Читать книгу Santa's Playbook - Karen Templeton - Страница 9
ОглавлениеSeated at the dinged metal desk taking up nearly half the tiny office near the locker rooms, Ethan propped his hands behind his head, yawning so widely his ears popped. The overhead fluorescent light flickered, then settled back into the mesmeric one-note hum that inevitably lulled Ethan to sleep. Practice had ended a half hour ago, right before the sun whisked away its last feeble rays, leaving a bleak, damp cold in its wake. Possibility of light snow, they said. Ethan’s knee protested, offering an unwelcome second opinion.
The silence this time of day... He hated it. Mainly because he could hear his own thoughts much too clearly. He glanced at the PE tests he was grading, blowing out a breath before shuffling the papers into a neat pile and stuffing them into his leather briefcase—Merri’s present that first Christmas after he’d started teaching. Since he’d made a promise—to himself, to the kids, to Merri on the day of her funeral—to let nothing interfere with family time, he wasn’t a fan of taking schoolwork home. But Jules, whose rehearsal would have ended two hours ago, was probably more than ready to be relieved by this point. As capable as she was at handling the boys and Bella, that wasn’t her job. So—he yawned again—he’d finish up the grading after the younger ones went to bed, while Jules was doing her own homework.
The movement sent another paper on the end of the desk fluttering to the linoleum floor below. Ethan bent to retrieve it, puffing out another breath. A notice from the office that two of his best players’ grades were jeopardizing their positions on the team. Ethan rubbed his eyes, then squinted at the names. Roland White and Zach Baker, both juniors, both in imminent danger of failing English III.
With Claire Jacobs.
Ethan almost laughed. Didn’t that figure? The good news was, it was still early enough to turn things around, at least for next year. The bad news was, they had to bring up their grades, fast, or be cut from the team for the rest of the season. And that would not be good. For a boatload of reasons.
But not a damned thing he could do about it right now.
He zipped up his Hoover Hawks jacket against the icy cold as the heavy metal door clanged shut behind him, trapping the silence inside...if not the memories. Despite the facelift the school had gotten since his own student days, every time he set foot in this place he imagined a grinning Merri sashaying down the tiled hallway in her blue-and-white cheerleading uniform, her blond hair pulled into bouncing, twin ponytails. Hell, yes, he thought as he trudged to his Explorer on the far side of the faculty lot, they’d been the stereotype “perfect” couple, the cheerleader and the star quarterback...except there’d been nothing typical about the girl who’d knocked the wind clean out of him from the moment he saw her—
Footsteps crunching behind him made him whip around, immediately on guard—a permanently ingrained habit from his time in Afghanistan.
“Sorry,” Claire said, appearing like an apparition in front of him. “Didn’t mean to spook you.” She nodded toward her car, parked in the one spot the halogen lights didn’t reach. “I’m right over there.”
He remembered White and Baker, that he needed to discuss their grades with her. Except it was cold, and late, and he not only needed to get home but to line up his ducks before broaching the subject. He’d had these conversations before, with other teachers about other players, and they didn’t always go so well. So he needed a minute or two to gather his thoughts, plan a strategy. Tomorrow would be soon enough. So he waved, expecting her to continue on to the sedate, middle-aged white sedan he was guessing she had not picked out herself.
Instead, she came closer. He frowned, still cautious, his heart thumping a little harder than usual. Okay, it’d be a lie to say she hadn’t occasionally popped into his head in the past week and a half, especially after Juliette had told him about her and Claire’s little chat. It would also be a lie to say he didn’t sometimes catch himself half hoping their paths would cross, if only to get a glimpse of that smile. Those glittering brown eyes. Like a spark of warmth in a cold, barren landscape. And lie número tres would be that, caution aside, he wasn’t completely unhappy about her appearance now, even if only because right now he’d welcome almost any excuse to escape from his own head.
Although, since Claire was inside his head—taking up way more real estate than was prudent...
Hell.
“What are you doing here so late?” Ethan said, aiming for friendly but detached. Instead of, you know, slightly deranged. “Juliette said rehearsal was over at four.”
