“I can’t read!” he yelled.

I crossed the room to him. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re only three, honey. You don’t have to read yet.”

He traded the book for a pillow, curled up and fell asleep.

Polly sidled up to me. “Everything, baby,” she said. She sounded exactly like Depp.

“Excuse me,” I said as I walked away.

After lunch, Ethan and I opened the door between our classrooms so that June and Polly could help each other keep an eye on our full-day students. Then we went classroom to classroom so the other Bayberry students could rehearse their holiday performance numbers for us.

“I have to admit I was a little bit worried,” Ethan said, “but they’re really coming along. And just in the nick of time. I can’t believe we’re on the homestretch.”

“It won’t be perfect by any means,” I said, “but I think cute is a definite possibility.”

Ethan smiled, his teeth sparkling like a tooth-whitening ad. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that nothing is ever perfect. Even when it looks like it from the outside.”

The “Dance of the Sugar Plum Puppies” was adorable. Ethan and I fist bumped each other as we walked down the hallway to the next classroom. “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Catnip” was possibly even cuter.

“How’d it go?” Polly said when I got back to my classroom a few minutes before dismissal. She was glowing like she always was now. It was exhausting.

I shrugged, took a long sip from my water bottle.

Polly tucked her hair behind her ears. “Is something wrong, Sarah?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Fine,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I said I’m fine,” I said without making eye contact.

Our classroom telephone rang. This rarely happened anymore, since for better or worse the parents all had my cellphone number and email address now. The retro ring was a blast from the past, a dinosaur. Someday our classroom phone would be gone completely, off to join the AV carts, the mimeograph machines, the dot matrix paper, the fax machines, the rolodexes, the manual typewriters, the hand-stamped due date cards for library books.

“Polly,” the office manager’s disembodied voice said through the tinny speaker. “Phone call for you.”

Polly wrinkled her nose, crossed the room to the phone. The beige phone was so old that it even had a curly cord, the kind I used to love to twirl around my finger as I talked, plus a non-remote voicemail system that I had to keep reminding myself to check every once in a while.

Polly picked up the receiver, whispered hello so she didn’t distract the kids from their work.

Her freckles jumped out as the color drained from her face. Then her whole face turned red.

“How did you get this number?” she whispered.