chapter
one
If Obsessive Email Checking Disorder were a disease, I was likely already in the final stages: trigger thumb, mindless refreshing, aimless scrolling, and, of course, an inability to focus on anything else in the entire world.
For what had to be the twentieth time in as many minutes, I paused the anxious cleaning spree of my classroom and unlocked my iPhone to check the digital envelope at the bottom of my home screen. Still nothing.
“Stop it, Lauren. You’re gonna make yourself crazy.” Because talking to yourself in the third person was totally rational behavior.
I stuffed the phone into the shadowy abyss of my top desk drawer and slammed it shut, cringing as broken crayons collided with last week’s confiscated toys. Too bad I couldn’t lock my poor self-control up in there, too. In a matter of an hour, I’d gone from promising myself I’d wait to check my phone until after school was dismissed, to caving to temptation’s call at the first sight of my purse like a back-alley addict.
I stepped away from my incarcerated device and re-armed myself with lemon-scented antibacterial wipes, searching for a surface left to sanitize before my first graders arrived and happily distracted me from my spiraling restraint. I’d already fluffed the beanbag chairs in Red Rover’s Reading Corner, tacked this week’s favorite art projects to the craft wall, and wiped every hard-to-reach smudge off Frog and Toad’s aquarium glass—all to keep my mind from wandering too far down the rabbit hole of unanswered questions.
I ran a damp wipe across the wooden date blocks displayed at the edge of my desk, pausing to update the archaic calendar system. Proclaimed there, in unapologetically red stencil paint, was last Friday’s date: November 15. But with just three clunky turns of the last block, I fast-forwarded time.
If only I could do the same in my personal life—skip all the wait times between job interviews, blind dates, medical appointments . . . and life-changing emails. Oh, how I envied my students’ ability to make the most of every moment, even the ones that seemed to last an eternity.
Or in my case, fourteen months, one week, and three days.
Not that I was keeping track.
The vibration of a door closing down the hallway, followed by the rhythmic tap-slide-tap of heels caused me to glance up from my clean-a-thon. I’d know those footsteps anywhere. Just like I knew exactly where they were headed.
Jenna Rosewood, my closest colleague and friend, halted in my open doorway not thirty seconds later, fisting two morning lattes wrapped in insulated sleeves. “Hey, they were all out of those blueberry muffins you like, so . . .” Her statement slid to a stop. If a pause could be considered judgy, this one had pounded the gavel and called the courtroom to attention. “Lauren,” she began on a sigh, “why are you sanitizing your classroom again when you already did your whole deep-cleaning ritual thing before we left on Friday?”
I worked to wipe all traces of guilt from my face, but my best friend could sniff out pathetic coping mechanisms better than an AA sponsor. “There were a couple areas I missed.” A lie so unconvincing not even my most gullible first grader would have believed it.
With enviable ease, Jenna wove her slender hips through my classroom’s narrow rows, careful not to bump the yoga balls and balance boards tucked beneath my students’ desks—four-legged chairs were overrated. Her distressed designer jeans and flouncy-tiered blouse were a perfect blend of earth tones against her Mediterranean skin. This, I knew from experience, was considered Jenna’s “dressed-down” look. Seriously, the woman didn’t own a single pair of elastic-waist pants, a glaring contrast in nearly every photo we took together, as my favorite wardrobe piece was a yoga pant that had yet to fraternize with a gym mat. But the plain truth was that no matter what Jenna wore on her svelte frame, she would always look more like a Calvin Klein mannequin come to life than a third-grade teacher in a working-class school district.
“Or perhaps,” she said, assessing me as she pushed my ladybug tape dispenser aside and perched on the edge of my desk, “you sent out another email inquiry, and now you’re overanalyzing life as we know it. Again.”
So yeah, my best friend had both beauty and brains. Not to mention a husband who saved impossibly sick children for a living at Boise’s most reputable pediatric hospital.
I paused a beat before scrubbing at a pretend ink spot near the edge of my conference table. “Maybe.”
“I thought we agreed you were gonna let all this go for a while. Take a breather. Live your life and enjoy the season you’re in right now. I swear you were present for that conversation, because it happened less than a week ago. In your living room.” Her eyes softened to a sympathetic plea. “You have to stop trying to make it happen. You’ll hear something when you’re meant to.”
I grabbed her caffeine offering and tried, once again, to accept her advice like a tear-off daily proverb. Immediately an image of King Solomon wearing Prada ankle boots and sipping on a skinny Americano materialized in my mind.
Jenna blew at the steam swirling out of the tiny spout in her latte lid. “Speaking of living your life, how did the recital go Saturday night with your sister? I nearly died at that pic you sent of little Iris! She had to be the prettiest ballerina on that stage.”
I smiled at the memory of my niece in her pale pink tutu and tight auburn bun, fully aware of Jenna’s tried-and-true diversion tactic. Bring up my niece, and I melt faster than butter on a toaster waffle. “She really was. She’s making plans to spend the night at my place soon so she can have a dance-off with Skye and me again—only she made sure to tell me she won’t be wearing her nice tights to my house ever again, since last time Skye’s nails snagged them during their twirling routine.”
My cocker spaniel had been named by the democracy system of my first-grade class last fall, a debate that had lasted nearly two weeks. My students had divided themselves into three potential name categories—Shopkins, PAW Patrol, and, of course, Marvel superheroes. But in the end, Skye from PAW Patrol had beaten out Black Panther and Twinky Winks. A victory as far as I was concerned. Even the most confident of women would falter at scolding a Twinky Winks in a public setting.
“S-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y.” Jenna drew out the word with all the dramatics currently available to a thirty-two-year-old. “That kid is so adorable. I can’t believe she’ll be in kindergarten next year.”
My heart lurched to my throat as I brought the latte to my lips for the first time. “I know. She’s growing up so quickly.” How did that happen? Hadn’t I only been rocking her in that swanky delivery room less than a year ago? Because five years seemed like a mathematical impossibility.
I didn’t miss the way Jenna’s eyes brewed with questions as she watched me take another careful sip of my coffee. “So . . . did you get a moment to talk to your sister after the performance like you’d hoped?”
Instantly, my sentimental bubble deflated. “If by talking you mean Lisa pointing out every available—or nearly available—man at the recital to me.” I shook my head and set my cup down, fighting the urge to pace. “She does this horrible flirty thing with her voice when she does it, too, like she’s talking through a cloud of helium.” It was the voice she used every time she slapped on her self-appointed matchmaker badge in my presence. “I’m not joking when I say she must have introduced me to six different men over the course of two hours. And she knows I’ve taken a break from the dating scene. We’ve discussed it numerous times, but like usual, my sister only hears what she wants to hear.”