The Player Next Door

“Who you still have a crush on,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Do you not remember what happened between us? Besides, I’m a thirty-year-old woman. And a teacher. I don’t have a silly crush on my neighbor,” I scoff.

“Thirty-year-old single teachers can have a silly crush on their smoking-hot neighbor.” She raises her hands in surrender at my warning glare. “Okay! You’re right. I believe you.” She hides her amusement behind a sip of water. She does not believe me.

Playing my words back in my head now, I’m not sure I believe me either. “Besides, it’s not like anything could happen between us. I’m teaching his son.”

Her lips purse. “I don’t think there’s an official rule against it.”

“Maybe not, but it would be frowned upon.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she agrees with reluctance. “Unless you kept it under wraps for this year. I mean, you’re old school friends and next-door neighbors, so it’s not shocking if you’re seen together. No one needs to know what else you’re doing together.” She waggles her eyebrows.

“Secret relationships with my student’s father is not how I want to start my teaching career here.” Lies and scandal. That sounds right up my mother’s alley, not mine.

Becca sighs heavily. She must sense she has no chance to persuade me otherwise. “But, still … wouldn’t that be romantic? You two getting back together after all these years?”

Several more teachers filter into the staff room for lunch-hour recess, thankfully halting that conversation from going any further.

Becca wasn’t exaggerating when she said half the staff here have one foot in retirement. The early-morning conversations I’ve heard so far all revolve around grandkids and countdowns to winters in Florida. Becca and I are two of the youngest staffers, part of what Wendy has referred to as “the new wave.” She claims that within five years, Polson Falls Elementary will be run by entirely new faces. Wendy herself must be thinking about retirement soon.

We exchange smiles with Karen Faro and Heidi Mueller—two primary grade teachers—and then shift into a corner to allow them space to use the sink.

“So, will our first paycheck deposit by close of business Thursday night or Friday morning …” My question drifts as a woman sweeps into the room and glides to the refrigerator, the wooly material of her faded black dress—far too heavy for this heat wave—swirling around her Birkenstock-clad feet.

“Holy shit. Madame Bott still teaches here?” She always insisted on being called madame, though I doubt she has a French bone in her body. Tension curls through my limbs as childhood memories flood back. I didn’t see Madame Bott here last week while I was setting up. I would have remembered. I’ll never forget the woman who cornered me in our classroom at recess, holding a picture of her husband in her white-knuckled grip, demanding to know if I’d seen him with my mother recently.

I had seen him—from my bedroom window as he was dropping off my mother late the night before—but I’d played dumb. Even at nine years old, I knew those adults were doing something wrong.

“It’s Mademoiselle Parish now,” Becca whispers. “Her husband left her for one of the mothers on their daughter’s soccer team.”

Didn’t see that one coming.

I watch the woman, who must be in her early fifties, while absorbed by a strange sense of déjà vu. Age has added softness to her waistline and weight to her jowls. Jet-black hair that once reached her tailbone is now threaded with gray and sits at her chin in a frizzy bob.

As a child, she intimidated me with her dark, calculating eyes and her thin smiles, and the way she was often caught muttering to herself. We were convinced she was a witch. She could still pass for one.

“Does she still wear that talisman necklace with the bird feathers and the—”

“Yup.” We share a look. “Last spring, one of her students broke his leg and insisted she put a hex on him for not finishing his assignment.”

“I guess some things haven’t changed.” One thing that has changed is me. I’m an adult. An equal. I won’t be intimidated by this woman ever again.

Flinty, dark eyes suddenly swing in our direction, landing on me as if homing in on a target. “Scarlet Reed.”

My back stiffens. I don’t remember her voice being so shrill.

Her lips stretch in a thin smile as she saunters over. “Wendy said she hired you.”

I force a polite smile. “Hello … Mademoiselle Parish, is it?” I wait for her to wave off the formality and suggest her first name. We are both teachers now.

“You came back. I heard you’d left, but you’re back.” She says it in an airy way, as if she’s learning this just now, through some unseen source.

“Yes, I did. Mrs.—I mean, Wendy—made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Her shrewd gaze roams my facial features, as if sizing them up, as if sizing me up.