Chemistry Lessons (21 page)

Wondering how long these game nights had been going on at Mercedes’s
house, Rosie forced a smile. “Thanks. That’s sweet of you to invite us.”

“I’ll be there this time,” Destry told Mercedes. “I promise.”

Mercedes faked a stern expression, pointing a finger at him as she
returned to her desk. “You better.”

Destry leaned over the desk, chuckling, while Rosie made her way out of
the office.

It had only been a couple weeks since he had kissed her and told her he
loved her. Could he already like someone else? It was the right thing for him
to move on, and she should have been happy that he had, so why did she feel so
disappointed?

She had marched halfway back to her classroom before she remembered
that she still had to plan her health lesson about impaired driving. The
strange thing was, that her meeting with Mr. Moore had done more to help her
plan than another three hours sitting at her desk could have. She was finished
being scared of what the Moores might do.

She would tell the truth.

Rosie’s health lesson began with a video of a blue sedan and a bicycle
riding side-by-side down the lane in front of her ranch. The sedan barely
outpaced the bicycle. Then the car came to a stop and a little old lady got
out. She wore a fuchsia muumuu covered with bird of paradise flowers, but that
didn’t keep her from doing a funky chicken victory dance. Rosie paused the
video. “That,” she said, “was the first time my grandmother won the race.
Grandma was such a slow driver that the McFerrin boys on our lane could beat
her on their bicycles. They had a deal that whoever lost would have to bake
cookies for the winner. Grandma ended up making cookies at least twice a week.”

From a desk along the side wall of the classroom, Rosie could hear
Destry’s deep laughter. It washed over her, steadying her shaking fingers. She
had needed him, after all, especially since only a few students seemed amused.
Most of the others doodled in their notebooks or texted under their desks.

Rosie pressed play on the digital presentation as it switched to a
scene of Grandma sitting on a bench outside the elementary school with a
hummingbird feeder on top of her hat and a columbine flower in her hand.
Kindergarten children watched as hummingbirds zipped around her, sipping from
the feeders.

The picture faded to a hot day when Grandma and Grandpa donned bathing
suits and lay down in the cattle’s big, round watering tank. As music played and
cows stood observing, her grandparents did their best impression of
synchronized swimming. They floated on their backs, moving their arms in unison
and kicking their pasty white legs, trying to look like the old movie stars.
Grandpa looked more like a dying cockroach with his limbs twitching above him.

By now, Destry had to reach for the box of tissues on Rosie’s desk. He
had laughed hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. Others gave into giggles as
Grandma posed like a statue and spouted bottled water out of her mouth.

Her students’ reactions were exactly what Rosie hoped for. She wanted
them to see
her
version of Grandma, the version that had brought extra
sparkle to her family’s life.

As the students continued to watch clips of Grandma working as a
kindergarten aide, Rosie sat down at her desk to silently rehearse what she
would say after the video finished. She had felt so nervous about it that she
hadn’t bothered eating breakfast, fearing she might be sick.

Finally, the presentation ended, and Destry flipped on the lights.

Rosie stood in her usual place, hands at her sides. “A little over a
year ago, my grandmother was killed by an impaired driver.” She sucked in her
breath. This was it. She’d said it, and now she felt as if she’d lit the fuse
on a keg of dynamite. An explosion was inevitable.

A few of the students sent texts under their desks—probably about what
Rosie had just said. She glanced at Destry, who nodded his encouragement, and she
thought once more of that kiss in the graveyard. Maybe it was better not to
look his way. He was too much of a distraction.

It took her a moment to notice that a student on the back row had
raised his hand. She called on him. “Wasn’t your grandma killed in an accident
with Janessa Moore?”

She swallowed. The boy lived down the lane from the Moores and probably
wanted to defend Janessa. It was too late to turn back. “Yes. I was driving
when Janessa missed a stop sign and hit us.” Most of the kids would be able to
piece together the story from there. If they spent any time in town at all,
they would have observed Janessa’s drinking habits, and some might have seen
her driving afterward.

The boy lowered his eyelids, squinting at Rosie. “So you’re saying Janessa
was drunk when she hit you?”

