“Morning, Lillian,” I said to the secretary at the front desk, whom I’d known since I’d gone to this school myself. I always wondered if the students thought I was pathetic for returning to teach here; I’d thought that of one of my own teachers, Ms. Chester. It was pathetic, in a way. And yet Ms. Chester was old, or at least had seemed so to me then—she must have been in her late thirties at the time. She’d since moved on to a different school. I figured I had a few years here before my expiration date.

I liked myself here, far better than I liked myself anywhere else. I hadn’t as a student; I’d felt alienated even before I’d started to make a mess by fucking around, but teaching here was like getting a second chance, starting fresh. I was a good teacher, in between the impatient bursts that overtook me from time to time, like the one on Friday. My knuckles on the desk; her frightened young face. I would have to repent for that. I would, at the very least, apologize. But when things were going my way, I was good at teaching, I was quite good, and I really did know this. I did care about something.

I took the long way around the corridor to my classroom—to the right, along three legs of the square that was this building, instead of to the left. Students were slamming their locker doors closed, jogging to class with their backpacks thumping against their sides. I took this route to avoid a certain teacher I’d fucked the first week of school, drunk at happy hour; we had run into each other a handful of times since, despite my maneuverings, and nothing terrible had happened besides my upswell of shame and disgust. Yet I wanted to minimize contact as much as I could. He was the only staff member I’d slept with, and I was determined to keep it that way—even if the other teachers found out, that could be seen as normal, I knew, sleeping with a coworker. One coworker. Beyond that was dangerous terrain. Beyond that they’d see me, really. For now, they saw this me: teacher-me. Trousers-me. I was competent here, I could do my job, even if I didn’t deserve the fellowship I’d gotten to do it. I thought of the papers I’d promised to hand back today, still sitting in their accordion folder. My students would ask about them, I knew—Friday, I would promise. I could do that much.