Emily Wright does not usually fall asleep half-lying down in the middle of her upstairs hallway. She probably wouldn’t care if you saw her there, but she would want you to know that she does in fact normally sleep in a bed. Her brown hair (which she acknowledged needs new highlights) is usually pulled back to prevent what it is doing right now, which is to say getting in a tangled, wavy mess around her face. She doesn’t usually sleep in those jeans, either.

To look at her one might guess she is middle-class, married, suburban, with one child under the age of ten. Actually, Emily Wright is middle-class and lives in the suburbs, but has recently been divorced and is left with her two daughters: one toddler and one teenager, both of whom adore her. But it was the teenage daughter, Charlotte, who had gotten into something of a heated argument with Emily earlier that evening, and it was her closed and locked door that her mother had defiantly stayed outside of, waiting to be let inside. Too bad her fatigue had defeated her resolve.

“Mom…mommy? Get up.”

No, wait, let me stay like this for just a couple more minutes, please. If I open my eyes, I know I’ll regret it.

“Mom. Mom.” What is it… “Mom.”

Emily’s eyes were still closed, but she was now quite awake. There was an awkward, slightly numb feeling down by her shin and another on her forearm—she must have fallen asleep in a funny position. As Emily slowly sat up, eyes still clamped shut, she realized by the shag carpet under her toes and the scratchy wallpaper at her arm that she was still in the hallway, where she’d fallen asleep what felt like hours ago. Little, five-year-old hands were shaking her numb forearm as a quiet, urgent voice still called out for mom. Feeling almost hung over, Emily finally opened her eyes. The only light in the hallway came from the thin, rectangular outline of Charlotte’s closed bedroom door. Of course Charlotte was still up. But at the moment it was Lizzie, Charlotte’s sister just over ten years her junior, who had shaken Emily awake. Even in the relative darkness of the hallway, Emily could see that her daughter was worried. She glanced from Lizzie’s face to the clock in the hallway—once her eyes had adjusted more to the dark, she could read it.

“Lizzie.” Her voice was tired and a little gravelly sounding, the way everyone’s is when they haven’t opened their mouths to say anything for hours. Emily cleared her throat and got into a more comfortable sitting position. “It’s one o’clock in the morning. What are you doing awake?”

“What are you doing in the hall?”

“I asked you first.”

“Mom, I had a bad dream. It was about the witch again, the Snow White witch. And she was chasing me with a huge axe. I wanted to get daddy but he wasn’t in your bedroom and you weren’t either, so I came to get Charlotte and I tripped over you.”

“Oh, that was you…” That explained the throbbing pain in the shin. “Honey, come on, you need to get back to sleep. School starts up tomorrow, you want to be all rested for your first day ever, don’t you?” With a groan, Emily pulled herself to her feet with Lizzie in her arms and headed for the girl’s bedroom.

“But mom, I don’t want…I’m scared to go back to sleep. I want daddy to give me one of his special nightmare prayers.”

The glow from Lizzie’s night light was enough for Emily to be able to see her way over to her daughter’s bed. Gently letting her down on it, Emily tried to keep any inkling of impatience out of her voice as she said, “Honey, you know dad isn’t here right now. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to try and go back to sleep, please.”

“But mom—”

“You have to try, for me.”

“But mom—”

The conversation was only going to resolve itself into a never-ending stream of “but mom”s, and Emily knew it. She aimed to sit on the edge of the bed but, in her tired state, missed and fell with a clunk onto the hardwood floor. Grateful that at least the pain had made Lizzie laugh, Emily grabbed the bedpost and this time made it to the covers. Lizzie was still giggling—and the giggling never failed to make Emily smile, because it was just too cute, kind of like how kids laugh in cartoons—and so Emily couldn’t bring herself to be as hard as she wanted to be.

