Learning Curve

The one he liked to wallow in right before the start of a new school year. But everything felt as if it was slipping out of his grasp. As if Emily Sullivan had ripped all the self-indulgent pleasure out of his back-to-school misery and twisted it into something…something even more twisted than usual.

Ideas crackled through his brain like static. He couldn’t stop considering all the possibilities, imagining all the delights of an ongoing ideological duel with a well-educated, intelligent adversary. The thrust and parry that could be played out before a captive but fascinated adolescent audience. It was tempting. It was intriguing. It was downright stimulating.

But Joe didn’t want to be tempted or intrigued. He certainly didn’t want to be stimulated. And definitely not by some chirpy student teacher with short skirts and big, wide eyes. Eyes with sparkly silver spikes that…

Stop right there. Get a grip, Wisniewski.

Joe took a deep breath, but regretted it instantly. There, just beneath the odors of musty texts and stale coffee, was a faint trace of something fresh and floral.

It was going to be a long, long year.

Dear Reader,

All of us have been touched, in some way, by special teachers who opened our lives to the possibilities beyond the classroom basics. In Learning Curve, Emily and Joe are given a chance to say thank-you for the lessons they’ve learned.

The teachers I tend to remember are those who shoved me out of my comfort zone and dared me to try something new. One of them told me I should try to write a book, and even though I laughed at the time and waited more than ten years to follow his advice, his praise meant enough to make me take that first uncomfortable step into a new world. This book is dedicated to him—my own small way of saying thank-you.

I’d love to hear from my readers! Please come for a visit to my Web site at www.terrymclaughlin.com, or find me at www.wetnoodleposse.com or www.superauthors.com, or write to me at P.O. Box 5838, Eureka, CA 95002.

Wishing you plenty of happily-ever-after reading,

Terry McLaughlin

LEARNING CURVE

Terry McLaughlin

For Professor Tom Gage, who told me I could write—

and then made me believe it, too.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER ONE

JOSEPH P. WISNIEWSKI listened to the slap and shuffle of his Birkenstocks echo along the empty corridor of Caldwell High School. He knew where his steps were taking him, but he wasn’t sure why anymore. That echo seemed to ping around the empty spaces inside him, searching for the answer.

He’d give himself until the end of the term to figure things out or hand in his resignation. To quit teaching.

He navigated a crooked course along the wide vinyl hall dulled by Mr. Stenquist’s ineffective floor wax, avoiding the sunlight flooding through the open classroom doors to nurse his hangover in the shadows. It wouldn’t be so easy to detour around the back-to-school business with his fellow faculty that was sure to nudge his early-morning headache into a mid-afternoon migraine.

“Suck it up, Wisniewski,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over the last batch of four-day stubble he’d feel until deep into Thanksgiving vacation. “This is why you get paid the big bucks.” Steeling himself to confront another school year, he shouldered his way through the office door.

Linda Miller glanced up from her command post behind the reception counter. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Joe’s grimace eased into a smile. The middle-aged secretary’s crusty personality masked a gooey cream center. Linda might be mouthier than the average clerk, but she anted up pay phone coins for teen crises and found more niches for hopeless grads than the local armed forces recruiting office. “Hey, Linda.”

“What? No tan from the tropics? No handwoven shirt from Nepal? No bruises from a dustup with a jealous husband? Exactly what kind of summer vacation did you take?”

“The restful kind.” He turned to pull two months’ junk mail and memos out of his office box. “And I told you that black eye was a misunderstanding. Pamela was legally separated. The divorce decree was in the mail.”

“Hmmph.” She came around the counter with her nose in the air, sniffing with a smirk. “Aramis. A seductive scent. With undertones of Excedrin and Scope that almost disguise the subtle hint of too much Scotch.”

“Come on, Linda. Even you can’t smell Excedrin.”