“It was. Then I had lesson planning,” Claire said in that voice he now realized reminded him of a very dry martini. Something else he hadn’t had in a long while. “If I don’t do it here, it doesn’t get done. And I suck at improv.” Her hands jammed into the pockets of her big puffy purple coat—she wore a backpack, like one of the kids—she quietly laughed, her loose curls dancing around her face. “Both onstage and in the classroom. You seriously drive the four blocks from your house?”
“When it’s twenty degrees at six forty-five in the morning, yes.” He wasn’t about to tell her the real reason, that the cold was brutal on his bum knee, even with the brace. Because whining was for losers.
“Gotcha,” Claire said, removing her hands to wrap the coat—she looked like a cross between the Michelin Man and the Fruit of the Loom grapes—more tightly around herself. “So you haven’t seen Juliette, I take it? In the past hour, I mean?”
“No. She always goes right home so her grandmother can get back to her home.” His mouth pulled to one side. “We have a system. A complicated one, but it works.”
“I can imagine. Well, I won’t keep you,” she said, smiling, and Ethan almost felt something thaw inside him. Almost. Until she said, “But Juliette is probably going to be very excited when you get there.”
“Oh? About what?”
“I’ll let her tell you,” she said, then started toward her car, taking the warmth with her, and suddenly he didn’t want her to leave. Not yet.
“She told me about your conversation,” he called after her. Already at her car, she turned.
“What conver— Oh. You mean from the morning I took the little one to dance class?”
He nodded, feeling the rims of his ears start to burn from the cold. And maybe something more. “Yeah. I should have said something before. To thank you, I mean. She promised... She said she was out of the matchmaking business. For me, anyway.”
Claire walked back a few steps, clearly trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “Good. Considering I did everything short of making her sign an affidavit. In blood.”
Ethan’s cheeks hurt when he tried to smile. Because it was so cold. “You have the magic touch.”
She humphed. “Hardly. But I do remember what fifteen felt like, when my entire life could be summed up in one word—yearning.”
“For what?”
A short, choked sound pushed through her lips. “Oh, God. Everything. Or at least, everything I felt was being unfairly kept out of my reach. Cool clothes. A boyfriend. Straight hair,” she added with a smirk, and Ethan’s cheeks ached again. “The difference is, though, that I never had the chutzpah to actually do something about my discontent. Well, except for the hair, but we won’t go there. Juliette... Yeah, she might overreach, but at least she’s reaching. And the thing is...she’s not reaching for herself. Not about this, anyway.”
“What...what do you mean?”
Claire stuffed her hands into her pockets again, her skin sallow in the ugly bright light. Despite her height—or lack thereof—there was nothing even remotely delicate about her, Ethan realized. Good thing, since many of her students were a lot taller than she was.
“I don’t know Juliette that well, of course,” she said. Cautiously, he thought. “And I certainly don’t know you, what’s going on in your head. But I do know what it’s like, to lose a parent. The empty feeling that leaves in your heart. And how much you wish...” Briefly, she glanced away, then back at him. “All you want is to plug up that emptiness. But what struck me about Juliette is that it’s not only her heart she wants to plug up. It’s yours. The matchmaking... She only wants you to be happy again.”
Ethan started. “She thinks I’m not happy?”
“Apparently so. And for a teenager in the throes of adolescent self-involvement? That kind of empathy is pretty remarkable. Which says to me she’s got a remarkable dad. And criminy, it’s getting late, I’m so sorry—”
She hustled back to her car before Ethan could even begin to figure out what to say, only to turn around again. “Oh! I almost forgot—I got a notice from the office about those two players of yours in my sixth period class? We need to talk.”
“Uh, yeah. We do. When’s your prep period?”
“First.”
“Mine, too.”
“So.” She grinned. “Your place or mine?”
“Mine,” he said, wanting to be on his own turf. “Room 110, right behind the gym.”
“Got it,” she said, then climbed in her car and took off, leaving Ethan to realize his aching knee was the least of his problems.