Rosie’s knees shook, but she stood straight, drawing in her breath. It
wasn’t her purpose to damage her former student’s reputation. She did, however,
want Janessa to change her ways. “She had an open bottle in her car, she had
alcohol on her breath, and she couldn’t walk a straight line. But according to
the police report, she wasn’t drunk.”

Some of the students nodded as if it made sense, but the boy turned his
gaze to the wall, seeming unsure.

“I’m not here to accuse anyone,” Rosie said. “What I really care about
is preventing other people from suffering the way my family has suffered. And this
isn’t just about drinking and driving. What else can impair your driving?”

A few students responded with the correct answers: drugs and cell phone
usage. One even added, “girls,” which brought the relief of laughter to the
room.

“If you’ll turn to page 103 of your textbook,” Rosie said, “you’ll see
a blood alcohol calculator. Sometimes it’s called a BAC chart. You can find
them online any time you want.” A few students brought their phones out to
search for BAC charts. “This chart shows how a person’s size and gender affect
how much they can drink before reaching the legal limit. Let’s say you’re a
woman who weighs 130 pounds. How much can you drink before it affects your
driving skills?”

Students studied the charts in their textbooks and on their phones.

A girl on the front row raised her hand. “You couldn’t even have two
drinks.”

The boy sitting behind Destry cracked a joke about how the girls needed
to stop dieting. Rosie guessed that the boy himself probably didn’t weigh much
more than 130 pounds.

Another boy raised his hand. When Rosie called on him, he looked down
at his desk. “What if you don’t have a license, and the person who gave you a
ride has had a couple drinks?” By the way he spoke, Rosie guessed this could be
a common situation for him.

“That’s a good question, Scott.” Rosie brought her chair out from
behind her desk, raised it to its highest level, and sat at the head of the
classroom. “Let’s open it up for discussion.”

Together, the students brainstormed solutions. The more they talked,
the more the students opened up about real-life situations they had faced. It
became a conversation among the students with Rosie calling on those who raised
their hands. Only the boy on the back row—the one who lived down the lane from
Janessa—seemed disturbed by the subject.

Her students barely noticed the bell when it rang. “We’ll have to keep
talking about this next time we meet,” Rosie promised, signaling that it was
time for the students to leave.

Rosie watched the students exit the classroom, still discussing
difficult situations they had encountered.

Destry gave Rosie a fist bump. “That was extraordinary.”

At his words, she beamed. Knowing how well he interacted with his own
students, she valued his opinion more than any other teacher’s. “Thanks for
coming. I’m not sure anyone would have dared laugh if you hadn’t been there.”

“I was happy to help.” He tipped his head in the direction of the
faculty lounge. “Are you staying for lunch? I was hoping you could look over my
students’ essays. I can’t tell whether I should be pleased or worried.”

She grabbed her purse and water bottle from her bottom drawer. Then she
remembered Tanner was taking her to La Cocina. “I’m going out for lunch today,
but I’d be happy to look over it after school.”

Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed that a look of
disappointment crossed Destry’s features before he smiled. “I’ll see you after
school then.”

She watched him saunter down the hall in the direction of the faculty
lounge. For the first time, it struck her how very alone Destry was in Lone
Spur. He had no family, and he interacted more with the students than with the
other teachers.

Then Mercedes turned the corner, heading toward him. She wore a lacy, light
pink skirt, the kind that would have made Rosie look like an overgrown poodle.
Of course, Mercedes looked more like a model as she smiled up at Destry. “I was
wondering where you were.” She executed a perfect pivot turn and headed toward
the teacher’s lounge with him, walking close enough to let him know she liked
him.

Rosie should not have stood watching them as long as she did. She
waited until they turned the corner before she walked out the side exit. Tanner
sat in his truck at the edge of the parking lot. “Guess what’s up on the internet
already?” he asked as she slid into the passenger seat.

She was still thinking of Destry and Mercedes. “What?”

“Your paintings.” He turned his phone for her to see. She blinked,
trying to forget about Destry. There, on the auction website were two of the
paintings that had hung on Grandma’s wall for decades. It didn’t seem real that
they could be worth so much money. Within two months’ time, they would be
auctioned off, and she would have enough for their down payment.