“No, but I can see that whatever you took isn’t living up to its advertising.” She pinned him to the wall with a look that made him feel like he was ten years old and smeared with enough incriminating evidence to get grounded for life. “Just look at yourself. What a waste of tall, dark and handsome, not to mention all that education. Have you ever once used those over-the-top looks or that under-the-radar charm to pursue anyone suitable to be the mother of your children?” She shook her head. “You know, your brains are interesting enough when they aren’t pickled, and your conversation’s kind of pleasant when you bother to move beyond the grunting stage.”

Because he was just about to grunt a response before moving out of firing range, Joe stood his ground, resigned to taking a few more lumps. Knowing Linda, they were coming.

“Shame on you. Forty years old and nothing much to show for it.”

“Thirty-nine.”

“The way you look today, fifty would have been a generous guess.” She wagged a scolding finger under his nose. “Well, it looks like you’re finally going to pay the piper.”

The waving finger made his stomach pitch and roll. “I’m really not in the mood for a lecture on overindulgence at the moment.”

“That’s right—when it comes to lecturing, you’re the pro. But I’m not talking about talk.”

Something about the gleam in her eyes set off alarm bells that intensified the throbbing in his head. “What is it? What’s going on?”

The phone interrupted. Linda’s lips spread in a smile that hinted of hell on earth. “Duty calls,” she said, patting his arm before she retreated to her post. “Duty calls us all, sooner or later.”

He followed her into the cramped area behind the counter, dumping his unread mail into the wastebasket. Carefully nudging the clutter on her desk aside with one hip, he settled in to wait while she recited the late registration litany for a new parent.

“…Yes, I’m sure that would be all right, Joyce.” She tried to wave him away, but he dodged and stuck. “Donny can take the forms home Monday after classes.”

“Tell me,” he said with a growl when she dropped the receiver back in its cradle.

She folded her hands over a stack of fall sports schedules. “Maybe if you kept in touch, you wouldn’t come back to nasty little surprises.”

Behind him, another door clicked open. “Joe?”

“Speaking of nasty little surprises,” Linda muttered under her breath.

He turned to see Kyle Walford, Caldwell’s principal, step out of his office. Joe’s headache shifted into migraine mode ahead of schedule.

“Joe, buddy. Looking good.” Kyle swept a hand through his hair and smoothed down his tie as he moved toward the reception area. Joe wondered, not for the first time, how Kyle’s wife got the greasy stuff out of his ties. Then he wondered if there was any way to get out of grasping that same hand when Kyle offered it in greeting.

“Where have you been?” said Kyle. “I tried calling you all day yesterday.”

“That’s odd. There was no message on my machine.”

Kyle threw a companionable arm around Joe’s shoulders, an awkward position for them both since Joe was several inches taller. “Well, you’re here now, and there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

“I was going to check on a few things before the faculty meeting.” Joe dug his heels deep into his Birkenstocks, resisting Kyle’s attempt to maneuver him into the principal’s office. “I don’t want to be late.”

“You can’t be late if I’m not there,” Kyle pointed out, flashing even, white caps.

Joe remembered that Kyle’s smile had been bartered for a local dentist’s outfield billboard. He didn’t smile back. “Who is it that’s important enough to keep everyone waiting?”

“Well, Joe…it’s your student teacher.”

It wasn’t often that Joe got angry enough to worry about high blood pressure. But he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his system now. There it was, coiling in his gut and rippling along his jaw. He didn’t want his classroom turned into some sort of petri dish, didn’t want a stranger probing into the hows and whys of what he did—especially when he didn’t know how and why himself anymore. He just wanted to get his job done and make his escape every afternoon shortly after three o’clock. “I don’t have student teachers, Kyle.”

“Plenty of teachers do, sooner or later.” Kyle playfully punched Joe’s arm. “And now it’s your turn.”

“I don’t have student teachers, Kyle.”

“You’ve got one now.” Kyle’s fingers twitched a bit as he smoothed his already smooth tie. “Come on into my office and I’ll introduce you.”