“Why don’t you come spend the night with me then, huh?” she sighed, once again taking Lizzie in her arms. “I know that I’m not daddy and I haven’t got his special bad dream prayer—”

“Nightmare prayer. It kind of rhymes.”

“Sorry, nightmare prayer…but I promise you that you can stay the whole night with me, okay? How’s that?”

“Okay,” Lizzie yawned.

Emily nudged her bedroom door open with her foot, and felt along the wall with a free hand until she reached her bed. Light was still eking out into the hallway from the edges of Charlotte’s door and it was by this light that Emily lay her youngest down into the comforters of her own bed. “There, you got nice warm comforters, big pillows, and the moon just outside that window. Think you can sleep now?”

“Mom?” Lizzie whispered.

“What is it, baby?”

“When is daddy coming back?”

Well, I can’t pretend that I didn’t think this was coming, Emily thought to herself, sitting on the edge of her bed and pulling off her socks. The problem was that even though she had anticipated the question, she still didn’t have a good answer. With all the Lifetime crap I watch you’d think I would have picked up something by now.

“Mom?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Emily answered. Well, that’s not true. Yes I do. “I don’t think he’ll be coming back soon. He’s not going to be living with us anymore.”

“Not ever?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Tears were evident in the kid’s voice. She wasn’t crying yet, but it was clear that she was about to be.

How can I explain this to a five-year-old? Doesn’t she have any friends with divorced parents? Doesn’t she know what this is like? “Well, you know your friend Cassidy, and how her parents don’t live together anymore?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, your dad and I are going to do the same thing…”

“You and dad hate each other? Cassidy’s parents hate each other!”

“No, no, Lizzie, it isn’t that,” Emily said quickly, reaching over to hug her now-crying daughter. Okay, that was a bad example. “Cassidy’s parents are, well, different. Your dad and I are still going to be friends, we’re very good friends and we still like each other very, very much.”

“Does dad love someone else?”

Yes. “No.” Emily sighed heavily. “It’s hard to explain, Lizzie. Someday you’ll understand. But I don’t think that the right time to go over it is at one in the morning the night before your very first day of school, do you?”

“Why not?” Lizzie sniffed.

“Because you’re tired, and I’m tired, and Charlotte is still awake and I need to go to talk to her,” Emily answered. “Now do you think maybe you could cut us all a break and go to sleep?”

“You’re going to go talk to Charlotte? Can you get Blackie from my room on your way back?”

“Yes, sure, now I’ll be right back.” With great effort, Emily heaved herself up off of the bed and walked back out of it for what she hoped would be the last time that night. She passed by the rumpled part of the carpet where she’d fallen asleep earlier and stopped to smooth it out. Not bothering to knock on her teenage daughter’s door, Emily opened it just wide enough to get inside and then shut it after herself. The bright light hurt her eyes more than she thought it would and she had to close them tightly for a few seconds.

“Hey, mom.”

Charlotte was not even pretending to be asleep. Propped up on three crimson pillows with the blankets pulled up to her neck, she might have been able to pull it off if her amber-colored eyes hadn’t been wide open. Her mascara seemed to have lost a battle against tears, because there was a long, black, smudgy line of it going down the side of Charlotte’s face that Emily could see. Charlotte’s red, tear-stained face clashed a bit with her pillows; her bleached blonde hair provided stark contrast.

“Charlie, shouldn’t you be asleep?” Emily yawned, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You have to go to school tomorrow.” For no apparent reason, she only called her daughter Charlie when she was tired.

“Mom,” Charlotte said in a cracked whisper. “I can’t …I just can’t. I can’t sleep, I can’t accept this, I can’t deal with dad—with him.”

“Honey, I know this all seems impossible to you right now,” Emily murmured. “But there are other, more important things to deal with right now.” Okay, not exactly. She knows that and I know that. “You’re starting junior year tomorrow, you don’t want to be all tired for—”

“Come on, mom. I’m not Lizzie.”

Emily sighed in defeat. “I know you’re not, sorry. I was talking to her just now.”

