Getting Warmer (10 page)

Agave High, built in 1996, was old for these parts. The main building was flanked by portable classrooms—a stopgap measure to accommodate the ever-increasing student enrollment. A mile down the road, another high school was being built to help ease the strain. I wondered how long it would take before that, too, burst at the seams.

I ushered the new girl in. “We’re out of desks. Here, take my seat.” I pulled my chair from behind the big teacher desk and set it at the end of the front row.

“Class,” I announced. “We have a new student.” She was the third student added to this class in the few weeks since school had begun, making for a total of thirty-three. School policy called for capping classes at thirty-two—hence the missing desk—but we could always squeeze in one more. Or two. Or five.

“Would you mind introducing yourself?” I said, not wanting to admit that I didn’t know her name.

“Certainly,” she said. She stood up and turned to face the class. “My name is Katerina Carboni. My family just moved here from Michigan.” Her voice was clear and musical, her bearing erect.

“I guess it’s a little hotter here than Michigan,” I quipped, realizing too late that I’d made the same joke when the other two students joined the class. (“I guess it’s a little hotter here than Ohio.” “I guess it’s a little hotter here than New Jersey.”)

Still, Katerina smiled warmly, while the other students more or less ignored me. “A little,” she said.

Katerina lingered after class. “Do you know where room P-eleven is?” she asked. “I’m supposed to go there for study hall.”

“It’s one of the portables,” I said. “That’s what the ‘P’ stands for.”

“Portables?”

“Those things that look like trailer homes.”

“I wondered what those were.”

I asked her what she thought of Arizona.

“It’s okay, I guess.” She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I mean, we’ve got a pool, and that’s cool.” She stopped. “Well, actually, it’s warm.” Her laughter brought color to her pale cheeks.

My Adventures students were beginning to file in. “It must have been tough to leave your friends in Michigan,” I said.

“Yeah.” Her smile faded. “I did drama, and I had this really close group of friends. We were doing
Othello
this year, and I was really hoping I’d get to be Desdemona.” She shrugged. “Oh, well. My dad got this totally great job, and this is the best thing for the family. That’s what my mom says, anyway.”

The bell rang. I scanned the crowd slowly settling into their swing-arm chairs. It looked like everyone was here . . . except . . . Robert. What a surprise.

“Guess I’d better get to study hall,” Katerina said, sounding a little regretful.

“Wait,” I said. “We’re doing a play this fall and I’m helping. Auditions are next week. Will you try out?”

Her face brightened. “Yeah, definitely! What’s the play?”

At that, Robert made his entrance, armed with his heart-stopping smile. “Sorry, I’m late, Miss Q.”

I gave him The Look. They teach you The Look in grad school. The Look is intended to silence a chattering class or chasten a rude student. The Look says, “Watch it, buddy, or you’re in for trouble.”

I’m an utter failure at The Look. I really need to practice more, to glare into my mirror at home while silently counting to five.

To my astonishment, Robert froze. His eyes grew wide. “The Look worked!” I thought to myself.

“Did you do your homework?” I asked, drunk with newfound power. But he didn’t respond. “Robert? Homework?”

“Huh?” It was then that I realized Robert wasn’t responding to The Look at all. He was responding to Katerina.

He blinked at me. “Did we have homework?”

 

 

My parents were in the kitchen when I came in.

“We were hoping you were the bug guy,” my mother said from her perch on one of the carved Mexican stools that lined the granite island.

“Sorry, just your youngest child.”

“He was supposed to be here an hour and a half ago,” my father said from his own bar stool. Like my mother, his feet were pulled as high off the ground as possible.

“There’s a scorpion in our bathroom,” my mother said, momentarily squeezing her eyes shut as if to block out the memory.

I plucked a handful of grapes out of the fruit bowl. The central air hummed around us. “Why didn’t you just step on it?”

“It’s poisonous!” my mother hissed.

“Not if it’s dead.” I popped a fat green grape into my mouth. “The scorpions aren’t so bad. It’s the millipedes that freak me out.”

“You mean, you’ve seen scorpions before? In the house?”

I looked up at the ceiling, counting. “This would be the third this summer. No, wait—the fourth. But one was dead. There’s something about the heat that brings them out.” I shrugged.

The doorbell rang. I answered it, as my parents looked too frightened to leave their stools.