EMILY SULLIVAN RECROSSED her legs, right over left this time, and reminded herself not to swing the suspended foot. Bruising the principal’s shins wasn’t the way to make a professional impression.

She reached down to tug at the hem of her skirt and watched it snap back into place a couple of inches above her knees, just like it had snapped back the other six times she’d tugged at it. Maybe she should have gone with the ankle-length skirt. Oh, well. No use second-guessing her morning fashion decision—and she did tend to step on that longer skirt and trip when getting out of chairs. Tripping and falling flat on her face probably created a less professional appearance than swinging a shin-bruising foot.

How could anyone relax in the principal’s office? Okay, the principal probably managed just fine. And at least she wasn’t staring at the fake walnut paneling from a juvenile delinquent’s point of view.

A delinquent adult’s, maybe. Her family certainly seemed to think so. That was why she had to clinch this student teaching assignment. It was her last, best chance to launch her grown-up life—even if, at twenty-nine, she was rusting on the launch pad. She’d studied subjects from anthropology to zoology, she’d waited tables in Dublin and sold perfume in Marseilles. She’d done just about everything but decide what to do with her life, blithely hopping from one campus, one major, one country, one job, to another. Now it was time to choose a career and stick with it. She’d run out of hopping room.

Kyle walked in, wearing his alligator-on-campaign grin. A dark, rangy man trailed him into the room, closed the door, and slouched against it, his hands in his pockets. Emily got a brief impression of worn jeans, wrinkled white shirt, black hair in need of a trim and waves of hostility.

“Emily Sullivan,” said Kyle, “meet Joe Wisniewski.”

She rose, hand extended, lifting her chin to look her new master teacher straight in his bloodshot eyes. So this was The Wiz, the infamous seducer of impressionable young minds and restless older women. He was exactly what she’d imagined, right down to the scruffy sandals.

What she hadn’t imagined was the potent appeal tucked inside the Heathcliff packaging. The sexual left hook knocked the wind out of her before she saw it coming.

“How do you do?” she managed to ask when she got her breath back.

Silence. Emily fought the urge to tug at her skirt until it morphed into a shroud. She wanted to wear it as she slipped into the hole in the ground she felt opening beneath her. And just when the absence of sound or movement had stretched her nerves to the snapping point, The Wiz shrugged away from the door and took her hand in his.

“Fine,” he said. His dark laser beam stare locked in on Kyle. “Just fine. Thanks.”

Emily slipped her hand out of his oversize grip and sank back into her chair. She would have preferred to dive under it instead, to tuck her head in the emergency position and pray that the impending nuclear blast didn’t spew too much radiation in her direction. Something was wrong—understatement alert. The tension in this office was a palpable, living thing. A thing with pastrami breath and a sinus condition, camped at an open fire. Which would explain why it was getting so warm in here. And hard to breathe. She tried to swallow without gulping out loud.

“So…” Kyle’s smile wavered a bit at the edges. “You might remember Emily’s brother, Joe. Jack Sullivan?”

Another marathon silence followed the question. Then, with a flick of a glance in Emily’s direction, Joe grunted. “I might.”

“He was a senior the first year you taught here at Caldwell, wasn’t he?” Kyle didn’t wait for Joe’s answer. “You made a big impression on young Jack, I hear. A big impression.”

The Wiz might have been carved in stone, except for the tiny muscle rippling along his jaw.

Kyle vaulted over another conversation chasm. “Jack Sullivan, Senior, was mighty impressed, too, I understand.”

“Is that so?”

Emily winced. She supposed that “impressed” was one way to describe sputtering, splotchy-faced outrage.

Actually, the member of the Sullivan clan who was the most enthralled, the most entranced, the most impressed by The Great and Powerful Wiz was impressionable thirteen-year-old Emily. She would sit in her spot at the Sullivan dining room table, swinging both feet, quietly devouring Jack’s civics class quote of the day and the delicious debates that followed like servings of dessert.