“She’s awake? Why?”

“Bad dream. Witch was chasing her again.”

“Sleeping Beauty?”

“Snow White.”

“Mm.”

“Actually, she tripped over me in the hallway.”

“You were still in the hallway?”

“Charlie, you were upset and wouldn’t talk to me. The door was locked. I wanted to talk about this with you and you refused. So I camped out, waiting for you to relent. I guess I kind of fell asleep waiting, though.”

“Guess so. I got up and unlocked the door eventually, I said you could come in. I didn’t open it though, so I didn’t know you were asleep.” Charlotte brushed some hair out of her face and sat up higher. She sounded anxious when she asked, “Did you tell Lizzie why you and… why you’re getting a divorce?”

“No,” Emily snorted, looking at the floor. “I didn’t know what to say. I mean, she’s too small and simple to understand things like this anyway, I didn’t want to complicate it by…” She looked up and was startled by Charlotte’s expression. “Geez, honey, that’s an ugly look you’ve got on your face right now.”

Charlotte was gripping her blanket so tight that her knuckles had turned white. “I’m sorry, mom, I just can’t get over it.” Anger and hurt were equally present in her voice as she went on, fighting back more tears. “I just wish it could have been anything else. Anything else. Any other reason and I wouldn’t hate him so much.”

Emily knew what this was about, but she didn’t know how to reply. She got the feeling Charlotte wasn’t done venting yet. An unpleasant feeling stirred up in her stomach, the way it always did when Charlotte broached upon the subject.

“I mean of course it would have been best if this wasn’t happening at all, the divorce,” Charlotte went on. “But I mean—couldn’t he have left you for a woman?”

“Charlotte,” Emily interrupted, reaching out and grabbing her daughter’s arm. She smiled as a force of habit. “Please, don’t, I don’t want to hear this.”

“But mom, it’s just so wrong,” Charlotte cried. “How could he keep that big a secret from you for so long? And then still see some creepy guy on the side when he had you and me and Lizzie—I hate him!”

“Please,” Emily said again, now aware that the salty taste in her mouth was there because tears were silently streaming into it. “Charlotte, please.” Why was that all she could think to say? She was more articulate than this. But the truth of it was that the idea of her husband leaving her for another man had left her floored, dumbfounded. And yet she had always wondered about him… but she’d suppressed that wonder for sixteen years, keeping it in the very, very back of her mind.

“He just doesn’t know how lucky he was to have you, mom,” Charlotte sobbed, throwing back her covers and embracing her mother. “He's so stupid, any idiot would stay straight for you. He’ll never, ever, get anyone better.” The crying was making her borderline incomprehensible, but it was the sentiment that reached Emily anyway. “I’ll never forgive him for doing this to you, mom, I never will.”

“Oh, Charlie, Charlie,” Emily whispered, holding her daughter close. “You will someday, I know you’re upset now.”

“I don’t understand why you’re not upset,” Charlotte wept. “You’re just too nice, you never get upset about anything!”

Emily smiled sadly to herself; rubbed Charlotte’s back and kissed the top of her head. “Of course I’m upset, Charlie. It’s going to take me a while to get over this. But I’ve resigned myself to knowing that I did all I could and there’s nothing else I can do. I just got to keep you and Lizzie, and that’s all I care about.”

“What visitation rights does he have?” sniffed Charlotte, trying not to cry onto her mother’s clothes anymore.

“He can have you two every other weekend and for your February and April breaks,” Emily recited, remembering what her lawyer had said. “And we’ll split the time in the summer.”

“He can have Lizzie,” Charlotte said darkly, moving her head down into Emily’s lap. “I don’t want to see him again.”

“Charlotte.”

“I don’t.”

It was pointless to argue with teenagers about things. That’s why Charlotte had locked herself in her room earlier—the fact that her mother refused to get angry and show her frustration had made Charlotte scream until she was hoarse. Teenagers were always right about everything, that’s what they thought. So Emily just nodded (even though Charlotte couldn’t see), and decided to talk to her about it later.