“Hey, Steve,” I said to the bleached blond man at the door. He wore a bright yellow uniform that said, “The Bug Guy.”

“Hey, Natalie, how are you, your mom called, or maybe it was your dad, they said you’ve had some kind of an infestation of scorpions, so, anyway, sorry I’m late, I was up in Carefree, big ant problem up there this summer, probably because of all the rains, and I got held up by the construction—you know the work they’re doing up there—anyway, I’m here now, so why don’t you tell me what’s been going on.”

Steve should really lay off the pesticide.

“It’s not an infestation,” I said. “It was one scorpion.”

“It was enormous,” my mother called from the kitchen.

Steve nodded rapidly. “Okay, then, I was wondering why you’d have so many when I was just here last month for your quarterly service, and so you’re not due for your regular service till, let’s see, November, but as you know, anytime there’s a problem, we’re always happy to come out, no extra charge, so I’m happy to take care of these pests for you.”

“Pest,” I said under my breath. “There’s just one.”

Steve headed upstairs (after almost four years of regular treatments, he knew the layout). I went back into the kitchen, where my parents remained glued to their island stools. “You could go outside if you’re worried about bugs in the house.”

“It’s too hot.”

“So turn on the misters.”

“They’re clogged. Hard water deposits. Water here is hard as a rock—no wonder my hair looks so awful. I told your father we should get a softener.”

“So go swimming,” I said.

“The water’s too cold.” (It was, actually. In September, the nights get so chilly that the pool becomes unusable long before the days cool down.)

We heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Steve appeared in the kitchen. He had a little twitch under one eye. “I looked all over the bathroom—you did say the master, right?—but I didn’t see any sign of a scorpion, probably it ran away, they don’t like the light, mostly come out at night, they like to hide in dark corners or under furniture. Hope you’re checking your shoes before you slip them on in the morning. Or it could be up in the vents, they love the vents. Tell you what I can do, I can sprinkle silicone crystals around all your doorways and the other entry points to the house, you know, the outlets, the dishwasher, any place a pest might find a way in, and what those silicone crystals do is, they cut a bug up as it crawls over your entryway, kills it before it ever gets into the house.”

It was quiet. Dead quiet. My parents stared at Steve. Finally, my mother spoke. “The scorpion was
gone
?”

“Yes, ma’am. No sign of ’em. Could be anywhere.”

“You should have stepped on it.” I opened the shiny fridge and pulled out a Diet Dr Pepper. I smiled warmly at my mom, the buyer of the Diet Dr Pepper, the only person in the world who knew which foods I loved best. “Next time, call me. I’ll step on it.” I popped open the soda. “Really, it’s not so bad. It’s not like you found a rattlesnake in your bathroom.”

“You seen any rattlers?” Steve asked.

“Not yet.” I took a drag of my soda.

“They’re good fried,” he said. “With catsup.”

Twenty-four hours later, I had the house—and the double-headed shower—to myself. My parents had spent the night on the pull-out couch in the bonus room because the guest room (the one other than the one I slept in) shared a wall with the master bath.

“But if the scorpion is in the vents, it doesn’t matter how close you are to the bathroom,” I said calmly. “It could blow out anywhere.”

By the time I got home from work, my parents had wrangled an invitation out of the Gillespies and were packed for an extended visit at their cabin. Flagstaff has scorpions, too, but I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t want to upset them. And I had really missed that shower.

“I’ve pulled your bed away from the wall,” my mother said. “So you’re not sleeping under a vent anymore.”

I rolled my eyes, though I had to admit the thought of a scorpion popping out of a vent did freak me out a little.

Jill was thrilled. “Party at Natalie’s!” she said after school the next day as we stood sweating in the faculty parking lot. Our car engines were running, all doors open, air conditioners at full blast. The interiors wouldn’t get truly cool, but in a few minutes they’d be bearable.

“Glad to see you’re in touch with your inner adolescent,” I said. “I don’t even know enough people for a party. Besides, I’m supposed to be starting a unit on
Our Town
tomorrow, and I haven’t even read it yet.”

Jill fanned her face with her hand. “Small town in New Hampshire. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Girl dies. That’s really all you need to know.”

Lars walked out of the school and headed for his Prius, a rarity in a parking lot filled with tired-looking Civics, Escorts and Sat-urns. It was easy to tell the faculty lot from the students’. The students’ cars were much nicer.