She’d never taken her turn in the classroom of the man behind the uproar. Shortly after Jack’s graduation, her parents had moved from the tiny mill town of Issimish to shorten Dad’s hour-long commute to his job in Seattle. And her fascination with the infamous Mr. Wisniewski had tangled with her fantasies into a knotty teenage crush.

Joe shifted his attention in her direction. “Is that so?” he asked again in that soft, dangerous voice.

“Yes, it is.” Time to focus on her goal, stiffen her backbone, and turn on the charm. She smiled her best Innocent-Your-Honor smile. “Quite an impression. In fact, that’s what brings me here.”

JOE CLIMBED THE STAIRS to the second floor of Caldwell’s main building that afternoon and headed toward his room. He shoved his hands into his pockets, silently cursing the unnatural alignment of crater-plowing asteroids, planet-destroying supernovas, galaxy-sucking black holes and all other cosmic disasters that had sent Ms. Emily Sullivan into his path, not to mention his classroom.

God. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was chirpiness. Emily Sullivan could give chirping lessons to a million yellow puffballs carpeting a commercial chicken incubator. And, as if her own big-blue-eyed version wasn’t bad enough, she’d gone and spread it like a virus, infecting the male portion of the Caldwell High faculty within minutes of bouncing into the conference room. She’d had them eating out of her fluttery little hands—right after they’d finished tripping over their tongues at her long-legged, short-skirted entrance.

Ed Brock, senior class adviser, had never been so animated about homecoming plans before Emily piped up with a few suggestions. Russell Strand, head math geek, almost choked in his own bow tie when she giggled a wrinkle-nosed giggle over one of his DOA puns. And the football coach couldn’t speak at all for a few moments after Emily’s blond curls brushed over his cheek as she reached to collect her complimentary season pass.

Even the female faculty members weren’t immune to Emily’s enthusiasm, applauding her proposal for a benefit debut performance of the annual spring play. Joe hated contagious enthusiasm almost as much as chirpiness, especially when it was the fund-raising kind. Most fund-raisers were a big waste of time, as far as he was concerned. They played havoc with scheduling, burned holes in the ozone layer and brought in approximately seventeen cents per hour of mental and manual labor. And now he was stuck with trying to round up student volunteers for the theatrical benefit.

Stuck. Stuck with a student teacher he hadn’t expected and didn’t want. Stuck with the administrative duties for a social studies department chair sidelined with complications from a difficult pregnancy. He was tempted to dump his student teacher on his chair’s long-term sub. It would be his personal social chemistry experiment: mix one part ignorance and two parts incompetence. No danger of an explosion—the school board had sputtered along for years on a similar formula.

He popped another couple of pain relievers and slipped through his classroom door, hoping to turn the lock for a few moments of peace and privacy. But Ms. Sullivan had already invaded this space, too. There she was: probing.

He watched her bend over to read the caption of a faded political cartoon pinned to the bottom edge of one of his bulletin boards. And he tried, he really did try not to notice the way that short skirt slid up the backs of those long, shapely thighs, or the way one of those blond party streamers slipped across her forehead to tease the tip of her turned-up nose.

God. Even her hair was chirpy.

Because he resented having to roll his own tongue off the floor and back into his mouth, he growled a bit more than usual. “There must have been an incredible flood of last-minute student teachers this year. I thought the university avoided placing them in out-of-the-way districts like Issimish, especially when there are so many more options closer to Seattle.”

“That’s right.” She straightened and turned to face him. “I was the one who suggested Caldwell. I asked my university adviser to pull some strings to get me assigned here. Specifically, to work with you.”

“Why?”

She twisted her hands together. “Because of what you did to my brother.”

“Jack?”

“Yes.”

Joe pulled his hands out of his pockets. “What did I do to Jack?”

“You inspired him.”

“No.” Joe felt something like panic welling up inside. “I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.” She took a step forward. “You changed his life. For a little while, anyway. But you did.”

He frowned and moved away from her. Around behind his desk, where it was safe.