Once they got to the restaurant and sat at their booth in the back,
Janessa bounced over to wait on them. “What can I get you today?” Her words
tumbled out with the lilting tones of a former cheerleader.

For the first time since the accident, Rosie raised her eyes to look
Janessa in the face. She was still Rosie’s former student. Though Rosie couldn’t
yet forgive her, she could fear
for
Janessa in that anxious way a
teacher can predict a student’s future. This was a smart girl who spent her
days serving tables and her nights staggering from bar to bar. Would she ever
change?

More than that, would the town ever change? Janessa wasn’t the only one
in denial. Mr. Moore, the bartender, Janessa’s friends, and the sheriff all
seemed to overlook the fact that Janessa still drove while impaired. Even
Grandpa refused to let Rosie file a lawsuit.

As Tanner ordered a couple of enchiladas, Rosie searched Janessa’s face
for a sign that she might have heard about the health lesson. In the girl’s
eyes, Rosie recognized a stubborn defiance. She had seen the expression over
and over again in the faces of her students, who only seemed to care about themselves.

Once Janessa zipped away with their orders, Rosie told Tanner about her
lesson, keeping her voice hushed in case anyone happened to be eavesdropping.
She felt relieved that the videos made an impact on her students, but
nervousness still plagued her. At any moment, Mr. Moore could call her into his
office, where she would have to justify her actions.

Rosie looked around the restaurant at the townspeople. Her grandmother’s
best friend sat on the other side of the restaurant at the table by the front
window. Jade sat with a few of the other teachers just a few booths over. And
next to them sat Mrs. Santiago who traded Grandpa her homemade bread for milk.
None of them deserved to die the way her grandmother had.

Tanner covered her hand with his. “You did the right thing, Rosie. I’m
proud of you. And who knows? You might have saved someone’s life.”

Rosie swallowed. “I hope so.”

A few minutes later, Janessa rushed in with their enchiladas. This
time, Rosie stared down at the food, avoiding eye contact. Her stomach still
ached from nervousness. She couldn’t help worrying what would come next.

They found out soon enough. As Tanner pulled out of the parking lot and
drove down Main Street, Rosie noticed the sheriff’s car trailing them. Although
Tanner drove at the posted speed, the sheriff flashed his lights and blared his
siren.

Tanner pulled to the side of the road. “Great!” he said, throwing his
hands up. “Now we’re both going to be late to fourth period.”

“Maybe you have a brake light out,” Rosie offered, hoping this had
nothing to do with her lesson. Word couldn’t have traveled to the sheriff this
fast, could it? Even if Mr. Moore knew already, he wouldn’t have had time to
tell anyone else yet.

Sheriff Dan Moore, a pot-bellied man with a bad dye job and a
comb-over, approached the driver’s side. Tanner rolled down his window. “Good
morning, sir,” Tanner said in a tone of respect.

But the sheriff wasn’t looking at Tanner. He stared straight at Rosie
in a way that let her know that this was all because of her. “I just clocked
you at ten miles over the limit.” Right then, a gust of wind caught the top of
the sheriff’s hair and sent it flapping upward.

Rosie sucked in her lips, trying to hold back laughter. The worst thing
she could do right then was to laugh about the sheriff’s hair. While Tanner
explained that he had been driving much slower than that, she held her breath,
but the sheriff kept glaring at her with his wing of hair waving in the wind.
That’s when the giggle started shaking in her stomach. She turned her head
toward the window.

“Are you laughing, ma’am?” Sheriff Moore asked, scribbling something
onto his ticket pad.

Rosie shook her head, but even as she did, a laugh exploded out in a
snort. She covered her mouth. “No.”

 Tanner narrowed his eyes at her.

The sheriff looked like he was trying to suppress a belch. “There’s
nothing funny about ten miles over the limit.”

“Sorry,” Rosie whispered as the sheriff waddled back to his squad car. “But
his hair. It’s like a tarantula’s stuck inside his brain and is trying to get
out.”

Tanner covered a grin with his hand. “I thought it looked more like a
bat coming in for a landing.”

By the time the sheriff came back, they had both regained their
composure. “I’ve decided to leave this as a warning,” the sheriff exclaimed, “but
just know I’ll be watching you.”