School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,78
the business a clue.
Jackson kept going, walking wide around the fence to head for the admin building, hoping he could check in as a visitor.
By the time he got there, he was drenched in sweat and so grateful for the air-conditioning he almost collapsed. There was something about the sun on the football field—probably the humidity—that made the heat so intense and so close it seemed to stop his breath.
He tried not to sweat all over the Formica counter and smiled at the grim-faced secretary behind the desk. “Hi, I’d like to talk to Mrs. Eccleston?”
“Sign in, please,” the woman said sourly. The nameplate on her desk read Shirley Anderson, and Jackson wondered if she saved any of that disdain for her students or if she spent it all on him.
Jackson signed the register, and Ms. Anderson plopped a school map and a visitor’s badge in front of him. “Put your name there and follow the map to here.” She circled a destination. “It’s in the K block, the portable on the end by the gate.”
The gate actually backed up against the parking lot behind the football practice field—which had been open, dammit. He was heading, in fact, back to where Henry was, and given that the campus had a tendency to sprawl in the middle of the city, he wanted to whimper. Okay, okay, fine. Maybe he wasn’t 100 percent yet, because the heat and the humidity really were sapping his will to live, but he was damned if he admitted that to anybody.
“Are there any water fountains on the—”
“You’ll see them on the sides of these two buildings,” she interrupted in a bored tone.
“Any vending machines with cold water?” he asked, and he had to admit, he was sort of pushing her buttons now because she was being a pill. He didn’t usually get this response from people. He tried a pretty smile. “I’ve got sodas in here for my buddy, but I gotta admit, some clear water would be—”
“At the end of the building,” she said, no smile in her icy gray eyes at all. “You’ll see it. You should leave now before she goes for the day. They really weren’t required to come back after lunch, but most of the teachers stayed to fix up their rooms.”
“Gotcha,” he said, still smiling.
Her hair was iron gray, and she compressed her lips so tight, they almost matched. “You can find it,” she said heavily, and he turned to go.
“Hey,” he said as his hand hit the release bar across the glass door. “You stay happy. You’re the heart of the school, you know that?” And then he left before she could respond. Yeesh!
She was right about the vending machines, though, and he felt a lot better after finishing off an icy cold water in one gulp. He bought another one for Henry, because the sodas were nice, but seriously, nothing beat water, and then bought another one for Mrs. Eccleston on a hunch. Poor woman, having to work with that dragon? Jackson felt like the water was the least he could do.
His steps echoed on the cheap wooden ramp up to the portable classroom, and he had to admit, the sound had a familiar ring to it. There was something universal about cheap prefab buildings and schools bursting at the seams.
He opened the door partway and stuck his head inside, liking the bright posters on the walls that he got with that first glance. “Mrs. Eccleston?”
“Yeah? Can I help you?”
Given Nate Klein’s glowing report, Jackson half expected the American Government teacher to be one of those sweet young things whom schoolboys fantasized about—and in that way, Mrs. Eccleston was a surprise.
Squat, fiftyish, with a good inch of gray between her dyed black hair and her part, the woman sitting at the desk was wearing loose shorts and an oversized gray T-shirt, neither of which was flattering on her. She wasn’t attractive, not even in that lean, superfit way that a lot of women had when they hit this age. She was squishy and tired, and she’d obviously forgotten her coif and her public face when she’d come in to finish decorating her room. There was a step stool in the corner of the room and a series of posters and tacks, obviously waiting to fill up the last empty space.
“Hi,” he said, coming in. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Jackson Rivers. I’m working for Ty Townsend’s attorney, and I was hoping you could answer some—”