This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,33
raised me on Sanka,” she said, “so I have plebeian tastes.” This wasn’t quite true—living in LA, she’d grown to appreciate a single-source, fair-trade, microbrewed latte—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still summon that older Claudia, the one who’d never tasted sushi until she arrived in California and who used to eat her mother’s meat loaf and Tater Tot dinners without flinching. The coffee was bearable; anyway, she was still too groggy from getting up at such an unreasonable hour to be picky. Tomorrow she’d look for the espresso machine.
Brenda had wandered over to an enormous bakery box packed tight with croissants. “Who is this courtesy of?” Brenda called to Evelyn.
Evelyn shrugged. “Who knows. The Hoffmans?”
Brenda picked the top layer off a croissant with her fingernail, then gave up and lifted the whole thing to her mouth. “I lost six pounds this summer and I swear it’ll all be back on my ass within the week. I don’t know what the parents think they’re doing to us. Making us all too fat and lazy to chase their kids around, maybe.”
“Speaking of—ask her,” said Evelyn, sitting up.
“Right!” Brenda leaned in close. “I don’t know what you’re doing this Thursday night, but some of us—teachers, I mean—get together weekly. There’s no union here, of course, so we formed a kind of ad hoc support group. We need to stick together, you know. Us versus them.”
“I doubt I’ll have time,” Claudia said. “I need my evenings to write.”
“Write?”
“Screenplays.” She lowered her voice. “I’m actually not a teacher. In real life, I’m a filmmaker.”
Brenda flinched visibly. Oh God, Claudia thought, I managed to insult her in less than fifteen minutes on the job. Still, her goal here wasn’t to get cozy with the other teachers, but to put in her time and take home a weekly paycheck. “In real life. Right. Of course not. Well, invitation stands,” Brenda mumbled. Flakes of pastry clung to the front of her blouse, and she knocked them off with the palm of her hand. “So, Claudia, let’s see your roster. I’ll tell you about your students.”
Claudia pulled the sheaf of paperwork from her bag. She’d spent the previous evening scrutinizing these pages, as if they were in code and she needed to locate a hidden key to unlock their meaning. There were convoluted class schedules, indecipherable campus maps, board meeting agendas, lists of school rules (“Do not fraternize with parents outside of school” and “No sexual contact with students, including hugging or kissing” and “Do not accept gifts of more than $200 in value from any parent,” the last of which stopped her cold: Who were these people?), and three pages of names that she studied, trying to envision the faces behind them. She handed these over to Brenda, and watched the other woman’s twitching face as she scanned the list.
Brenda jabbed her finger at the pages. “It’s a good group you’ve got here,” she said, as Claudia peered over her shoulder at the list of tiny type. “Jordan Bigglesby, she’s the undisputed social princess of the school, would be our prom queen if the school went for that kind of stuff, which of course we don’t. Mom’s an actress, you’d recognize her if you watch that sitcom with the monkey. OK, you’ve also got Theodore Kaplan, who will undoubtedly fail your class because he misses too many tests for rugby practice. He thinks he’s going to get into Harvard as a legacy—Dad’s an entertainment lawyer over at Mannatt—but he’s got another think coming. Lisa Yang is a smooth talker, don’t believe a word she says. Her mother’s a publicist, reps all the big stars, so she’s learned a few tricks. Mary Hernandez—a scholarship kid, extraordinarily bright, always very serious. Doesn’t quite fit in here but will probably show up everyone in the end.” Her finger traveled farther down the list and then stopped. “Oh. Penelope Evanovich is in your senior seminar.” Brenda looked up at Claudia, meaningfully.
Claudia stared back at her, as the name plucked at her memory. “Evanovich, as in Samuel Evanovich?”
Brenda nodded soberly. “Oh, yes. He’s on the board here.”
Claudia took this in, excitement pistoning in her chest. Samuel Evanovich was one of her film idols, a legendary movie producer with a long list of Oscar-nominated dramas; in the golden days of American cinema, back in the sixties and seventies, he’d put his thumbprint on almost every significant Hollywood movie and at least a dozen Oscar winners. He was the Hyperion Collection. Claudia attended his