A hangover is never a good way to start a school year.

My alarm clock screams. I’ve already slapped the snooze button into submission four times. If I don’t roll out of bed right damn now, I’ll be late for work.

I rub the scuzz out of my eyes and sit up slowly. My stomach gurgles with an impending rebellion.

“Fuck.”

I swing my legs to the floor and stare at my feet. Wiggle my toes. I’m missing a sock.

The room tilts on an unsteady platform of nausea. At least it stopped the spinning it was doing last night. A quick glance at the other side of my bed confirms I slept alone, which is both a pity and a relief. The weekend turned into a two-day drunkfest. I drank so much at staff development on Friday, Green was starting to look hot. Thank the gods Savage was there to whisk me home to safety before I broke my No Bonking Teachers rule. #GoodSave

Savage and I picked up a couple women at the hotel bar Saturday night, had our fun, and left them shortly after for a midnight showing of Fight Club at the university theater. It was a nice distraction from the threat of work looming just over the Sunday horizon. We spent yesterday morning recovering at home, and then I tamed my back-to-school jitters with half a bottle of vodka while watching a Monty Python marathon.

Admittedly, the liquor was a bad choice, but it felt pretty good in the moment. “The Lumberjack Song” always chills me out when I’m feeling stressed.

I haul myself off the mattress and stumble to the bathroom, belching up a storm. I brace my hands on either side of the sink and stare through the looking glass into my bloodshot green eyes.

“You cannot puke.”

Gurgle, my stomach replies impishly.

I tick off the number of vodka shots I consumed last night for each iteration of the phrase, “And now for something completely different.” When I have to go to the other hand, I give up counting. Damn, it’s a good thing we stayed home; otherwise I might currently be passed out in the parking lot at Oscar’s.

Gurgle. Gurgle.

Gurrr-gggle …

Shit. I’m definitely gonna puke.

I lean over the toilet, stick my finger down my throat, and get it over with. Better here than in the boys’ bathroom across the hall from my room at school. Do you know what middle school boys get up to in bathrooms? Exactly.

Once the deed is done and I’m sure my gut is running on empty, I brush my teeth, shower, dress, and swig half a bottle of Gatorade to curb the dreaded onslaught of dehydration + headache that are sure to follow. I grab my briefcase, which I never cleaned out from last year, and hurry out the door.

Locking the deadbolt with my key, I glance over my shoulder and notice Savage’s car is gone. He probably went to the gym first thing. The guy is a machine. But in case you’re wondering, he works out for the ladies, not because he’s some big health nut. If he weren’t always on the prowl for a body to stick his dick in, he’d be an out-of-shape slob sucking the buttery garlic sauce from the bottom of the pizza box.

I hop into my Camaro and slide the top down. With a couple quick engine revs, I peel out of my driveway and head for Bracken. I arrive with two minutes to spare.

As I saunter into the building, heading toward the main office, I nod at familiar faces and engage in the usual “How-was-your-summer?” bullshit. The people I care about know what I did over the break, and anyone else who’s interested can inquire within their gossip mill of choice in the sixth, seventh, or eighth-grade workrooms. There are a handful of nosy bitches in this school who like to poke their noses in everyone else’s business, especially mine and Savage’s.

Whatever.

As usual, the office is abuzz with activity, but today it’s the adults who are flitting hither and thither rather than the students. With only a few days of preplanning, there’s never enough time to get rooms set up, curriculum planned for the year, and team rules put in place before the masses roll in. Tensions can flare at the start of school, and judging by the frenetic flurry of forward flux, less prepared teachers are already running about like headless chickens.

But not me. I’m cool as a cucumber.

I mosey over to the desk behind the counter and wave at the secretary, Jo. She’s the only person in the building whom I address by her first name when kids aren’t around. We have this unspoken rule at Bracken where staff members call each other by their last name. It’s a sign of casual camaraderie in the face of forced professionalism, I suppose. But to me, Jo is Jo. Or Mrs. Amity if kids are present. With bright, clear blue eyes and a head full of silvery hair, she’s like my second mom. Sometimes she leaves cookies in my mailbox. Ain’t she just the sweetest?

“Hey, Jo,” I say, flashing a big smile.

