My face felt like a balloon deflating. There was a collective hush in the audience before Millie began giving me a pity clap, the rest of the audience joining in soon after.
Do. Not. Cry.
I pinched myself hard under the elbow, hoping to shock my system into not crying. Smiling numbly, I accepted the trophy with a mumbled, “Thanks.”
Miles and I made to leave the stage when Pamela stopped us both.
“Hold on! We need to grab a picture of you two for the school website.”
We stopped moving and turned to face Pamela as she fumbled with the camera on her phone. I shifted my weight and dared a glance toward Miles. Brown eyes tucked behind long dark lashes met my gaze before I looked away. My chest tightened.
Pamela raised the phone up in front of her, looking at us through her screen. “Okay, squeeze in a bit closer. Yes, that’s great! Miles put your arm around Olive. There you go. Just like that. Hold your trophies out in front and…smile.”
TWO
"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."
Charlotte Bront? - Jane Eyre
Grammar Queen.
It was fine. Not a big deal. I followed rules, tried to help everyone, happened to be good at grammar, and this was my reward. My trophy. What I’ll be remembered for.
Most of the teachers mingled in the auditorium after the awards. Miles tried a couple of times to speak to me, but I cut him short. I flew from the room the second Pamela relinquished the mic. Not in a weird way that would make anybody think I was upset, but in a way that suggested I had places to be, like any other busy but emotionally balanced person. I pasted on a smile, pretending to look at my watch, waved to a few friends, and acted like I was headed home to put my new trophy on the mantel.
I didn’t have to be the favorite. When I set about getting my teaching degree, I originally thought I’d make a great second-grade teacher. But I fell in love with English. Reading and literature had become passions, and I knew that I needed to teach them. After my dad’s passing, I had thrown myself into the work, craving the distraction it provided. I found my rhythm, and the students responded to my efforts. It was the best kind of feeling when your hard work began to pay off. My kids were studying the classics like Jane Eyre and Taming of the Shrew and, for the most part, enjoying it—even the boys, thank you very much.
At least…I had thought they were.
I didn’t become a teacher to win popularity contests. That wasn’t the problem. But something about this cut deeply. My job was the one thing I’d had in my life that brought me an escape. Helping teenagers discover the joy of literature and connecting with them over that shared love had kept me going this past year on those days when I didn’t want to get out of bed. I thought I’d been shaping lives, at least to some small degree. But Grammar Queen? It felt like a slap in the face.
I needed to clean something.
I stopped in the teacher’s lounge to grab my half-eaten lunch bag from the fridge and frowned at the crumb-topped tables and dirty dishes piled in the sink. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, there was a group of older teachers, all male, who refused to eat their lunches in their Tupperware or take-out boxes like the rest of us. They preferred to use a plate from the school’s 1960’s collection in the cupboard, completely bypassing the stack of paper plates I purchased and put in front of said cupboard. Then, they would either finish and leave their plate in the sink for “later” or cover their half-eaten scraps in plastic wrap and place them in the fridge where they were left to die and grow fur until somebody （me） couldn’t stand it any longer and washed them. Glancing back at the still-empty hallway, I hesitated. I needed to get out of here, but my hands itched to do something. To make something right again. I didn’t want to get caught by anybody, but maybe I could just wipe the counters down really quick.
Yes. Just the counters.
I was forearm-deep in dirty dishwater at the sink when Miles strode into the room.
He stopped when he saw me and raised his eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
By this time, I had worked through a sufficient amount of my feelings by way of plunging and scrubbing. So, I looked down at the plate of crusted-over sweet-and-sour chicken in my hands and then smiled sweetly back at Miles. “Why don’t you give me your best guess.”
“Taking out some deeply hidden aggression on dishes that you shouldn’t be washing.” He strode to the refrigerator and took out a small lunch cooler.
I ignored the jab. “If I don’t wash them, nobody will.”
“But that’s not your problem,” he said, leaning against the counter.
I gave him a frozen smile. “If everybody had an attitude like that, nothing would ever get done. Some of us have to put in some elbow grease. It’s how the world turns.”
Turning back to my scrubbing, I tried to ignore him, which was a little hard to do when he just stood there, watching me. Fine. I was happy to play this game.
“Congratulations on your award, by the way. Are you going to make a special shelf for it?” My attempt at sarcastic humor fell flat, even to my ears.
Still, he said nothing. I rinsed off the dish and placed it on the drying rack. He was still looking at me, but his eyes seemed deep in thought, which was, honestly, more unnerving than him just criticizing me. I reached for another plate.
“You know, Olive, the awards don’t mean anything. Nobody voted. It’s just for Pamela and Harris to feel good about themselves, more than anything.”
My fingers dropped the plate in my hands, and it splashed into the water, sending droplets all across the front of my shirt. He called me Olive, maybe for the very first time besides our initial meeting nine months earlier. I wasn’t sure he even realized that he had.
“I know,” I said as I grabbed the plate once more. “I’m not upset about anything.”
He nodded his head toward the sink, where I was attacking the dish with hostile fury. “I can see that.”
“I’m serious.” I slowed to a carefree scrub before rinsing the dish and placing it on the drying rack next to the others, then picked up the washcloth hanging on the faucet and began wiping the counter. Maybe if I said it slowly and with conviction, he would believe me. Most people didn’t want to dig too deep; that usually just left everyone feeling uncomfortable. Not Miles. He was watching me with his arms folded like a puzzle he seemed vaguely interested in piecing together.
“Well, that’s good because I almost feel a moral obligation to contest the whole thing. If I showed them the love note you sent me, they’d take away your trophy for sure.”
I gave him a scowl, which only made an annoying grin spread slowly across his face. “That was a casual email to a friend, not an English paper. And I was in a hurry when I wrote it.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “When I saw that our very own Grammar Queen didn’t even know the difference between the possessive ‘your’ and the contraction, I felt a deep sense of worry for the education of our students.”
“It was probably spell check. It’s always getting it wrong.” I wiped the counter, boldly moving closer to force him backward to wipe in front of where he stood. He chuckled and took a step back.