willing to compromise the needs of our student services staff in the name of our blood-thick yet petty rivalry, we made do with an office that seemed to shrink by the minute.
It was a decently sized space but with two desks, a tall bookshelf, and a small, round meeting table that we had to push into a corner and only allowed for two chairs, there was no breathing room left. Writing on the whiteboard required leaning across the meeting table and if I didn't push my chair in all the way, we couldn't close the door.
I spent a lot of time away from that space. I observed in classrooms every day, tucked myself away in the art or music rooms when they weren't in use, found reasons to hang out in the main office near Lauren and the nurse. None of those people hated me.
Today, I headed straight for the middle school wing, housing our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Most people scrunched up their noses at the notion of working with tweens and preteens but I loved those kids something fierce. It was my favorite age group. I treasured everything about that weird, wonky phase of development.
In that regard, Tara had one truth down cold: I wasn't cut out for early elementary. I'd managed well enough in the years before Lauren decided this job was too big for one person—even though I'd abhorred her noticing I couldn't handle it all—but my strengths lived in upper elementary and middle school.
I slipped into Clark Kerrin's social studies and history class and tucked myself into the kidney-shaped table in the back of the room while he talked through key elements of ancient Olmec society. Because Clark was a pro, he didn't even blink in my direction, instead continuing on with this portion of his lesson.
My laptop open, I created a new document and hammered out a list of things I'd need to do in advance of this Albany trip. My schedule for next Thursday and Friday needed to be shuffled, I'd have to collect my dry cleaning a day earlier than usual, and my car was going to need servicing—just to be on the safe side. And I'd need to figure out how I was going to survive all that time with Tara.
I glanced up when I noticed Clark's voice getting closer.
"I want you to flip back to your notes from last week and draft a list of ways in which the Olmecs and the Greeks were similar in the development of their civilizations," he said to the students when he reached the back table. "Don't forget to check in on architecture and art while you're doing that, please."
I stood, glancing at the sixth graders as they started paging through their notebooks. "They're really into the comparative civilization stuff, aren't they?"
He frowned at the page of notes on my laptop and asked in a low voice, "Am I being formally observed right now?"
"Oh, no, sorry," I said quietly, waving at the screen. While I visited classrooms all the time, I didn't usually sit down and take verbatim notes more than once a quarter. "This is totally unrelated. I just wanted to pop in for a few minutes."
"And flash murderous glares at me while you did it?" he asked, laughing. "You know that's always a fun experience for me."
"My apologies. No murderous vibes intended," I said. "I just needed to avoid…" I shrugged, shoved my hands in my pockets. "You know."
With a knowing nod, he glanced out the door to the classroom directly across the hall where Noa Elbaz was breaking down the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus. She had a roll of blue masking tape dangling from her wrist, three dry erase markers in hand, and two Sharpies clipped to her lanyard.
"Yep," he replied, still watching her. "I know all about it." The moment broke when he clapped me on the back. "If you're saying a bit, would you make yourself useful and go sit by Braxton? He requires some hairy eyeballs to keep him focused on this class rather than his book."
When Clark returned to the front of the room, I pulled a chair up beside Braxton and tapped the mostly empty graphic organizer on his desk. "Get caught up while you can," I said quietly. "You don't want to have to do this at lunch, my friend."
With a stifled groan, he closed the graphic novel he'd been reading under his desk and set to gathering the information he'd missed. I