19
LIA
“Come on,” Polly begged, making puppy dog eyes at me from the doorway of my bedroom. “Please come out, you need this!”
“The only thing I need right now is to grade all of these assignments,” I said, ruffling the stack of booklets at the edge of my bed. “And maybe a bottle of wine,” I added with a wink as I reached for the glass of pinot on my nightstand.
I was perched on my bed beside the mountain of homework that I needed to grade by tomorrow morning. They were turned in Friday, and I had already put them off all weekend, waiting until the last minute to grade them before Monday. I had gotten my red pen and my wine, now all I needed was some peace and quiet.
Unfortunately, ‘peace and quiet’ wasn’t on Polly’s itinerary for the night. Ever since the debacle with Benjamin, she had been attempting to drag me to the bar for a ‘girl’s night out.’ It was easy to brush her off during the week, “it’s a school night!” I would protest, but she became more persistent when the weekend hit. Now, Sunday, her urgency was at an all-time high.
“Maybe next weekend,” I offered, even though I know I have no intention of leaving the comfort of my bed or my sweatpants then, either. I was not like Polly. I was not the type to process my grief on the dancefloor, or between shots of Fireball. I preferred sobbing into my pillow in between binge-watching episodes of Gilmore Girls.
“Fine,” Polly sighed in defeat. “But next weekend I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer!”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded dismissively. I listened to the sound of her footsteps stomping down the hallway and, once I heard our apartment door slam behind her, I collapsed onto the bed.
I stared at my phone, waiting for it to ring even though I knew it wouldn’t. I blocked Benjamin’s number. I had to. What happened in the cafe was a wakeup call. A reminder of why Benjamin and I were always destined to fail.
He was the billionaire shifter and I was the girl from the school. He was the legal guardian of one of my students and I was the teacher. He was notorious for being unable to commit to women, and I was the girl with an inherent inability to trust. We couldn’t be more wrong for each other. And no matter how right things felt when our bodies touched, it was always going to end with someone getting hurt. Better for it to happen now, rather than later. Better for it to have been a clean break, without the school board or the tabloids getting involved.
I had gotten out most of the tears and fought through the anger and resentment phase of our unofficial ‘break up.’ Now I just felt empty. I pulled myself back up on the bed and took a sip of wine, then I reached for the first assignment in the stack of homework projects that I needed to grade.
Every week I assigned my class a take-home project that needed to be completed with the help of their parents. The idea was that the project forced parents to take an interest in what was going on at school and get involved. But the sad reality was that most of the time, the nannies just ended up working through the project themselves at the last minute.
For this past week’s project, I provided each of my students with a storybook. The pages inside each book had been pre-printed with the texts of different fairy tales. One book was Rapunzel, another told the story of Snow White. Besides the block of text printed at the bottom of each page, the book was blank. The assignment was for students to read the story with their parents, then work together to create illustrations that matched the passage of text on each page.
Flipping through the stack of completed books, I couldn’t help but wonder, cynically, how many nannies were up late the night before, racing to complete their illustrations.
It was times like these that I questioned whether I really belonged at a school like Vivatin Day. I wanted to help kids that fell between the cracks, but even my best efforts to build real connections seem to falter and fall short.
The truth was if it wasn’t for Harper, I probably would have considered leaving Vivatin Day a long time ago. Helping Harper gave me a reason to stay. But now that Harper didn’t need me anymore, I was wondering if I really belonged at Vivatin. I felt like I was missing my real calling. That I should be doing more.
I flipped open the first assignment and immediately my suspicions were verified. The storybook Aladdin had been painstakingly illustrated with drawings far beyond the preschool level. I flipped through the pages, and felt my heart sink. Then, knowing there was not a damn thing I could do about it, I marked the back cover with a passing grade and moved on to the next book in the stack.
I had made it through the first half of the stack by the time I needed to take a break to refill my wine glass. I checked my phone, then reminded myself again that I blocked Benjamin’s number, and I reached for the next book.
Maybe it was because Benjamin was still lingering on my mind, but when I see Harper’s curly handwriting on the cover of the storybook, my heart instinctively leapt in my chest.
I considered moving the storybook to the bottom of the stack, but then I convinced myself that it was better to tear off the band aid and deal with it then. I took a deep breath and dropped the book onto my lap.
