”
Emily ran out of fingers and crossed her arms beneath attractively perky breasts. “You joined the Peace Corps after graduation and took up teaching when you got back to the States.”
Dozens of years summarized in less than a dozen sentences. It didn’t matter—he’d lost track when she mentioned the Peace Corps.
Guatemala. Rosaria.
He shut his eyes against the old wounds, and then opened them to confront the new irritant: Emily Sullivan, a living, breathing reminder of what he’d been like when he started teaching at Caldwell. That first year, before the crushing news from Guatemala, before Rosaria’s death. The year he’d been fired up with purpose and filled with enthusiasm.
It was hard to look at her. Hard to look back. But he forced himself to meet her eyes, to smile, to nod. “An impressive performance. I think you managed to hit most of the highlights.”
“Thank you.”
Joe leaned back in his chair, which creaked a warning to keep his voice low and his wits sharp. “So you want me to agree to share my liberal, left-wing soapbox with a…” He gestured for her to fill in the blanks.
“A woman who was raised on Air Force bases and Reaganomics.” Emily leaned down and settled her hands on the edge of his desk. “A conservative Republican.”
“That’s redundant,” he said.
“That’s predictable,” she answered.
He shifted forward and noted the tiny flinch before her smile widened. He waited and watched as her knuckles turned white from her grip on his desk. But she didn’t back off, and she kept her eyes steady on his. He had to give her points for sheer spunk. “Oh, I don’t think you’ve got me completely figured out yet,” he said.
“Good. That’ll just liven things up.” She took a deep breath. “Come on, Wiz. Take me on for a couple of rounds. You’ve got nothing to lose but the right edge of that soapbox.”
He could see the freckles scattered across her nose, and the shards of silver ringing her pupils. One curl slipped forward over one of her eyebrows, and he caught his breath. Such an appealing package wrapped around such repulsive politics. He could reach out and strangle her. Or tip forward just a couple of inches and nibble on those smug, curvy lips. The first would earn him a prison sentence. The second would probably get him fired.
He was sure about one thing. Sexual harassment of a student teacher wasn’t part of his personal politics or his philosophical underpinnings. He leaned back and rubbed a finger across his mouth. “You know, a soapbox can have a pretty slippery surface. And I may have a few surprises left up my sleeve.”
“Sounds like a challenge—or a bargain. Either way, I’m taking it.” Emily slapped her palms against the top of his desk. “That’s the spirit. That’s The Wiz I’ve heard about. This is going to be great, just great,” she said, backing toward the door. “And don’t worry, we can work out the details later.”
She sidestepped into the hall. “I have a few surprises up my sleeve, too. See you on Monday—bright and early!” And then she was gone, taking most of the classroom’s oxygen with her.
Joe sighed and slouched deeper into his complaining chair. He closed his eyes and tried to reach that comfortable state of ennui he liked to wallow in right before the start of a new school year. But everything felt like it was trickling out of his grasp. As if Emily Sullivan had ripped all the self-indulgent pleasure out of his back-to-school misery and twisted it into something…something even more twisted than usual.
Ideas crackled through his brain like static. He couldn’t stop considering all the possibilities, imagining all the delights of an ongoing ideological duel with a well-educated, intelligent adversary. The subtle—no, the visceral thrust and parry that could be played out before a captive but fascinated adolescent audience. Hmm. It was tempting. It was intriguing. It was downright stimulating.
But Joe didn’t want to be tempted or intrigued. He certainly didn’t want to be stimulated. And definitely not by some chirpy student teacher in short skirts and big, wide eyes. Eyes with sparkly silver spikes that rayed out into sky-colored irises rimmed by beautiful navy rings….
Stop right there. Get a grip, Wisniewski.
Joe took a deep breath, but regretted it instantly. There, just beneath the odors of musty texts and stale coffee, was a faint trace of something fresh and floral.
Damn. It was going to be a long, long school year.
CHAPTER TWO
BRIGHT AND EARLY. Those two words certainly seemed made for each other, Joe thought as he shuffled through the main hall of Caldwell High at 7:45 a.m. on the first day of school. Sort of like black and blue. Or battery and assault.
He tucked a stack of folders under one arm and rammed his hands into his pockets, focusing on the floor to avoid eye contact. Eye contact could lead to conversation, which often led to dodging requests and other forms of aerobic exercise. And he wasn’t looking for a workout.
Two sleek, high-heeled shoes bounced into his path. By the time Joe’s gaze roamed over sexy ankles, shapely calves and knees that hinted at more interesting items above a no-nonsense hemline, he knew what he’d find at eyeball level: Emily Sullivan, his own personal triathlon.
She beamed up at him, her smile nearly blinding him with white-toothed enthusiasm. He hoped she came with a dimmer switch. “Good morning, Mr. Wisniewski.”
“Is it, Ms. Sullivan?”
“Well, of course! Don’t you just love the first day of school? All the energy, all the possibilities.”
She sighed a happy little sigh and scrunched up her nose, oblivious to the staggering and chest clutching going on behind her back. Her prim sweater set and that twist thing she’d done with her hair wasn’t going to fool the local male population. Might as well go for truth in advertising and hang a flashing neon Hot Babe sign around her neck.
“I was wondering,” she said, “if I could sit in on all your classes today, since it’s a noon dismissal schedule.”
“If you want to. It’s going to be pretty routine, just handing stuff out. Texts, course schedules. Threats.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
There it was, punching him right between the eyes in the first five minutes of the first morning of the school year: one of the many reasons he didn’t want a student teacher, even one who didn’t look like Emily Sullivan. It was going to be a lot of work for him to find work for his student teacher to do. “I could probably come up with something,” he muttered.
“Great!”
Great. It was going to be like training a puppy. An eager, squirming puppy that followed him everywhere, licking his shoes, looking up at him with big, wide puppy eyes no matter how many times he scolded or stepped on it. He hated stepping on puppies, but it usually happened sooner or later, because the damn things always managed to get right under his feet. Crowding him.
Might as well kill two puppies with one stone, so to speak. Give her something to do, far away from him. He pulled the folders from under his arm and chose some prep work. Emily could do it. She could feel useful and needed, a valuable partner on the educational team. She could establish a meaningful relationship with the copier. “Do you know where the copier is?”
“Linda showed me.”
Probably during some female bonding ritual involving office equipment. “Class rosters are inside. Copy the assignment sheets and reading lists, with a couple extra for each class, okay?”
“Okay. I can handle that.” She hesitated, her smile dimming just a bit around the edges. “But do you think I’ll be finished by the time the first bell rings?”
Squish. “If not, we’ll finish up at the break—my prep period is right after that. Don’t worry about it.”
Emily’s beam bounced back. “I’ll see you in class.”
Joe stood rooted to his spot, watching her blond twist bob through the hall, wondering how he was going to get through five class periods of puppy eyes following his every move.
“Hey, Wiz.”
