“Boring?” I cried before I could stop myself. “Boring? Are you kidding me?” I started to laugh. “Oh my God, you have no idea.” Boring people do not flee the Luxembourg government, I wanted to add, but I kept my mouth shut.
Roux gave me the side eye as I tried to compose myself. “Riiiiight,” she said. “Okay, I’m just going to back up slowly and hustle myself to class while you figure out something to do about this.”
“You do that,” I told her, still giggling. “I’m sure I’ll come up with a creative use for some safety pins and paper clips in the meantime.”
“That’s the spirit,” Roux said. “Trust me, I’m trying to save you from social extinction.” Then she turned and walked down the hall, so confident in her stride that people moved to get out of her way.
I could see that step 2 of SNP was going to need some revising. As was my uniform.
I shook it off, though, because I had bigger fish to fry. I needed to get my class schedule synced up with Jesse Oliver’s, which meant I needed to get into the school’s computer system.
This is always my favorite part of the job.
The administrative office smelled like old paper and burned coffee and looked like the kind of room where dreams go to die. There was a halfhearted GO HARPER! sign stretched across one wall, but it just looked ambivalent. It could have said, WE LOVE CHEESE! for all it seemed to care.
There was only one secretary in the office that morning, her desk empty save for a large box of Kleenex and a photo of her two kids. She was typing away furiously and didn’t even look up when I stood right in front of her desk. “And how may I help you this morning?” she asked.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Maggie, I’m new here, and I think I have a problem with my class schedule.”
“Do you now?” She didn’t make it sound like a question, though.
I plopped down into the chair next to her desk, balancing my coffee in one hand as I began to rifle through my bag. “It’s just that I’m in geometry, and my parents, they want me to, you know, reach my potential and try to maximize my abilities.” I had no idea what I was saying, but it sounded good to me.
“Your class assignments are permanent unless—”
“Oh my God, are those your kids?” I changed topics like a seasoned pro. Which I was. “They’re so cute!” And they were cute, in a sort of missing-teeth chipmunk way. “Twins?”
This time, the secretary actually smiled a little. “Yes,” she said. “Six years old.”
“What are their names?”
“Detroit and Dakota.” She smiled a little more while I tried not to widen my eyes too much. Apparently I had gotten off easy with a name like Margaret. “They just started first grade yesterday and—”
“Oh my God, I am so sorry!” The coffee fell from my fingers and flooded over the box of Kleenex and the desk, dripping into the secretary’s lap. I had made sure it was lukewarm beforehand, just in case of that. “Oh, no, let me help!”
She leaped up from her seat as the coffee continued to stream across the desk, flooding everything in its path. “It’s all right,” she said, trying to hold her soaked sweater away from her. “Just let me, um, get cleaned up here.” She tried to wipe the coffee off her desk, which was useless. Believe me, I know how to make a real mess. “Oh, geez.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “I’m such a butterfingers. Maybe too much caffeine this morning. I’ll totally pay for the dry cleaning.”
She nodded, already looking down the hall toward the restroom. “Why don’t you come back later this afternoon?” she said. “We can talk about your schedule then and …”
“Great,” I said, and made a mental note to send her an anonymous fruit basket. Detroit and Dakota would probably love it.
“I’m just going to go get cleaned up and … yeah.” She didn’t look thrilled with me, and I couldn’t blame her. I hate when innocents are in the line of fire.
As soon as she disappeared into the restroom, I slid into her seat and immediately pulled up the log-in screen. Her user name was still there, but the password was empty.
Hello, kiddos.
I tried entering “DETROIT” but it didn’t work. Then I tried “DAKOTA.”
Bingo.
Sometimes it’s so easy that it’s not even fun.
My fingers moved fast, pulling up my and Jesse’s class schedules. He had chem, French, calculus (which he was failing, I noted), English III, and AP US History. Also, despite the failing math grade, he was an A/B+ student. “He totally cheats,” I whispered to myself.
I opened up my schedule next and immediately put myself into Jesse’s French and calculus classes, dropping geometry for good. I thought about putting myself in AP English, as well, but come on. Like I have the time to read all those books and write the papers.
The secretary still hadn’t come back yet (coffee can be such a bitch to get out of cotton, I knew from my own clumsy experience), so I took a risk and opened up Roux’s class schedule. She had French, too, but I wasn’t about to move her into our class. I wasn’t going to spend an hour every day listening to Roux translate “Why is your uniform so boring?” or “What do you have against accessorizing?”
I logged out and slid myself away from the desk and out of the dusty office just as the bathroom door swung open. The secretary wasn’t thrilled to see me in the hallway. “So sorry!” I said again. “So klutzy! I’m amazed I haven’t spent half my life in traction!”