Страница 100 из 130
Everyone knew me.
Nevertheless, I imagined they were not expecting to see Jessica James, the twenty-one year old daughter of Jeffrey James and sister of Jackson James, dressed in a long white beard sitting behind the wheel of an ancient Ford Super Duty F-350 XL.
In my defense, it wasn’t my monster truck. It was my mother’s. I was currently between automobiles, and she’d just upgraded to a newer, bigger, more intimidating model. Something she could plaster with bumper stickers that said, Have You Kissed Your Sheriff Today? and Don’t Drink and DERIVE, Alcohol and Calculus Don’t Mix, and Eat Steak!! The West Wasn’t Won With Salad.
As the local chief of police’s wife, mother to a police officer (my brother) and math teacher (me), and the daughter of a cattle rancher, I think she felt it was her duty to use the wide canvas of her truck as a mobile pro-police, mathematics, and beef billboard.
After a few more minutes of confused stares, the gang of seniors shuffled off toward the entrance to the community center, casting cautiously confused glances over their shoulders. As quickly as I could, I maneuvered the beast into a space at the edge of the lot. Since inheriting the truck I usually parked on the edge of parking lots so as not to be that jerk who drives an oversized vehicle and takes up two spaces.
I adjusted my beard, tossing the three-foot, white length over my shoulder, and grabbed my gray cape and wizard hat. Then I tried not to fall out of the truck or flash anyone on my hike down from the driver’s seat. Luckily, my costume also called for a long staff, and I leveraged the polished wood to aid my descent; the rest of my costume was negligible — a one-piece mini-skirt sheath with a low cut front — and made stretching and moving simple.
I was halfway across the lot, lost in delighted mental preparation for my father and brother’s scowls of disapproval, when I heard my name.
“Jessica, wait up.” I turned, found my coworker Claire jogging toward me. I set my wizard hat — which had a built-in wig — on my head and waved.
“I thought that was you. I saw the beard and the staff.” She slowed as she neared, her eyes moving over the rest of my costume. “You’ve made some… modifications.”
“Yes.” I nodded proudly, gri
“Do you like what I’ve done?” I twisted to one side then the other to show off my new garment and the high-heeled strappy sandals.
“Are you still Gandalf? Or what are you supposed to be?”
“Yeah, I’m still Gandalf. But now I’m sexy Gandalf.” I wagged my eyebrows.
Claire covered her mouth with a white-gloved hand then snorted. “Oh my God! You are a nut!”
A sinister giggle escaped my lips. I’m not much of a giggler unless I’ve done something sinister. “Well, I couldn’t wear it to work. But I love the irony of it, you know? All those stupid Halloween costumes that women are expected to wear, like sexy nurse and sexy witch and sexy bee. I’ve actually seen a ‘sexy bee’ costume. Am I missing something? Is there a subset of men who get off thinking about pollinators?”
“I agree. You can’t wear the sexy Gandalf costume to work. In addition to being against the dress code, you’re already starring in the sex fantasies of all your male students as their hot calculus teacher. If you’d worn sexy Gandalf at school instead of regular Gandalf, I think they’d go home feeling confused about their sexuality.”
I laughed and shook my head, thinking how odd the last three months had been.
Like me, Claire was a native of Green Valley; also like me, she’d moved back to town after college. She’d become the band teacher during my senior year of high school. Now we were coworkers. With her gorgeous red hair, light blue eyes, and a strikingly beautiful face, during my senior year as well as now, she was labeled the hot music teacher.
She even had those awesome high cheekbones that magazines talk about, with the little hollow above the jaw. Add to her stu
But she had sad eyes.
Unlike me, she’d married her childhood sweetheart. Her husband, Ben McClure, had been a marine; he’d died overseas two years ago. Having no other family to speak of, I surmised that Claire was still living in Green Valley because she wanted to stay near his family.
I’d left home for college a content, albeit geektastic, invisible nobody. I didn’t marry my childhood sweetheart because I didn’t have one. But upon my return (just a short four years later), same school with the same social order and subsets, I’d now become a new stereotype.
I was the hot math teacher.
I’d never thought of myself as the hot anything.
I shivered as a gust of late autumn wind met my excess of bare skin.
“Come on,” Claire looped her arm through mine. “Let’s get inside before you freeze your beard off.”
I followed her into the old school building; as we neared I heard the telltale sounds of folk music drifting out of the open double doors.
It was Friday night, and that meant nearly every able-bodied person in a thirty-mile radius was gathering for the jam session at the Green Valley Community Center. As it was Halloween I noted the place had been decorated with paper skeletons, carved pumpkins, and orange and black streamers. The old school had been converted only seven years earlier, and the jam sessions started shortly thereafter.
Everyone in Green Valley would start their evening here. Even if it hadn’t been Halloween, married folks with kids would leave first, followed by the elderly. Then the older teenagers would go off, likely to Cooper’s field for a drunken bonfire. Those that were adult, unmarried, and childless would leave next.
When I was home last, four years ago, I was part of the Cooper’s field drunken bonfire subset, even though I never stayed long and never got drunk. Now I was clumsily and hesitantly trying to find my way in this new single adult subgroup as of September when I moved back to Green Valley after completing my bachelor’s degree at the University of Te
Where each individual from the unattached adult cluster (to which I now belonged) ended the evening would depend heavily on that person’s personal goals. If the goal was to have good, clean fun, then you typically went to Genie’s Country Western bar for dancing and darts. If the goal was to get laid, then you typically went to the Wooden Plank*, a biker bar just on the edge of town. If the goal was to get laid and cause trouble, then maybe get laid again, then you went to the Dragon Biker bar, several miles outside of town and home of a biker club named the Iron Order.
Or, if you were like me and the goal was to grade a week’s worth of calculus assignments, then you went home, put on fla
I spotted my father before he spotted me as a crowd had gathered; he was speaking animatedly to someone I could not see. My dad was standing at the table just inside the entrance to the old school where a big glass bowl had been placed to collect donations. He was, as always, wearing his uniform.
Claire stood on her tiptoes then tried leaning to the side to gauge the cause of the crowd. “Looks like they’re doing trick-or-treating. I see a bunch of kids in costume, and there’s a bucket of candy at the table.”