Page 14 of Call You Mine
Georgie is the last to leave the classroom, and it isn’t until it’s just her teacher and me that I realize the complete mess the classroom is. It’s like a bomb went off, leaving candy wrappers and discarded napkins everywhere. There arecrumbs on the carpet, and the neat pods of desks I saw when I got here are completely askew.
“So,” Callie starts. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”
I hear her question, but it doesn‘t register. I’m too distracted by the mess around us, and the skin on my palms begins to itch. I open and close my hands, counting.
The thought of how insane I must look right now crosses my mind, but it’s not as important as getting to seventeen.
“Ava?” I hear from next to me, but I can’t answer right now.
I didn’t get to seventeen.
“Ava,” Callie says, but this time it’s with a note of concern,
Sixteen
Seventeen
Immediately, enough of my anxiety lightens for me to inhale. “Sorry, what did you say?” My eyes scan the room, the urge for order heavy on my mind, but I have to get a hold of myself.
This meeting is for Georgie.
I need to get a handle on this.
I’m not going to be like my mom—too concerned with myself and my own problems to take care of the people around me.
“I asked what you wanted to talk about.” Callie sits down at her desk, and I manage to turn my body from the mess of the classroom, focusing on her. “Is everything okay with Georgie?”
Callie motions to the chair next to her desk—I didn’t even realize she pulled it up for me. It definitely wasn’t there a minute ago.
The urge to start my counting again is like a weight pressing down on my chest, but I sit on my hands, hoping the compulsion subsides—I know it won’t, so I pause, giving myself a minute before I get back to it.
Counting how many times I close my fist won’t help Georgie.
Talking to her teacher will.
“Right,” I say, my eyes finally meeting Callie’s. I’m expecting to see some sort of annoyance or confusion from her—I can’t imagine what she must think of me—but there’s nothing. She has her hands interlaced in front of her, resting on her desk, patiently waiting for me to go on.
No wonder Georgie likes her so much.
“Does this have something to do with Georgie’s mom?” Callie asks, and it catches me off guard for a moment before I remember what happened thirteen months ago.
This is Georgie’s second year having Callie as a teacher, since Callie moved from sixth-grade writing to seventh-grade reading, so we’ve met before today.
Callie was the one who called me last year when my mom forgot to get Georgie from school.
When I got the call, my first reaction was panic—that not only had something happened to Georgie, but to my mom, too. I became Georgie’s secondary contact after her dad died two years ago, but I never got a call from school before.
They were asking if someone was on their way to pick up Georgie—she’d been waiting outside the school for over an hour, and all the other kids were gone. Callie was on her way to her car when she spotted Georgie pacing in the parking lot, as her calls to my mom went unanswered.
Because she was so drunk that she didn’t know what day it was—let alone that it was time to pick up Georgie from school.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Callie adds when I don’t respond right away, pulling me back to the present. “It’s just—” she shakes her head, her eyes going to her hands–“Georgie has become very withdrawn these last couple of months. She’s nothing like the student I had last year—always engaged, well-liked by her peers, on top of her school work.”
She reaches toward a basket of papers on her desk, pulling one from the bottom and sliding it over to me,
“She recently turned in this as her reading assignment.” My eyes scan the paper as Callie continues, “I’m reading a chapter book to the kids right now, about a boy from outer space who is struggling to feel like he can relate to the kids at his new school on Earth.” Georgie’s handwriting is almost illegible, and I’m tempted to ask Callie if her fancy teacher superpowers can help me decipher this. “Students were asked to infer how the protagonist is feeling in the first few chapters,” she explains, “and if they can relate to him as a character.”
It takes me a second to make out the few sentences Georgie scribbled onto the paper, but when I do, my heart drops.