She followed, facing him across its scarred oak surface. “You encouraged him to think, for the first time, his own thoughts, to question all the ideas that had been handed to him.” She ran a finger along a crooked gouge. “It may have been a brief deflection, but it was an important one. I think it was very important—downright momentous, in fact—that Jack took those first wobbly steps off the family’s well-beaten path.”

Joe didn’t want to be held responsible for anyone’s first wobbly steps, or for anything momentous. And he really didn’t want to be a human detour sign. Not unless it meant he could make Emily Sullivan disappear.

She turned back to the bulletin board and pointed at the curling slips of yellowed paper. “I’ll bet some of these headlines are the same ones you pinned up on your bulletin board the first year you taught here. The same ones that were here when Jack was sitting in this room.”

“I’m not big on redecorating. If you want the bulletin update job, it’s yours.”

Joe regretted the offer the moment he heard himself make it. It sounded like he was knuckling under and accepting the situation. But what else could he do? There she stood with those big blue eyes and those tousled curls and those odd little curves at the corners of her mouth that made her look like she was smiling even when she wasn’t.

She couldn’t be smiling all the time. Could she?

And what had he been regretting and resenting before he got sidetracked? Oh, yeah—there she stood, in her newly assigned spot, expecting some newly assigned duties. “There.” He waved in the direction of a particularly ragged display. “If you decide to stay, and if I decide you can—and that’s a couple of big ifs—there’s your first assignment.”

Emily laughed. Joe watched her nose scrunch up and felt a throat-constricting kinship with Russell and his bow tie.

“I wouldn’t dream of touching these bulletin boards,” she said. “They’re absolutely you. Look at this.” She walked over to one and then turned, crooking a finger in invitation.

Joe didn’t want to deal with overt invitations. Or covert invitations, or invert invitations, or any other kind of invitation that would lure him too close. “I know what’s on my walls.”

“Come on and take a look.” The finger kept curling, tugging at him with hypnotic pale pink nail polish. “Please.”

He scuffed across the room and leaned down to squint at a faded editorial on Ford’s pardon of Nixon. It was hard not to notice her fresh, floral scent competing with eau de chalk dust and essence of floor wax, but he thought he was doing an admirable job of blocking it out. “Yeah. Ford. Nixon. So?”

“There’s nothing here about Nixon going to China. I checked.”

“Try a little word association with just about anyone you meet. Nixon, Watergate. Nixon, crook. Not Nixon, China.”

Emily straightened, smiling her tilt-edged smile. “That’s my point, exactly.”

“Glad you made it. I’d be even gladder to get it.”

She leaned in a bit and lowered her voice. “You are, and I quote, ‘a corrupter of innocent young minds.’”

“Jack Senior, right?”

He thought he saw her wince before she nodded. “Yes.”

“You asked for this teaching assignment to upset your father?”

“Actually, my father finds my choice of a student teaching assignment…fascinating.” She linked her fingers under her chin and gazed up at him with something that looked suspiciously like admiration. “I want to inspire students, the way you inspired my brother. I want to watch you in action, to try to figure out how you do it.”

“No.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. The look on her face was drying up all his spit. “I mean, I don’t know for sure that I do it. If I do do it, I’m not sure how. And even if I thought I could do it, and knew how to do it, I know for sure I don’t know how to show anyone else how to do it.”

Time out. Time to stop right there, before he started making even less sense. But he should definitely stop before her naive enthusiasm—and that soft, dreamy look on her face—made him feel any more stiff and empty, old and dried up.

He shuffled back to his desk and dropped into his chair. “I don’t want to do this, Ms. Sullivan. I’m sorry if you’ve been led to believe differently, but the truth is, I didn’t agree to have a student teacher this year. I don’t work with student teachers anymore. I haven’t for a long, long time. I didn’t even know about your assignment here until a few moments before I met you this morning. And I don’t think this is a good idea, in spite of all your expectations and your obvious enthusiasm.” He slumped lower in his seat and stretched a hand across his forehead. “Or maybe because of them.”