“I’m sorry I got mad at you, mom,” Charlotte whimpered a few moments later. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“It’s all right, Charlie, I understand,” Emily assured her. “When things like this happen, when people get divorced, you expect there to be a negative reaction.” Charlotte tightened her grip on Emily’s leg. “Ow. Um, honey? Could you lessen up a bit, there?”

“Sorry,” Charlotte chuckled, patting the spot. “Hey, you’re still in your jeans.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

They sat there in silence for a few more minutes, Emily stroking her daughter’s hair and thinking about Tyler and his secret boyfriend and their divorce and Lizzie’s first day of school in the morning…

She wasn’t sure if much time had passed when Charlotte said, “I think I should go to sleep now.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m fine, mom.” With what looked like great effort, Charlotte returned to a sitting position. She kissed Emily on the cheek and said, “Really. I love you, mom.”

“Nice to know someone does,” Emily responded with a one-sided smile. “Hey, wait… isn’t that Lizzie’s stuffed animal? Blackie?”

“Oh.” Charlotte picked up the stuffed, white dog and handed it to her mother. “Yeah, I kind of borrowed it earlier. I miss my old animals, I should get those out of the attic. Remind me again why Lizzie called a white dog Blackie…?”

“Because he has a black nose, silly,” Emily said, taking the dog and making a “duh” face. Charlotte laughed, prompting Emily to continue: “And Lizzie wanted me to bring him back to her, she’s spending the night with me.” Charlotte chuckled again and bade her mother good-night, asking her to shut off the light on her way out.

Just as she was drifting off to sleep a small while later, Charlotte heard a faint buzzing sound on her window sill. It sounded like drilling, but then she realized it was her phone. She jumped up immediately to answer it, and saw that it was a text message:

Plane was mad delayed. just got in!! see u at school tmrw love bentley

Bentley. She was about to text him back when she decided that if he was already awake, he wouldn’t mind talking to her. Charlotte only had to wait for the phone to ring once when she heard his deep, masculine voice (so unlike dad’s) answer it.

“Charlotte! Hey!”

“Bentley,” she laughed. He sounded so excited that she had called. Just the sound of his voice was making her feel better already. “How was Chile?”

“Oh, it was awesome, I can’t wait to tell you about it.”

“Any cute girls there?”

“What’re you, kidding me? Cute shmoot, what do I care when I’ve got Charlotte Wright waiting for me at home?” Bentley laughed. “Uh, wait. You did wait for me… Wright?”

“Oh, ha, you just wanted to get your little pun in there,” Charlotte said. “Have you opened your schedule from school yet?”

“Yeah, I just opened the envelope when you called,” he answered. “I guess I should probably be going to sleep soon, but I just had to make sure I wasn’t getting Green for math again.”

“And are you?”

“No, I struck gold, ha, ha!” It was amazing to Charlotte that just from his voice over the phone, she could hear his physical qualities. His blonde spiked hair and piercing blue eyes still resonated in her memory, not to mention those killer dimples and broad shoulders. He just sounded like your all-American boy over the telephone and he looked it in person. She had inadvertently stopped listening to what he was saying, just concentrating on hearing his voice. But she caught herself in time to hear the end of his schedule. “…and then last period I’ve got art with, uh, Shovet. Do you think I’m saying that right? Show­-vet? Shaw-vet? Sho-vette? They must be new.”

“Yeah, he is,” Charlotte replied, reaching for the folded-up schedule on her nightstand. “Remember how Mr. Vine and Mr. Hearst retired last year? Shovet must be a new recruit because I’ve never heard of him before. ‘J. Shovet.’ Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to pronouncing it.”

“Maybe he’s Russian. Yeah,” Bentley said, sounding pumped. “I bet he’s a big, blustering Russian dude, like that guy from that Rocky movie!”

