A Perfect Pair. Jen Safrey

“I’ll drop by your place Thursday.”

      “I know.” Derek walked away, but Nate heard him mutter. “Creature of habit.”

      Josey was sitting at her desk, her head bent over math papers, when she heard footsteps in the hallway approaching her room, which was at the very end. All the female teachers’ heels had that authoritative sound, but these steps were slower and harder. A man’s dress shoes, Josey guessed, not taking her eyes off the current paper. She stopped pondering the topic when she realized she had marked seven out of ten answers as wrong. She glanced at the name on top. Jason, she thought, what is the matter with you? You came for extra help last week….

      The “Hi” from the doorway startled her. She turned with a gasp and saw Nate standing there. She let all her breath out in an audible whoosh and bent to the floor, groping around with her fingers for the red pen she’d dropped.

      “Nate!” she gasped. “Way to scare a person. Sneaking up on me.”

      “Sorry, teach,” Nate said in a sheepish student’s voice.

      “That’s just not enough,” Josey replied haughtily. “Go stand in the corner.”

      He pretended to head to a corner, then stopped. “Do you really make kids stand in the corner?”

      “I’m usually a little bit more creative than that,” Josey said, retrieving her pen from where it had landed near her foot.

      “What do you do?”

      “Oh, if I catch you passing a note, I tack it up to the bulletin board behind me here, so everyone in the class can read it at their leisure.”

      “Harsh.”

      “If I catch you chewing gum, I make you stick it on your nose.”

      “Gross.”

      “And if I catch you cheating, I make you write an essay about how brilliant the student is that you were trying to cheat off of.”

      “Wow. You would have been my most hated teacher. I did all those things. Except the cheating, of course.”

      “I’ll bet.”

      “But come to think of it, all my teachers were old hags.”

      “Nate!”

      “They were. I probably would have had a big crush on you, though.”

      An unexpected flush of embarrassment swept over Josey. “Nate, all your teachers were probably my age. They just seemed like old hags to you at age eight.”

      “Untrue. I caught my second-grade teacher cleaning her dentures once.”

      “You did not!”

      “I swear it.” He pushed a student’s chair out from a tiny desk and tentatively sat down in it. Apparently deciding the short metal legs would hold him, he relaxed.

      “You’re finished with work awfully early today, aren’t you?” Josey asked.

      “I was feeling pretty lousy, so I went in early and knocked off early.”

      “Oh. Were you not feeling well yesterday, either? I called you a couple of times but I thought you were out.”

      “No,” Nate answered, stretching one long leg out in front of him and inspecting his pants leg. For lint, probably, Josey thought. “I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone.”

      That was unlike him, but before she could start in about it, a small scuffling noise drew her attention to the door, where a little girl with a blond ponytail stood, hesitant to enter, glancing uncomfortably at Nate. She brushed a pink sneaker back and forth on the floor.

      “Sara! What are you doing here so late?”

      “I was playing on the swings with Joan and Courtney, and I remembered I forgot my spelling book.”

      “Well, then, you’re lucky I’m still here. Run and get it.”

      Sara didn’t make a move. She just stared at Nate.

      “That’s a friend of mine. Mr. Bennington.” Josey waited for Nate to introduce himself or say something to put her student at ease, but for some strange reason—he looked as nervous as the child did. They just watched each other in a wary game of size-up.

      It was Sara who broke the silence. “That’s my desk,” she said, her words turning forceful. “You’re sitting in my seat.”

      Nate jumped up with a guilty look on his face, muttering, “I’m sorry.” He put his hands behind his back. His masculine frame towered over all the desks and chairs, making it seem like he had just stumbled into a dollhouse. Sara walked past him to her desk, knelt down and pushed her arm into it, fumbling. She slid her spelling book out of the mess, bending the soft cover back as she did so. She smoothed it out with a flat palm and then, as an afterthought, pulled out a thick round pen. She held it toward Nate. “Look at my pen.”