Terry McLaughlin - Learning Curve

Better still, there might be some way to get rid of her. He’d make a few phone calls, talk to a few people. He’d ease her out, before she realized what was happening. Before she could shake him up like this again.

Before she wormed all the way under his skin and drove him completely over the edge.

There you go, Emily, he thought with a smile. Plans. Short-term and long-term goals, neatly outlined and ready to be implemented.

He walked over to his piano and stared down at the keys. There it was again—the tune that had been teasing through the back of his mind all week. All it needed was a different tempo: lazy, with a touch of the blues.

He stretched one hand over the keys and began to pick out the first few notes of “Animal Crackers in My Soup.”

ON MONDAY MORNING, Joe watched Emily hunch over her observation post in the back corner of his second-period Current Events class. She was doing an admirable job of ignoring the bright blue Skittle wobbling on top of the radiator a few inches from her elbow.

Her neighbors were having a more difficult time ignoring the results of an incident involving a dangling backpack, an open box of candy and Emily’s swinging foot. Every once in a while someone shifted, and another Skittle scuttled across the room. A discussion on the European economic union couldn’t compete with the subtle soccer matches going on in the aisles.

When the bell rang, she stood with the other students and began her end-of-observation routine: double-checking her schedule in her organizer before closing it, arranging her pens in a predetermined order in the pen compartment of her briefcase, marking her place in her journal before slipping it into its special slot.

She adjusted the strap over her shoulder and turned to leave, but Matt stepped into the aisle, blocking the path from her desk to Joe’s. “Hey, Ms. Sullivan.”

Emily gave him one of her more businesslike smiles. “Hi, Matt.”

Joe turned to wipe his lecture notes off the board and give them both a little privacy. He suspected Matt had a bit of a crush on her. There was a lot of that going around. She’d have to learn to deal with it on her own.

“I heard you’re going to coach the JV girls’ basketball team,” Matt said.

The eraser scudded across the board and flopped on the floor in a little puff of chalk dust. Joe swiveled to scoop it up and caught Emily’s quick, guilty glance.

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