Page 3 of The Chaperones

Chapter One

Friday Morning, 7:00 a.m., nineteen hours earlier

Stella, the art teacher

I weave around the near-empty lot at Ventura Harbor and park along the crystalline water that glitters to the horizon. There’s a serenity to the scene: rows of sailboats parked along the docks, their metal masts pointing like flagpoles toward the sky. Monet could have painted it, although part of me had hoped today would be more like The Great Wave off Kanagawa, waters so rough the boat company would have to cancel the ferry for today. But June is the start of calmer swells, the perfect season to visit the Channel Islands, which is why the parents chose this weekend for their trip. Our trip. Today, the ocean is as stagnant as a pond and shimmering. Monet, not Hokusai.

Despite my reservations about being the sole school representative on this trip, I know this weekend is an opportunity for me. Teaching might be my day job, but it’s one I intend to keep. Unlike my friends, I don’t want to live off my art. Rather, I can’t live off my parents, and I don’t want the stress of buying groceries and paying rent to warp my art. As I tell my students, your emotions inform your work whether you want them to or not. I’d only live off my craft if it could buy me a house like the Chester School families own, not that I’ve ever aspired to a home so big you could get lost in it. And even if I did end up with the kind of solo shows and collectors who put me in the highest tax bracket, I wouldn’t quit the Chester School. I love the children. Particularly these third graders, who like to get their hands dirty and make weird art. Who can look at a Dalí and see things in it that I haven’t before.

So, setting aside my fleeting hopes that the trip might be canceled, I really am happy to be here. My boyfriend, on the other hand, isn’t so thrilled about it. He kept trying to convince me not to go. He suggested we drive up to San Francisco to see the Femme au chapeau exhibit at Sfmoma I’ve been talking about unendingly or that we fly to Hawaii to hike the volcanoes. He’s spontaneous like that, big on romantic gestures. I’ve promised him this trip is for us. This is the weekend the parents are going to fall in love with me. We’ve got Raymond Zhao cooking all the food. The most scenic island in all of America. Custom jackets from Cassie Bent. And all the crafts their kids could desire. By the time we board the boat back to Ventura, Sneakergate—as the moms have taken to calling it—will be the furthest thing from their minds.

I step out of my car and inhale the crisp morning air, the brine stinging my nostrils. I’m relieved not to see any of the parents. I’d wanted to be the first person here, but these parents are early is on time and on time is behind kind of people, so different from my painter friends who constitutionally cannot arrive less than fifteen minutes late to anything, even their own openings. I reach into my car for the jacket Cassie had made for everyone on the trip, a two-toned blue fleece with reflective silver piping to match the Chester School colors. I grab my day pack and the clipboard with the group roster and sign-up sheets for campsite jobs, the talent show, hiking, and kayaking. Of the twenty-seven students in third grade, thirteen of them and their families are boarding the 9:00 a.m. ferry to Santa Cruz Island. We have fifty campers in total, including me and Raymond Zhao’s two sous-chefs.

A man from the boat company wheels a scale to the end of the metal ramp, beneath a sign instructing campers to weigh their gear, then leave it in a pile. There are strict weight limits for the boat, but Raymond Zhao has negotiated an increased amount for our group. I wonder what it’s like to live in a world where the rules don’t apply to you. It sounds limiting to me. Rules force you to get inventive. Still, I’m glad for the extra twenty pounds to account for my art supplies.

I open the hatch of my car and begin to unload crates of paper, paint, toilet paper tubes, skeins of embroidery thread, and rolls of lanyard. I lug them over to the scale, wondering if I’ve brought too much, if it will read as desperate instead of prepared.

“You with the school?” the man from the boat company asks as he places a large metal box beside the scale. The lid is open, and a white laminate sign reads Scorpion Campers Fuel in black block lettering that’s aggressively ugly. Forgive me for believing that everything should be designed with aesthetic intent, even slapped-together instructions. Our world is only as beautiful as we make it.

“What gave me away?” I quip.

He points to the box. “Anything flammable needs to go in the box.”

I give him a little salute, and he frowns, thoroughly unamused by me. When his back is turned, I stick my tongue out at him before heading back to my car to grab my camping backpack and tent.

On the horizon, the mountainous terrain of the Channel Islands undulates like waves. I’m not sure if I’m looking at Santa Cruz, where we’re headed, or Santa Rosa. I’ve always wanted to visit the Channel Islands, but it’s notoriously difficult to get a reservation, particularly during the summer season. Sure, I’d rather be here with my boyfriend, heading to the more remote campground on the other side of the island at Prisoner’s Harbor, where we would shroom and commune with the island foxes, than to the family-friendly Scorpion Cove. Still, this weekend is an experience I wouldn’t get without the Chester School.

A car pulls into the lot, one I immediately recognize as Cassie’s arctic-blue Rivian. I’ve learned a lot about luxury cars since working the drop-off line at the Chester School. There are two primary groups of families: the electric-car families and the luxury-SUV families. Although from what I can tell, neither is a reflection of their stance on the environment. Except Cassie. Of course she drives electric. As she swings around the parking lot, I feel the butterflies I always get when I see Cassie.

While I wouldn’t have recognized her, I knew who Cassie Bent was when Jill, the head of school, went over the parents with me before the school year started. I’d never really given much consideration to the Cassie Bent behind Bent Clothing and have only owned one pair of Bent’s iconic jeans, bought at the Out of the Closet on Sunset. RIP, my sweet store. I remember the way my heart raced the first time she came into my classroom. She was dressed monochromatically, as I’ve since learned is her style, in an olive green that perfectly complemented her auburn-tinted hair, carrying a bag of fabric she hoped I might be able to use for a project. Every few weeks, she’d return with more materials. I can’t remember how those bags of batik and striped linen led to the idea for the sneaker project. Even as we planned it together, I never got used to her magnetism, her elegant ease. After months of knowing her, just the glint of the sun off her metallic car sends my heart racing. Or maybe that’s nerves, but I promised I wouldn’t say anything on this trip.

Only, as Cassie steps out of the passenger-side door, stretching her thin arms toward the sky, I realize that there’s no way I can spend three days straight with Cassie and not tell her the truth.

This weekend, I will confess to Cassie what’s been going on. Because she’s going to find out eventually. When she thinks back to this weekend, I don’t want her first thought to be that I was lying to her.