Friday rewind
Eugenie White had woken up on Friday morning having the feeling the day would be extraordinarily shitty, and she had been right. Everything that could go wrong at work went terribly wrong. The photocopy machine was out of order, and she cursed herself for having been lazy the day before and left school without preparing her handouts for the first hour, had to improvise a skit activity which left one of her students breathing into a bag from stage fright, and that was only period 1. By midday, she arrived late at her cafeteria duty and realized a student had stabbed another one in the ear with a spoon, creating very superfluous damage but still, she was immediately called to the Principal’s office after lunchtime to debrief and be assigned a blame.
Thus missing fifteen minutes of her seventh hour, she had to walk around the whole school to gather half of the students of that period who, thinking she was absent that day, had absolutely not defaulted to the study hall where they were supposed to go during a free hour but decided to explore the most forbidden areas of the building, including the fire staircase, the teachers’ restrooms, the janitor’s office where they had searched for chemicals that could be used as drugs and made a mess. She wasn’t even mad when they got back to the classroom, just hoping that the rest of the unlocated pupils was not setting fire on the school or stabbing each other with some other spoons.
“Your class sucks” said a girl who was so disappointed she had to go through the six minutes left of Geography class that she couldn’t hold the protest in, “I wish you were absent, Ms White”
“You’re detained”
“For what?” the girl asked, impertinently.
“For being a very unpleasant individual at the moment. Tomorrow morning, you’ll come sweep the floor”
“Actually, no, my dad got a job in Turkey and we’re leaving, leaving that stupid school, that stupid town, that stupid Geography class”
Eugenie had been about to tell her who the boss was and thinking hard about it, but she took a bit too long to search for the right comeback, and that was the bell. The girl –Monique— slammed the door behind her, and the group left Eugenie dazed, not understanding quite right why the world was so cruel on a Friday. It was her free period then, so she decided to chill, regain composure, and sat at her desk. Why not? She started the kettle, picked out a ginger and apple tea bag from the little pocket of her purse. As the temperature rose high into the boiler and started whistling, Monique erupted back into her classroom, sobbing, her makeup creating streaks of blue and green on her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry I said your class sucks, Ms White!”
“Monique, are you okay?” Eugenie eyed the tea bag in her cup, did this thing that teachers learn to do very early in their careers, which was performing an action of personal importance while feigning attention to a needy member of their class, usually punctuated by some wows, humhums, and some thatscrazys. She poured the hot water inside the cup at the speed of light.
“Nooooo, I am NOT OKAY” Monique broke down, theatrically dropped her bags and her coat on the floor and reached the area behind the desk to hug Eugenie, drooling and spilling snot and sticky melted black eyeliner on Eugenie’s shoulder, “I’m not okay! I don’t want to go to Turkey! I want to die! My parents are evil!”
So Eugenie spent her only break of the day comforting Monique, promising all the heavens that they would keep in touch, with the class, even starting a pen-pal project between Indiana and Turkey, “really, you will do this?”
Absolutely not, there is no time for that shit, Eugenie thought, “of course sweetie! We don’t want you to feel like anyone is going to forget about you!” Everyone is going to forget about you in about a week. At the end of the period, the bell rang, thankfully, and Monique left feeling a lot better, and she was almost at the threshold of the door when she turned around and asked : “actually, can you please write me a note? I kinda sorta skipped a class to come to you”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“What class?”
“Mr O’Donovan’s”
That’s just great. Donal was that stupid English 1 teacher across the hall, and they already had a tense relationship because he was that snob idiot nightmare colleague that no one wanted in life, but now, he would see the note, that bogus excuse Monique and I had an important meeting, and bring it to the Principal with ‘great concern’, she could already imagine it, hear it, ‘now the Geography teacher thinks she can organize meetings during other people’s lessons’ At the end of her last class, her eyes fell on the teacup she had fought so hard to put together earlier and been monopolized from consuming. She sniffed it : cold and the bag had marinated too long. She discarded it in the sink.