“Hey, Lars!” Jill held up her arm and waved. “You wanna go over to Natalie’s house later? Her parents are out of town.”

“Jill’s coming,” I said as he got closer, just to make sure he didn’t get the wrong idea. How ironic if I finally got a shot at Lars now that I was no longer interested. After all, I was dating Jonathan. Or, someone who looked just like me was dating Jonathan, at any rate.

Lars approached, twisting open a water bottle. “Actually, Natalie, I was hoping we could go over some audition stuff, anyway.” He poured some of the water onto his cupped hand and splashed the back of his neck. He did it again, dousing his forehead this time.

“It can’t go too late,” I told Lars. “I’ve got to put together my first
Our Town
lesson for college prep.”

“Just assign parts and have the kids read it out loud,” Lars said.

“But they’ve already read it,” I said. “I assigned it for homework.”

Lars raised his eyebrows. Mentally, I ran through the kids in my college prep classes. “Well, some of them read it. Two, maybe.”

Jill took Lars’s bottle and splashed her own face. “Okay, then. I’ll bring the food. Lars, you bring the booze. We like margaritas. Six o’clock work for everyone?” She handed the bottle back to Lars. He took a swig.

“And what about me?” I asked, eyeing the water bottle. I wanted some to dump on my own sweaty face, but taking it would seem oddly intimate now that it had touched Lars’s lips. “What should I bring?”

“You just sit there and look pretty,” Jill said. Then she took the bottle and drained it, returning the empty container to Lars.

 

 

Jill, hauling a brown bag, got to the house first. “Where’s Lover Boy?”

“Oh, please. Lars is just a friend. Besides, I’m seeing Jonathan now.”

She strode into the kitchen and put the bag on the counter. “Oh? And who does Jonathan think he’s seeing?” When I glared at her, she laughed. “Just tell him. He’ll probably think it’s funny.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said.

“Would it be such a great loss?”

I blinked at her. “I like him.”

She shrugged. “Okay.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a bag of sushi rice. “You got a rice cooker?”

“Yes. Except in this house, we call it a pot. So—what? You don’t like Jonathan?”

“Of course I like him. What is there not to like?”

“Meaning?”

“He’s just a bit, you know. Sedate. And he has absolutely no sense of style.” She retrieved more items from the bag: baby zucchini, ginger root, bagged lettuce, brownies, and a package wrapped in white butcher paper. “Ahi,” she informed me. “You do have a grill, don’t you? I’m making seared ahi.”

“Of course we have a grill. Stainless steel, enormous. You could roast a turkey on that thing.” I folded up the paper bag and stuck it on the shelf of the walk-in pantry specially designed to hold brown paper bags. “Lars has style, and you think it makes him look gay.”

“I don’t really think Lars is gay. Confused, maybe.” The doorbell rang. “Speak of the devil.”

“I brought margaritas,” Lars said, holding up a giant yellow bottle. He gazed up at the ceiling fans whirring high above us. “Wow. Nice place.” He wore linen Bermuda shorts and a silk floral shirt that looked Tommy Bahama—but surely a teacher didn’t spend that kind of money on clothes. I wore shorts and an old tank top, almost deliberately underdressing, as if to prove that I was over—so over—Lars, while Jill wore a billowy black skirt and a strappy shirt from Target.

Jill took the yellow bottle. “Premixed? Lars, you philistine.”

“You should have asked for martinis. Those I know how to make.” He trailed Jill into the kitchen. “Granite counters. Nice.”

After I poured the second-rate margaritas, Jill said, “I’ll make dinner. You kids go work on your play.”

I smirked. “Yes, Ms. Green.”

Lars and I spent the next hour discussing
Romeo and Jules
and enumerating the qualities necessary in our leads. For Julia Smythe (Jules) we needed someone “beautiful, vulnerable—just plain sexy,” Lars said. And Romeo Flores? “Charismatic, maybe a little dark, intense.” I deferred to Lars’s opinion because I hadn’t actually read the script yet, though I didn’t want to admit it. It had been sitting on my nightstand for a week now. But when I wasn’t grading papers I was planning lessons or slogging through
The Odyssey
(okay, through
The Odyssey CliffsNotes
). I kept promising myself a night off, an evening spent slack-jawed in front of the television, but even that was more than I could fit into my schedule. Still, I told Lars I knew a girl, a new student, who might be perfect for the role of Jules.