Page 36 of Jagger
“Um, Molly, I’m not sure how to address this, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. As you know, personal relationships with parents of students in your current class are prohibited. The fact that our records indicate that Ethan Morgan’s parents are married makes this situation even more problematic, even if they’ve recently separated or something.” She was speaking quickly, sounding as if she had rehearsed her little speech, and I held up my hand to stop her.
“Michelle, it’s not what – “
“Molly, I met the man when they registered Ethan for kindergarten. I’m sorry, but I saw you holding his hand yesterday, and also saw him touch you in a…very personal way as he helped you into his car. It’s obvious that the two of you have a romantic relationship, and that’s not – “
“Michelle,” I interrupted her quickly, “the man you saw is Ethan’s uncle, Cole. He and Ethan’s dad are twins. There’s no rule about relationships with other family members, correct?”
“Twins?” Michelle said faintly, looking cautiously relieved, and I nodded, unable to stop the grin at her expression.
“Yes, identical twins. Cole actually came with Ethan’s parents to pick him up yesterday. He wanted to...surprise me." I finished lamely, suddenly realizing that I didn’t really want to share why exactly Cole had felt the need to come with them yesterday.
“Twins,” Michelle repeated, looking much happier than she had when she started the conversation. “Well, that puts a different spin on things. I do still need to note that we had this discussion in case there should be any question about preferential treatment down the line, but no, dating a student’s extended family member isn’t against the rules.”
“I won’t let any relationship I’m having with Cole affect my treatment of Ethan, or any other student, I promise you.”
Michelle flashed me a smile and assured me that she wasn’t concerned. “Ethan is a sweet little boy, isn’t he?” she asked.
“He is. If we had favorites, he would be one of mine, even without knowing his uncle,” I told her with a tongue-in-cheek grin. We were all cautioned about having favorites, and officially, it didn’t happen. We all knew, however, that it did.
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up. I have to admit, I was worried about this conversation all evening long, partly because I was so shocked that you would be involved with a married man, or even a recently separated one. That’s just not you.”
I shook my head. “Nope, definitely not,” I agreed, thinking of how sick to my stomach I’d felt at the idea that I’d been complicit in helping Ethan’s dad cheat on his mom.
“All right, I’ll leave you to get ready for the drop-off line,” she said with a quick glance at the clock on the wall. “Twins, huh?” she murmured, shaking her head a little. “Imagine two men looking that gorgeous.” I laughed, and she looked startled, as if she didn’t realize she had spoken aloud.
“I know, it’s seriously not fair. You should see their dad. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I’ll tell you. Good genes definitely run in the Morgan family,” I told her, as we headed back down the hall toward the front entrance of the building.
“Silver fox?” she asked with interest.
“Fox with a little silver at the temples,” I corrected with a grin, remembering my first impression of King.
“Well, let’s hope that Grandpa Morgan picks up little Ethan from school someday, shall we?” she joked with a wink as we parted ways at her office.
I laughed, imagining the stir that it would cause if all three men ever showed up at the same time. The school would be overrun with hormonal women wanting to get a good look at them.
The drop-off line was moving smoothly this morning for a change, which unfortunately gave Brad time to hammer me with questions about last night. I rolled my eyes and ignored his questions for the most part, only telling him that we’d had a very nice time.
“Oh, you’re just no fun,” he groused at me as he started to walk back to the end of the line to wave those cars ahead.
“That’s not what Jagger said…twice,” I told him smugly, snickering as he stumbled and whipped his head around to stare at me with his mouth hanging open.
“Go do your job,” I motioned to the cars starting to bottleneck in the back. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I smiled as I spotted Abby and Ethan pulling up to the curb in front of me. Abby gave me a huge smile and a quick wave from her car as Ethan got out and made his way over to me.
“Hi, Miss Walsh,” he greeted me happily, as he usually did, then turned to wave at his mom as she pulled away from the curb.
“Good morning, Ethan, did you have a good evening?”
At his nod, I smiled and gave him a thumbs up as he walked to the main entrance door to line up with the rest of the students. Before long, we were all assembled in our classroom and getting the day started. The morning passed relatively easily, until we got closer to the lunch period. I noticed Anna Edwards was being even more quiet than usual. She was a very shy, almost skittish little girl, and I was worried that she didn’t seem to be assimilating into the kindergarten routine as well as her peers were. She was very much a loner, although I suspected she dearly wanted to make friends. Despite my attempts to draw her into activities with the other students, or their attempts to befriend her, she seemed determined to keep to herself. I made a mental note to speak to our guidance counselor about it, to see if she thought Anna would benefit from some sessions with her social skills group.
When it came time for the kids to line up for lunch, I realized that Anna hadn’t brought her lunchbox as she always did, so when we got to the cafeteria, I had to arrange for her to be provided with a tray lunch. She didn’t have any lunch money in her account, so they would have to bill her mother for it later. I left the kids under the supervision of the lunch monitors and hurried down to the teacher’s lounge. I grabbed my lunch and inhaled it in the twenty minutes I had left. Amanda Pulaski, the school’s guidance counselor, came in as I was finishing, and I quickly filled her in about my concerns regarding Anna. She agreed to observe her in the classroom setting in the next few days.
By the time the kids returned from lunch, they were wound up tight. There had apparently been a minor food fight among some of the fourth graders, and it had caused quite a commotion among the rest of the students. After twenty minutes, I felt like I was trying to catch a fart in a whirlwind, as my grandpa used to say, so I gave up on the lesson plan and shifted gears. I put on some music instead and told the kids we were going to “dance our sillies out”, which really just gave them an opportunity to get rid of all the nervous energy they had from seeing the chaos in the cafeteria. I’d found that some of the early Beatles’ songs worked really well for this kind of thing, with the added benefit that the lyrics were child-friendly. It was during this time that I realized that Cole’s dancing skills may have been passed down to his nephew. Ethan had “moves like Jagger” too, and I couldn’t resist taking a short video of him to show Cole. After ten minutes of dancing and free movement, I had them each pick a coloring page from the stack I kept on hand. We had ten minutes of Quiet Time while they colored, which gave them an opportunity to calm down and focus, before we jumped back into learning the letter ‘D’.
The rest of the afternoon wasn’t quite as bad, but I still had a couple of unruly kiddos who seemed to be trying to see how much they could get away with. They were clearly still feeling bold after seeing the bigger kids throwing food. When the dismissal bell rang, I led the kids outside with a huge sigh of relief, only to find that most of the parents in the pick-up line had lost their good sense today as well. Cars were parked in the spots clearly marked for buses and parents weren’t pulling ahead which caused the line to back up to the point that Brad lost his good-natured smile, which almost never happened. By the time we had the last of the students accounted for, we were both about ready to scream.
“What the hell was that?” Brad asked with a bewildered shake of his head. “It was worse than the first day of school!”