‘The Tale of the Lost Queen,’ the cover read, in squiggly magic market letters.
I don’t remember this fairytale… I thought, frowning as I flipped open the cover.
The first page was an elaborate colored pencil drawing of spindly grey buildings, stretched to comical proportions in front of a bright blue sky. In the center of the page, there was a girl with yellow crayon hair and a bright pink crown.
‘Once upon a time,’ the text began on the first page, ‘in the faraway kingdom of Charleston, there lived a special princess named Harper.’
I felt my heart thump. This wasn’t the storybook I assigned to Harper. In fact, this wasn’t a storybook at all. This was a recreation. Someone reprinted their own story, painstakingly following the format of the storybooks I had assigned so that it would look identical to the other projects. Someone had written their own fairytale, replacing the one I had originally assigned to Harper. And the flutter in my stomach told me that that someone was Benjamin Johnson.
I flipped the page and found another rendering of the girl in the crown, this time accompanied by an impossibly tall man wearing a matching pink crown and an impressive attempt at a grey suit.
‘One day Princess Harper was sent to live with her uncle, King Benjamin, who was a beast, in a strange place called Shyft Lofts Castle.’
Flip.
‘King Benjamin loved Princess Harper very much, but he had never taken care of a special little princess before, and he needed a little bit of help.’
Flip.
‘Luckily there was a very kind and beautiful woman named Lia who was willing to help him.’
Flip.
‘Princess Harper adored Lia, and soon King Benjamin did, too. Shyft Lofts Castle began to feel like a home for the first time.’
I flipped the page and my eyes froze on an illustration of the tall king in the grey suit and pink crown, Benjamin, embracing a woman with flowing blonde hair and a blue Vivatin Day polo shirt, me.
‘The truth was, King Benjamin had been living a dark and lonely life at Shyft Lofts Castle. His beast was slowly taking over. Princess Harper and Lia brought color and light into his life, and the king realized that he had finally found his Queen.’
Flip.
‘King Benjamin hoped that Lia would be his queen so they could be a family and live happily ever after… but then something terrible happened.’
Flip; the page was shaded entirely black with crayon, and in the center there was a gnarly depiction of a dragon exhaling glitter-paint plumes of fire.
‘King Benjamin was confronted by a terrible monster.’
Flip.
‘The king knew that the monster would hurt the people that he loved the most. So, in order to protect his beloved queen, the king lied. He told the monster that Lia was just a teacher.’
Flip.
‘The king had told the lie to protect his queen from the terrible monster, but Lia was hurt. She ran away, before the king could explain himself.’
I flipped to the next page, where King Benjamin was speared by his sword, his face twisted in agony.
‘King Benjamin realized that he had lost the only woman he had ever loved. Without his queen, his clan was incomplete…’
Flip.
‘King Benjamin vowed to never stop searching for his lost queen.’
My eyes were already dripping with tears and I felt my entire body prickling with the rush of emotions. Both the reminder of sadness and the sudden exhilaration of renewed hope.
I flipped to the final page in the book, and this time there wasn’t a typed passage or illustration. There was just a note, penned in deep black ink.
‘Lia, I can’t beg you to understand or forgive me… all I can do is beg that you’ll give me the chance to explain myself. I thought I was protecting you, but it’s obvious to me now that I only managed to hurt you. The truth is, I would have been proud to call you mine that day. I asked for your trust, and I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to earn it. If you’re willing to give me another chance, you can find me where we shared our first date. (That’s right… I called it a date).’
‘Sunday night. You pick the time… I’ll be there, waiting for you. If I don’t see you by midnight, I’ll accept that you’ve moved on and I won’t bother you again.’
I was staring at the words, and then the realization hit me. Sunday night. That’s tonight.
Benjamin was waiting for me, right now, at the Shyft Hotel West. I clicked on my phone, bringing the home screen to life. It was 11 pm. That meant that I had less than an hour, less than an hour to shimmy out of my sweatpants and make it downtown.
I felt a dose of panic added to the emotional stew brewing inside of me, and then I jumped from the bed, downed the rest of my wine, and reached for a pair of jeans and my MetroCard.
In this fairytale, the queen is taking the subway to find her beasty king.