She jumps up, circles her desk, and tosses her arms around my shoulders. “Hey, honey! How are you? Good summer? Look at that tan!”

I nod. “Spent most of it surfing with Savage in California, so yeah. Good summer. How about you? Any more grandbabies on the way?”

Her eyes twinkle and she grins.

“You’re kidding!” I say.

“Nope. This one’s due in March.” She holds up crossed fingers. “We’re hoping for a girl this time.”

I raise a fist to eye level. She bumps it with hers. “Girls rock the world. With all those boys you’ve got, it’s past time to bring in the X chromosomes.”

“Speaking of chromosomes.” She leans closer and darts her gaze meaningfully to the closed office door where Chokeman used to (allegedly) bang teachers and/or choke students.

I cock my head to the side, waiting for her to continue.

“Dr. Dragov wants to speak with you.”

I arch a brow. “About chromosomes?”

Jo wrings her hands and then lowers them to her desk as she sits and looks away. “Something like that.”

I’m not liking the way she evades my question. I lean forward so the others in the office can’t hear. “Is she a bitch or something?”

Jo starts to answer, but the door opens, and Darcy and Keith Kuntz file out, laughing in their uniquely fake way, looking more like creepy twins than husband and wife.

“You should come ovah this weekend,” Darcy says, her voice twanging with a nasally Yankee accent. “We’uh grilling yuh favorite. Steak. Ray-uh. Just the way ya like it.”

Keith trails behind Darcy with his tail between his legs, as usual. I can only imagine what he’s like in bed with her directing traffic.

A full-body shiver overtakes me.

“I’ll let you know,” a strong female voice replies.

Darcy’s gaze falls on me, and her expression transforms from smiling to disgusted. The downgrade is as abrupt and jarring as a car shifting from fifth to first. I can almost taste the taint of exhaust that look leaves behind in the air. Like the wisps of sulfur after a demon pops out of one plane to torment someone else on another.

“Slate-uh,” she grits out quietly between clenched teeth, dull brown eyes scraping down my front from behind horn-rimmed glasses. Her (unsuccessful) attempt to be hip, I assume.

“Kuntz,” I reply, careful to pronounce it correctly. I flick my gaze at Keith like a booger. “And Kuntz. Nice summer?”

Keith starts to answer, but Darcy cuts him off. “Yes, it was. We’ve been helping Dr. Dragov move into huh new home and getting ready fuh anothuh great yea-uh at Bracken Middle.”

What a suck-up.

A secret smile falls across her lips. It makes me twitchy. Like she knows something juicy and can’t wait to blab it to everyone, but she’s waiting for the right moment to unleash its maximum fuckery potential.

I’ve seen this look before. It’s usually followed by rub-it-in-your-face gloating (Darcy winning Teacher of the Year), a firing (Chokeman), or other bad news (So sorry, Ms. King, but you’ve been moved to the district’s technology services department). I just heard about that last one, and it sucks. Kristina King was a brilliant computer lab teacher. Funny as hell with huge brass balls to match her punky blond haircut. Her only fault was rubbing Darcy the wrong way and calling out her bullshit when she smelled it. Apparently, King was mysteriously reassigned last week.

“I’m sure it will be another great year at Bracken,” I say.

Darcy’s knowing smile widens and somehow becomes even more smug as she tugs Keith behind her like the bitch he is out of the office. She stops to talk to some other teachers in the hall, laughing and throwing her arms around them like they’re best friends, reunited after decades apart. Gimme a break.

“Jo?” Dr. Dragov calls. “Would you please buzz Jack Slater again? I need him ASAP.”

Jo jumps to her feet, still wringing her hands. She presses an I’m sorry look into my face. “He’s right here, Dr. Dragov.”

A slender woman with graying, short hair appears in the doorway. Her eyes are blue and sharp, completely the opposite of Jo’s. They survey me like I’m an undiscovered ice sheet in Antarctica. “It’s about time,” she says. “I’m Dr. Dragov. Come in, Jack.”

