Page 24 of The Other Side
10
“Who can tell me which Greek city-states fought in the Peloponnesian War?” I asked my class, leaning against the front of my desk to alleviate my aching feet after a full day of classes.
Nobody answered.
Predictable.
Three students were asleep, five were messing with their phones, a couple were lazily flipping through their textbooks, attempting to look like they were searching for the answer, and in the very back, Queen Bee Claire DeLongpre was touching up the top coat of her manicured nails.
The bell sounded over the ancient PA system. Everyone stood in unison, packing their things to take a quick exit.
“Athens and Sparta,” I yelled the answer over the cacophony. “Turn in your essays on the way out, please,” I requested beseechingly.
A good third of the class probably wouldn’t even bother. I knew better than to put up a fight. I merely deducted points for days late, eliminating any awkward conversations or made-up excuses. If they couldn’t write a five-paragraph essay on any topic of their choosing, they deserved to fail.
“Claire,” I called out as the girl passed me, surrounded by her usual gaggle of friends.
“What?” she replied sharply.
“No more nails in class—someone will pass out from the fumes, and the windows are painted shut,” I explained.
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes, flipping her long hair over her shoulder as she marched out the door.
I had noticed I wasn’t getting quite as much resistance from the students as the year before. Montgomery was small, with only around one hundred students per grade level. “Keeps things competitive,” Headmaster Winston had noted of the small student body when I’d once asked him.
With eight periods in the day, I taught two classes per grade each day and was able to cycle through the entire student body between the fall and spring semesters. I was fortunate for the smaller class sizes. I’d heard so many horror stories from other teachers while earning my teaching certification of how public schools were bursting at the seams and funding went down every year.
But as with any job, Montgomery had its own set of challenges, despite the benefits. Fearing any interaction with a privileged student could lead to professional disgrace was definitely high amongst them.
Six weeks.
We’d already been in session for a month and a half.
And those first six weeks at Montgomery had thankfully passed almost uneventfully. The autumnal foliage in the surrounding woods had started to turn early. The colors deepened as the temperatures dropped with each passing day.
I watched leaves fluttering to the ground as I made my way across the back lawn to the storage shed where Lenny had kindlyleft a few parcels of chopped wood for me to take up to my room and the lounge, as the weather had also begun to turn with the leaves.
There was some sort of primitive central air system in the carriage house, but I had never figured out how to work it and my maintenance requests the previous school year had gone unanswered. So instead, I took to using the wood-burning fireplaces to keep warm, which suited me just fine. I found the smell and sound of a crackling fire quite soothing.
Chance had finally taken the hint and had thankfully been keeping his distance from me. Although occasionally I’d catch glimpses of him around campus snapping photos on the antique camera he had mentioned to me on the drive home the first night we met.
I often wished I could see the photos he took. If things had turned out differently between us, maybe I would have become his muse, as he had joked. I found my anger toward him waning slightly, but it didn’t change the fact that we were from different worlds, or that he had lied to me.
As fall sunk in, he began to wear sweaters over his button-up shirts, which made him look positively swoon-worthy. And swooning I still was, much to my dismay.
“He probably smells good too,” I grumbled to myself as I hauled one of the heavy parcels across the back lawn to the carriage house.
The thought occurred to me as I lugged the wood up the three flights of stairs, thumping on each step as I went, that it sounded like I was dragging a body, so I wasn’t surprised when Chance poked his head out of the door to his apartment, just as I made it to the fourth-floor landing.
“What are you doing?” His eyes darted from me to the parcel.
“Nothing,” I grunted, trying not to think about how my fingers were burning from the exertion and that I definitely felt at least two blisters forming.
“Sure you don’t want help?” He quirked a brow, his head swiveling as he followed my progress down the hall to my own door.
“No—go away,” I retorted petulantly as I passed him.
“Violet…” He trailed off, as if it pained him not to be able to assist me.
