The Practicum

Room 214 at the high school smelled of whiteboard markers, wet coats and teenage deodorant, which Grace had decided, after three weeks, was the smell of hope mixed with panic.

She was there for her practicum: eight weeks as a student teacher, in a grade ten English class, under a mentor teacher called Ms. Delacroix, a tall woman of about sixty who wore bright scarves and had taught in this school for twenty-five years. Ms. Delacroix watched Grace teach three periods a day from the back of the room, with a notebook, very much as Frank had once watched from the leather chair. Grace had told her this. Ms. Delacroix had laughed and said, "All good teachers are the same teacher, in different chairs."

On the second day of the practicum, Grace had looked at the class list and seen a name she knew. Jaylen.

The teenager from the youth program. The boy who had sat on the potato boxes in the back room of the Blue Plate in June, pretending not to care, and had read the layout drawings faster than anyone.

He had looked at her across Room 214 on the first day with an expression of pure horror. Then, after a second, he had looked almost relieved.