Presumptuous much? I lift a brow and follow her into her cave, which looks nothing like it did the last time I was here, talking cryptozoology with Chokeman. He firmly believed there was a creature called the Goat Man who lived in the Piedmont and hunted the folk of Appalachia and ate their entrails after brutally goring them with his razor-sharp horns. That guy was into some weird shit.

The office has transformed from a slightly messy dude-pad, complete with signed footballs and framed posters featuring the local university team, into a sterile library with enough books to fuel an entire education department at a small college. Bloom, Gardner, and Piaget rest on the corner of Dragov’s meticulously neat desk. Beside them is a stack of what appear to be personnel folders. The one on top has my name on the tab.

“Sit down.” Dragov gestures to the chair across from the desk. She took out Chokeman’s comfortable cushioned seats and replaced them with utilitarian ones featuring hard bottoms and backs with no arm rests. The temperature is seventy, according to the monitor beside the door, but her icy presence makes it feel subarctic.

And I’m sweating as the bile I thought I’d purged creeps back up my throat.

“You may have heard about the budget crisis,” she says, opening my personnel folder.

I shake my head no, but she’s too busy flipping through the pages to notice.

“Thanks to state tax cuts, the district lost a lot of funding we had last year, and we’ve had to stop hiring new teachers. Class sizes are going up across the county. We’re looking at a return to thirty-three, max.”

“I teach gifted.” My voice cracks. I clear my throat. “We’re topped off at twenty-one students per segment. State regulations.”

She lifts her head and stares at me. Through me. Like a laser beam. “Not anymore.”

Gulp. “Not anymore a regulation or not anymore teaching gifted?”

She folds her gnarled hands on top of the file, and all I can see are dragon talons. “I’m moving you to sixth grade.”

My heart hiccups, accidentally bumping into my stomach, which is nervously weighing the benefits of another eruption.

“Beg your pardon?” I choke.

“You’ll be teaching language arts and science.”

“Science?” This time my voice sounds like that of the prepubescent boys I’ll apparently be teaching in a matter of days.

“According to your transcript, your minor was in middle school science education, so yes. Science.”

I can’t teach science. I only took that minor because Isabella did. And she’s gone now, along with everything I ever learned about Punnett squares and balancing chemical equations.

No way. Uh-uh. I won’t do it.

And sixth graders? What in the fucking fuck, lady? Some of them still pee their pants when they get scared.

I hike a calf up and attempt to cross it over the opposite knee. Fail. The leg falls, and I nearly tumble out of the cold aluminum chair biting my ass.

“I don’t feel comfortable teaching science,” I say carefully.

Dragov’s eyes never wander from mine. “Then you’re welcome to find yourself a job elsewhere. The superintendent wants me to cut three full-time positions here at Bracken. I’ve already dismantled the instructional lead and computer lab teacher positions. If you’re not up for the task, I can make yours a three-person team and shuffle the extra students to the other two teams.”

I swallow hard.

This is the only real job I’ve ever had.

I’m a teacher. I love teaching. I can’t not teach.

But moving to sixth grade? Science? If I had Savage and the others to back me up, maybe. As it is, I’m scrambling to find the upside in this deluge of bad news. From the sounds of the budget woes, I can’t even move to another school in the district. Not that I’d want to.

“Okay, if I have to switch teams and teach science, I’ll do it. At least I’ll still have the gifted kids.”

“Sixth grade already has five gifted-certified teachers,” she counters. “You’ll have one advanced language arts class, two regular classes, and two heterogeneously grouped sections of science.”

Her hard expression fills me with dread.

Sixth grade. Science. And regular ed.

A wave of heat flushes my cheeks.

I’m totally gonna vomit again.

“All right. I guess that’s settled. Which team am I on?”

Please don’t put me with Witcher the Witch and Vino the Lush.

She returns to her folders. “Team 6A. With Witcher, Love, and Vino. Room four.”

Of course.

I stand, so flustered and angry and disgusted and sick, I can’t even reply.

“Oh, and by the way,” Dragov says without looking up, “you’ve been assigned a student teacher. Your protégé starts on Monday.”

I nod and bolt from her office. I barely make it to the teachers’ restroom before my stomach launches projectiles like Mt. Vesuvius on a particularly bad tectonic day. Head hanging over the porcelain bowl, I mumble, “Fuck my life.”

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