* * *
As usual, all four kids accosted him the instant he set foot inside the house, yammering about their days. Also as usual, he swept Bella into his arms to get a hug and kiss, and as usual, she made a face about his pokey end-of-day beard. And the twins were doing their speaking-in-tandem thing about something that had happened at school, and Juliette was telling them all to go wash their hands, dinner was almost ready, and he thought that while this obviously wasn’t the life he’d envisioned, it was the life he had, and he was determined to keep that life on as even a keel as humanly possible.
Then Claire’s words about his being remarkable—there was a laugh—smacked him upside the head, and for a moment everything tilted again.
“Dad?” Juliette said, setting a huge bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in the middle of the table as the others scampered off to wash up. “You okay?”
Finally he looked at his oldest child, noticed how much she was beaming. “Yeah, baby, I’m fine. Wow, this looks great. Did you make this, or your grandmother?”
“Baba brought over the meatballs, I made the sauce. There’s salad and garlic bread, too—”
“So I ran into Miss Jacobs in the parking lot, and she said you had some big news to tell me?”
The kid’s smile punched him right in the gut, like it always did. “The girl playing the Ghost of Christmas Past had to drop out of the play, so Miss Jacobs had a bunch of us read for it. Then the rest of the cast voted on who should get the part, and...I won!”
“Way to go, you!” he said, giving her a high five...even if his enthusiasm didn’t match hers. And yes, he felt bad about that, that he couldn’t get completely behind something that clearly meant so much to his daughter.
Whose eyes were sparkling more than he’d ever seen them. “I mean, I know it’s only a high school play, but I so wanted this—I even prayed about it.”
Ethan felt his mouth flatten. “Jules...”
“Oh, I didn’t ask God to give me the part! But I didn’t think it’d hurt to ask Him to help me do my best when I read. That’s okay, right? I mean, isn’t that how the guys pray before the game? To play their best?”
She had him there. Granted, the prayers were unofficial and unsanctioned—and completely voluntary—but the pregame ritual had been an open secret for years. Maple River was a town of many faiths, and a surprising number of the kids walked the walk. And if praying fired the guys up, made them more focused, Ethan was all for it. So he turned a blind eye, even if his own faith had been a little tattered around the edges for some time.
“Not that I’m any expert,” he said, “but seeing as it worked, I guess you got it right.”
“I am so excited,” she said on a blissful sigh, turning away to collect bowls from the cupboard. “Because it’s, like, another step, right?”
“Toward?”
The bowls clunked onto the table. “My acting career, what else?”
“And like you said...it’s only a high school play.”
“Dad,” she said, giving him the side eye as she clunked the bowls on the table. “Have you not been listening to anything I’ve been saying for the past three months? I love acting. It’s like...it’s like I’ve finally figured out who I am. What I’m supposed to do with my life. And yes, I know I’ve done like a million other things before now, and given up on all of them, but...but this is different.”
Ethan’s forehead knotted. “I thought your eBay business...?”
“That’s part of my plan, yeah. To help pay my way through college. But I already know I want to major in drama. And not at some Podunk local school, either. At Yale. Or Carnegie Mellon. Maybe even Julliard.”
At that, a tremor traipsed up his spine, the same tremor—or one of its many, many cousins—that had assailed him with relentless regularity ever since Merri’s death, the realization that he couldn’t protect the kids from making mistakes, from disappointment.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want Jules to be happy—of course he did. Hell, he’d sell his own soul—presuming the market value on it hadn’t tanked—to ensure all of his kids’ happiness. That was a given. But worry niggled, too, that she was only setting herself up for a fall. Not only about being one of the few stagestruck kids to actually make it as an actor, but even getting into those schools...
Then reality clunked him on the noggin, reminding him again that Jules was only fifteen, that her only brush with acting was this class, which she’d only been in for a few months. With that, the fear backed off and went looking for someone else to torment. At least for the moment. Yeah, there was stuff he still wanted to say, warnings he wanted to give. But at this point, he’d only be wasting his breath, since what was the likelihood of a strong-willed teenage girl actually heeding her father’s warnings?