“Yeah, okay, Bentley.”

“You sound really tired.”

“Huh, go figure, at one-thirty on a school night. Ugh, school in the morning.”

“Crap, you’re right. Well I’ll see you tomorrow then, in Shovet’s class. Or let’s meet for lunch, okay? I’ve got a lot to tell you; sorry I couldn’t write.” Pause. “Wright.”

“I have a lot to tell you, too,” Charlotte muttered. “So I’ll see you then, okay? Lunch or in J. Shovet’s Advanced Drawing and Painting Class. Bye.”

“Bye, babe.”

At this point it should be mentioned that J. Shovet is not Russian and J. Shovet is not a man. In fact, while this very conversation was going on between her two future students, Jill Shovet was lying awake in her apartment, staring dismally out of her window. Nice view of downtown.

She was shaking and suppressing that nasty taste that kept filling her mouth, the type that’s telling you to get to a bathroom fast because you’re about to heave. Jill had thrown up about four times that evening from sheer nervousness. Her new job was going to start tomorrow. Hopefully she wouldn’t be as scared then as she had been during her interview for the position. She must have seemed so lame, she thought, because a member of Hudson High School’s art department had felt the need to come down and tell her in person that she had the job. His name was Scott Maxwell, and he taught freshman art class and also a senior AP art class. He’d called before coming over, asking Jill out to lunch to tell her the news. Over the phone she had been certain this meant he wanted to let her down easy in person, but he later said he’d just wanted to see her reaction when she found out she’d gotten the job. Scott was very good looking, almost too good-looking to be an art teacher. Jill had to smile when she remembered how he had flirted with her.

It had been a long time, she realized, since a man had flirted with her. That was nice about moving to a new town, no one knew her there. Scott didn’t know he wasn’t her type. He didn’t have breasts.

Jill would laugh at the frankness of that statement.

She was not unattractive, and this she knew, but she was no knock-out, either. But when her dark brown hair was brushed just right and when her contacts were left out, her dull blue eyes could draw you in like the Mona Lisa—you just couldn’t look away. In fact she could look positively pretty if she wanted to. But that wasn’t her focus now, not in this new town, not here. She wanted to teach high school students art. She wanted to teach them how to draw from direct observation without really looking at the object; to catch sunlight with watercolors; grapple dark shadows with ink. She yearned to be the Virginia Woolf of art.

Hudson High School was supposed to be fairly liberal when it came to high schools, but Jill didn’t think she would be too obvious about her orientation right away. She hadn’t forgotten her last run-in with narrow-minded people and was not in a hurry to have the experience repeated in any way. If people just let her alone, she was grateful.

Artists are different, though, she thought to herself. We’re different. They won’t mind me. But as she lay in bed thinking about Scott Maxwell and how he had practically bent over backwards flirting with her, she couldn’t help adoring the naïveté of some people. Hudson High was going to be interesting, that was for sure.

When she still couldn’t fall asleep after another ten minutes, she impulsively sat up and snatched the first attendance sheet in reach. It was her junior class of advanced drawing and painting, which she’d had taped to her window. Just for kicks, Jill had already memorized every name on all her attendance lists. Charlotte Wright was the last name on this one. In her head, Jill thought of a million different jokes concerning both Charlotte and Wright that she could use but knew she wouldn’t. Or at least hoped she wouldn’t. Maybe Charlotte Wright was shy and wouldn’t appreciate a joke that could be construed as being at her expense.

I have to stop thinking this much. I’m going to give myself a mental breakdown. Or heave, again. Ohhh… Her stomach lurched. The latter.

Author’s Note: And so begins this sloppy tale! The next chapter will detail the first day of school at Hudson High. This is my first story for this site, and my first original story (i.e. not fan-fiction) that I’ve done in a very long time, so I know this is a lame thing to ask but please don’t be mean!