The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,131

“To go to the Cluck and Oink?” His forehead twists into a bemused serpentine shape.

“Point taken.”

“You look great. Sort of Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing meets Jennifer Beals in Flashdance.”

“Oh, well, in that case…” I do a nerdy dance move my colleagues in the college English department once affectionately dubbed Big Bird on Ice. Nathan laughs, and we proceed to his truck. On the way to town, we chat about nothing important.

Entering the Cluck and Oink, I feel a pang of self-consciousness. Granny T is behind the cash register. LaJuna brings our menus, offers a shy hello, and tells us she’ll be waiting our table.

Maybe takeout would’ve been a better idea. The library was one thing, but this looks too much like a date and sort of feels like one, too.

The girls’ cross-country coach is in the corner. She checks me out in a way that’s not friendly. She and the other coaches are annoyed with me. Some of the kids have been late for after-school practices because they’re busy working on their Underground projects.

Lil’ Ray emerges from the back room carrying a dish tub, spray bottles of pink cleaner looped over his belt like cowboy six-shooters. I didn’t even know he worked here.

He and LaJuna cross paths in the narrow space between the waitress station and the kitchen door. They jostle and tease and then, where they think no one can see, melt into full-body contact and a kiss.

When did that get started?

I feel like my eyes have just been burned. No. Please no.

No more.

Heaven help me, I may not survive these kids. It’s something, every time I turn around. Some new pitfall, pothole, roadblock, poor decision, or act of pure stupidity.

Lil’ Ray and LaJuna are so young and they both have tremendous potential, but they’re also dealing with huge challenges in their daily lives. When you’re a kid in a tough family situation, you’re painfully vulnerable to trying to fill the void with peers. As much as I’m in favor of young love in theory, I’m also aware of the potential fallout. I can’t help feeling that Lil’ Ray and LaJuna need a teenage relationship about as much as I need five-inch stilettos.

Don’t read too much into it, I tell myself. Most of these things come and go in a week.

“So, I was thinking about the house.” Nathan is talking. I rip my eyes away from the scene at the waitress station and try to ignore the glowering coach, as well.

“My house?”

The question hangs in the air while the bread boy stops at our table with an offering that would smell heavenly under any other circumstance. He sets down a well-used plastic basket, then loads it with corn muffins, breadsticks, and rolls, then adds butter, honey-butter, and a knife.

“Hey, Miss Pooh,” he says. I’m so out of sorts, I haven’t even looked up and noticed that the bread boy is also one of my students. A shaggy-haired kid from the Fish family. The others classify him squarely in the category with the hoods. Rumor is, he smokes weed, which his family grows in fields carved out of the backwoods somewhere. Generally, he smells like cigarettes, especially after lunch.

The Fish family receives no kindness in the teachers’ lounge, either. White trash. None of those Fish kids ever graduate from high school, so why waste your time? was the exact quote. Sooner they drop out, the better. Just a bad influence on the others.

I offer up a smile. While Shad Fish, the next oldest boy in the family, is a bit more talkative, I wasn’t even aware this senior Fish kid knew my name. Gar Fish has never spoken in class. Not once. Most of the time, he has his forehead propped in his hands, staring down at the desk. Even at the library. As a student, he’s a complete slacker. He’s not an athlete, either, so there’s no coach defending his lack of academic effort.

“Hey, Gar.” The poor kid has sisters named Star and Sunnie, and a little brother named Finn. People poke fun at the names