So all he said was, “Those are some lofty goals,” as the other kids stormed back into the kitchen to noisily take their places at the table.
“Aim high, Mom always said. Right?”
Actually, what she’d said was, “Aim high, kick fear in the nuts and live like you’ll die tomorrow.”
“Right,” Ethan said, swallowing the baseball-size knot in his throat.
* * *
The next morning, Claire cautiously threaded through the herd of students surging to their first-period classes, the cardboard tray holding two coffees precariously clutched in her still-frozen fingers. It was ridiculous how badly her stomach was boogying, never mind that Ethan’s office door would most likely stay open and this wasn’t even remotely personal. This was about the kids, period. And surely she had the wherewithal to pull off a simple conference without sounding like someone who’d been teaching for five minutes.
Someone who, despite how far she’d come, was still far more comfortable on a stage or in the front of a classroom of rowdy students than she was one-on-one with the likes of Ethan Noble.
Gosh, she hadn’t been on this side of the building since those long-ago days of required PE in the tenth grade, a thought that did not evoke even the faintest trace of nostalgia. The bell rang, magically sucking students out of the halls and into classrooms. Claire scurried the rest of the way to Ethan’s office, through halls that smelled faintly of chlorine from the indoor pool. His office door was open, but she rapped lightly on the glass insert, anyway. He glanced up, then stood, with what he probably thought was a smile.
“Hey,” he said, looking as though he’d rather be anywhere else, with anyone else. Yeah, promised to be a great chat. “Right on time.”
“I brought coffee,” Claire said, holding aloft the tray, willing it not to wobble. “Couldn’t remember what you liked, so I got straight black. Cream and sugar optional.”
“Black’s fine. Thanks.”
Claire pried one of the cups out of its little nest, muttering a mild obscenity when a few drops squeezed out from underneath the lid and dribbled down the side. The tray clumsily lowered to his desk, she snatched a napkin from the bunch fortuitously wedged in one of the empty cutouts to wipe up her mess before handing the once-more-tidy cup to him.
“Thanks,” Ethan said again as she wadded up the soggy napkin and stuffed it into her coat pocket. Looking almost amused, he reached behind him for a metal trash can, held it out.
“Right,” she said, fishing out the napkin and dropping it into the receptacle. He replaced the can, then gestured toward the chair in front of his desk before sitting back in his, taking a long sip of the coffee. “Jules is very excited about getting that part, by the way.”
Okay, good start... “And you didn’t even hear the screech when the stage manager read her name. Like Justin Bieber had asked her out.” Claire unsnapped her coat, took a drink of her own coffee. Still warm, hallelujah. “Or whoever the hottie du jour is, I’m not really up on these things.”
“You’re not up on these things.” Ethan shook his head. “Do they change every week, or am I completely out of the loop?”
She smiled. “Both, probably,” she said, and—amazingly—he started to smile back...only to apparently remember why they were there.
“So. We have an issue. About my players not passing your class.”
“No,” Claire said carefully. “Ultimately, this is Roland’s and Zach’s issue. Not ours. But I do want them to be successful. To feel successful—”
Ethan scowled. “And you think I don’t?”
“In all areas of their lives. Not only football.” She leaned forward, her heart hammering. That scowl... One might say it was intimidating. One might also say it was dead sexy, but this was neither the time nor the place. “Look, I’m well aware how important the football program is to Hoover. And that’s fine...as far as it goes. The problem is, the guys get this idea that academics come a distant second to sports, especially that sport, that nothing trumps bringing home that dang championship trophy, that they’re far more valued for their brawn than their brains. And for what? I care about these kids, Ethan. And it kills me to see them not even try to live up to their full potential. So...” She felt her face heat. “Thought I’d put that out there.”
His silence seemed to suck the air out of the room, just as his steady gaze sucked the air from her. Then something flickered in those icy blue eyes, although his posture changed not one whit. “You like football?”
