Shirley Jump - The Marine's Kiss

“Gee, thanks. I think.” Jenny dug her check out of her pocket. “Here you go.”

“Oh, no need to pay me, ma’am. I haven’t laughed that much in ages. Plus, the paper got a snapshot of your date with Reginald. I’d say that free publicity makes us about even.” Ed gestured toward a young man holding a camera and standing across the street. “I thought this might make a good story, so I called the Mercy Daily News myself.” He thumbed the strap of his overalls and nodded.

“This is going to be in the paper?” Oh Lord, her career was over. Might as well start scouring the Help Wanted section now. If there was anything Dr. Davis disliked more than Jenny’s unconventional teaching methods, it was publicity about Jenny’s teaching methods.

A tension headache began to pound in her temples. She pressed her hands to her head, then tucked her hair behind her ears. She would deal with this later. Preferably after a lot of Tylenol and a huge platter of nachos.

Stuffing the check back into her pocket, she spun on her heel and flapped her arms at her class like a mother goose. “Come on, children, back inside.”

“Miss Wright, what’d the pig taste like?” Jimmy Brooks asked.

“Yeah, was he all boogers and slime?” Alex Herman had a fascination with all things nasal. He’d even fashioned a nose for his clay project in art class.

“Eww, Alex. That is so gross.” Lindsay Williams made a face and took a step away from him. “Miss Wright wouldn’t really kiss a slimy pig anyway. She has taste.”

“In what?”

Lindsay shrugged. “I dunno. In animals, I guess.”

Not in men, Jenny thought. As far as love lives went, she’d be willing to bet Reginald had better luck than she did. Finding a man wasn’t high on her priority list right now anyway, not while she was so consumed with her class. All relationships did was complicate her life. Jenny had had enough complications to last her until she was eighty.

“Okay, that’s enough. We need to get back to work.” Jenny pulled open the outside door to her classroom and led the children inside. They took their seats, amid a steady stream of pig chatter and chair squeaking. Then she moved to the front of the room and clapped her hands. After a moment, the children quieted down and faced her. As always, a small thrill of triumph ran through her when her class ran like clockwork. To Jenny, a civilized and orderly class proved she was doing a good job. “Now, you all have done a wonderful job on the first level of the reading challenge. But, we still have a ways to go.”

The class let out a collective groan.

“I’m willing to make it fun,” Jenny said. “If you’re willing to put in the work.”

“Are you going to dye your hair green this time? I really liked the pink,” Jimmy piped up.

“Uh, no. Not this time,” Jenny said. Dr. Davis had nearly gone into cardiac arrest when she’d seen the fuchsia hair Jenny had sported as a first-quarter class incentive.

“How about making us another giant ice cream sundae?” Lindsay rubbed her belly. “I didn’t eat dinner at all that day.”

Lindsay’s mother hadn’t been happy about that either. She’d called Dr. Davis to complain, resulting in another black mark on Jenny’s teaching record. “Er, no, no sundaes.”

“Well, what then?” the class asked.

Jenny put on a bright, work-with-me smile. “We could read just for the fun of it!”

“Nah. That’s boring.” Jimmy said. “We want a prize.” Twenty-five nine-year-old heads nodded in agreement.

She’d created a monster. The children now expected rewards for making their class goals.

Maybe Dr. Davis had a point.

No, she refused to entertain that idea. Her third-graders needed every boost they could get to raise their reading level. This past winter, Mercy Elementary’s scores in the state achievement tests had come back at their lowest levels in years and the school had been placed on probation. Losing their accreditation was a very real possibility, if something didn’t happen. Jenny couldn’t change every class, but she could darn well change her own.

In the last few years, her class had become her main priority in life. It wasn’t that she’d set out to become the stereotypical spinster elementary school teacher. It had just happened that way, after too many failed relationships and one broken heart that refused to heal. And it was a heck of a lot easier to concentrate on the children than on why Jenny attracted bad dates like steel filings to a magnet.

“I’ll think of something,” she said, rubbing at her temples again and returning her thoughts to the class. As long as it didn’t involve pigs or hair dye, she figured she’d be fine.

“Miss Wright?” the school secretary blurted over the loudspeaker. “Can you come down to the principal’s office please? I’ll have Miss Rhodes cover your class.”

“I’ll be right there,” Jenny said.

Jimmy mouthed “Uh-oh.” The other kids’ eyes got wide. They knew that even for an adult, an impromptu trip to the principal’s office meant only one thing—big trouble.

Debbie Rhodes opened the connecting door between the two third-grade classrooms and gave Jenny a sympathetic smile. “Do you think she saw the pig?” she whispered.

“How could she not? He weighed three hundred pounds and arrived in a hot-pink truck.” Jenny sighed. “Guess I better go down there and face the wrath of Davis, huh?”

Debbie gave her arm a squeeze. “Good luck.”

If she could have trudged in two-inch pumps, Jenny would have. It was a bit hard to look as if she was going to her execution dressed in black capris and a white sweater set. So she held her head high, straightened her shoulders and figured if she was going to get fired, she’d go out looking good.

“Dr. Davis would like to see you in her office. She said to shut the door.” Bonnie, the school secretary, gave her a sad smile, as if she knew Jenny was going to enter the lair of the lion and come out like a shredded sock.

Jenny’s spine slumped a little. “Okay.” She crossed to the principal’s office, entered the room, then closed the door behind her.

Dr. Davis sat at her desk, all business and primness. Her gray hair was woven into a tight bun, her brown checked suit perfectly pressed. She had on dark framed glasses, a chain dangling from both sides of the lenses. Dr. Davis left nothing to chance—not even losing her glasses.

“Sit down, Miss Wright.” Dr. Davis didn’t bother to look up from her paperwork. “I hear you had a visitor today.”

“Uh, yeah. A really cute pig.” Jenny pasted on her bright smile again. “The kids loved him.”

“It was a distraction from their learning.”

The smile fell a little. “It was a reward for reading a hundred books this term.”

Dr. Davis raised her head. She dropped her glasses to her chest. “Your class read a hundred books?”

“Yes, they did.” Jenny nodded. “They tried some authors for the first time. Even Jimmy Brooks read three and he didn’t read at all before the pig incentive.”

Dr. Davis leaned back in her chair. “You know the school has been placed on probation because of our achievement test scores this year.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

Dr. Davis tapped at her lip with her pen, thinking. “We don’t have much time to bring up our scores if we want to make a difference. You have mentioned to me, several times, that you’d like more support for your program.”

“I do,” Jenny said. “I really think it could work. The children have responded well to incentives and fun.”

“Be that as it may, I’m not entirely sold on your methods thus far. However, I do have to worry about our accreditation. There’s a grant available to the third-grade class that can demonstrate the best growth in reading skills over the school year. It can be used to buy books, computer equipment, whatever you want. I’m quite impressed with what the other teachers are accomplishing using traditional methods….”