She started her car with the very serious agenda to leave school and began driving when suddenly, all hell burst loose. The noise from her vehicle told her she was activating a dying machine, screaming laments from the inside and screeching against the concrete underneath. She stopped, what the fuck NOW? and realized she had a flat tyre. She waited an entire other hour waiting for help and a new wheel, waving goodbye to everyone who was happily driving off to their weekend. She hated every single one of them. Donal was the last one to exit, not even saying goodbye, not even granting her a look. Good, motherfucker, she thought, I hate you the most, now, bring my note to the Principal, like…
She stopped herself from having an internal scene where she would win an imagined argument against him, against the world, and then, at the very end of the day, she finally parked her car in her spot at the garage two blocks from her building, a fourth and brand-new tyre and all good, stepped out into the street and was greeted by one of those free-huggers. A storm was brewing in the sky, she saw, maybe that was the reason why everything had been so crazy, and the air was hot, damp for the Fall season, and the free hugging man had huge sweat stains under his arms, spreading them toward her, “free hug? Come on” he said, “you look like you need one”
“Do. Not. Touch. Me, sir” she hissed at him, keeping him away with her index finger pointed upwards, fury in her eyes. “Stay. Away. From. Me”
“Wow” he backed up in rendition, increasing the volume of his voice, “you are everything that’s wrong in the world, madam”
“No, you are!” she groaned back at him, and, as she did, as he stepped away with actor level sorrow on his face and Eugenie felt the crowd around her, a small disposition of passers-by, slow down their strolls and pause to stare at her with great disapproval, one lady pushing a baby cart sniffing loudly, unimpressed, and a couple next to her, “he just wanted to give you a hug, for the love of God” She hoped they would step into some poo on the next block, or bite into a rotten cookie.
Her card was declined at the night shop next to her building, where she aimed at buying a bottle of wine, cigarettes and some peanuts, so she had to walk two more blocks down the street to find an ATM, her card working just fine then, and make her purchase in cash. “Is it only plan for you night of the Friday?” the shop owner asked her, a very old but very handsome, graceful man pretending not to speak perfect English to trick customers into paying cash.
“Sir, if you don’t mind keeping your nose out of my business”
“Actually” he said, adding a free sample of Menthos –the first kind thing that had happened all day!— to her supplies, “you look like you need it”
She needed a shower too. That was the first thing she did when she got home, finding out that again, the hot water had run out. As she stumbled out of the bathroom, clean but shivering, her cat yelled at her multiple times, demanding the attention she had not been able to provide him as she had entered their home earlier, glancing at her with reproach, and vomited inside one of her slippers.
The moment came when she felt it was over, eventually. Still wrapped in her shower towel, she ate a bowl of hot, spicy noodles with some chicken nuggets, listening to a nice comedy podcast, smoked a cigarette and made up with her cat after she cleaned his vomit and threw both her slippers into the trash –she had no energy to even bring them into the laundry bag—, poured herself a nice glass of wine. She had forgotten the little bag of peanuts, but she was no longer hungry, no longer upset at the universe. Friday nights had that power, the perspective of sleeping in the next day, the idea of two full days of leisure, it healed the wrongs of the world. She opened her laptop and browsed through what had been released on Netflix during the past week, hoping for something with murder and a woman detective coming back to her hometown to solve it, falling in love with her first high school crush against her will.
The divine algorithm which had been built from her daily online habits gave her just that, so she started the first episode and then, she heard the sound of a light rain falling against her window. A storm was coming, she smiled. What could be more perfect at the moment, when she needed the coziness and the shelter so much? With a sigh of content, she poured herself a second glass of wine and paused the introduction, lit the new mango candle that her aunt had shipped to her from California with a postcard that simple read ‘Wish you were hear’, which had made her laugh tenderly. It smelled very good in the house.
And then Barry happened.