“Not particularly, no.”
His mouth might’ve twitched. “You think it’s stupid? Silly? Pointless?”
“Do I have to choose?”
“Good thing you brought coffee,” Ethan said, and this time she definitely saw a twitch. “Otherwise a person might think you were here to pick a fight.”
“Being up front isn’t the same as picking a fight. But no way am I fudging grades so the kids can still play. Which I know other teachers have done.”
At that, his brows lifted. Not a lot, but enough. “And you think I asked them to do that?”
“You tell me.”
“No. Never.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Am I unhappy when I lose a good player because his grades suck? You bet. And I’ve never kept that a secret. Any more than I did when I was a student here, and I had to bust my buns to pass a couple of classes or risk getting cut from the team. I wasn’t exactly academically gifted—or so I thought—so, yeah, I thought the policy was a load of crap. But if it eases your mind, I don’t see it that way now.”
“No?”
“No.” The glimmer in his eyes faded. “Heck, nobody knows more than me that there’s more to life than football,” he said with a quiet intensity that riveted Claire’s attention. “And that putting all your eggs in that particular basket is nothing but an invitation to watch all of ’em break. But try explaining that to a seventeen-year-old who’s never known before what it feels like to be successful, to be somebody, before he discovered this one thing he’s actually good at. Some of these guys, they can’t see further ahead than next Friday night’s game. Then there’s the others who are looking to the future, who maybe need that game to clinch the championship, which in turn maybe’ll snag the attention of a college scout. For them, football might be their only shot at actually going on to college—”
“Oh, come on, you’ve got players from pretty privileged backgrounds, too.”
“True. But White and Baker aren’t among them. I know these kids. Know their families, if they even have much of one. Hell, I went to school with some of their parents, so in a lot of ways this is personal for me. And let me tell you something else—what they learn out on that field? About being part of a team, of working together to achieve a goal? Totally new concept, for some of ’em. And one they’ll use for the rest of their lives. Believe it or not, football’s about a lot more than throwing around a funny-shaped ball. For these kids, football’s not only their life. It’s their lifeline. To something better. Something—” he lifted a hand, let it fall back to the desk “—more.”
Definitely not your average jock, Claire thought. His obvious passion—for the kids even more than the sport, she was guessing—stirred something deep inside her. Compassion, maybe? Because obviously this was very personal for him. And not only because of his long-standing relationship with the community, but because the game was as much a lifeline for him as for them.
“I get what you’re saying—”
“Really?”
She smiled. “Yes, really. But they still need to know how to write a five-paragraph essay. Especially the ones who do go on to college.”
“Agreed. I’m not against the policy, per se. But I don’t want them to lose the one thing that’s making a positive difference in their lives.”
“It’s about balance, absolutely. So let’s get them help.” The passing bell rang. Claire stood, gathering her purse. And her now-cold coffee. “And I’ll work with them, too. The unit on Macbeth is coming up,” she said, and Ethan made a face. “Hey, I’m an actress. If I can’t bring the thing to life, who can?”
“You ever tried teaching it to a bunch of high schoolers?”
“Oh, I think I’m up for the challenge.” At his if-you-say-so smirk, she added, “It’ll be good, I promise. Because you’re not the only one who gets off on seeing them accomplish something they didn’t think they could.”
Ethan studied her for a moment as, outside the door, kids shuffled and shouted their way to second period. “That why you became a teacher?”
She thought for a moment. “To be honest, my goals when I went for my certification weren’t nearly that altruistic. I needed a job, I liked kids and I thought teaching was something I could do until... Well. Not getting into that right now. So no, that’s not why I became a teacher. But it’s why I’m glad I did.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean,” he said as he stood, and somehow she got snagged in his gaze, which felt an awful lot like that memorable college performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream when she’d backed off the stage, got hung up on a fake tree stump and landed flat on her butt.
“Your guys won’t lose their spots,” she said. “Not if I can help it.”
Then she booked it out of there before anything even remotely inappropriate could take root in her thoughts.
