Game of Love (The Remingtons, Book One: Love in Bloom Series)

Chapter Ten, Game of Love

Chapter Ten

AFTER CALLING THE bank and checking directions online for the school, she realized that walking a few miles in heels might be a bit much after sleeping only a handful of hours the night before. She'd swallowed her pride and borrowed cab fare from Dex, ignoring the smirk on his handsome face. He'd wished her luck before she left, and as she walked into the old brick building, she realized that luck hadn't been on her side in months. Maybe even years. Or ever. Although, what else could running into Dex have been?

The halls of the elementary school were bright and cheerful. The school had that unique elementary school smell of paste and cafeteria food. She missed the kids she'd worked with in Maryland, and she hoped they were getting the attention they needed from their new teacher. When Ellie was teaching, she didn't have shivers of doubt. She was confident in her teaching skills, and although school had been a painful experience—Ellie had always felt like a misfit—it was the one place she could prove herself. She'd excelled at schoolwork, earning A's in most of her subjects despite feeling out of place. Grades were all about her. She controlled how much she studied and how intently she paid attention. No one else could take credit for her grades, good or bad.

"Ms. Parker? I'm Principal Price. I'm glad you made it." Principal Price was an older woman with pencil-straight salt-and-pepper hair worn in a severe blunt cut just below her ears. Her smile was forced, which Ellie noted went along with her feigned kindness. She imagined this woman, who was as vertically challenged as Ellie, hovering somewhere around five foot three, had a default scowl that took hard work to mask.

"Thank you. I've heard a lot about your school." Ellie followed her into a small office, which was impeccably clean save for a small stack of files on one side of her desk.

With her nose in Ellie's file, Principal Price said, "On your application you stated that you were moving to New York to return to your roots. Is that right? So you're from the city?"

Was it? Or was it to be closer to Dex? Focus, Ellie. "Not the city, just outside. You know what they say..." Shit. Ellie had no idea what they said, much less who they were. "Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker." She pressed her hand to her knee in hopes of settling the nervous bounce that had taken over.

"Tell me about your teaching style."

Ellie had practiced for her interview nonstop on the train to New York, and she rattled off her prepared answers. "While I follow the outlined curriculum for the students, I cater how I teach each lesson to the needs of the children. I work with the kids who need more time or depth to understand a concept while the ones who do understand are working their way through the problem. I find that holding up the entire class for one or two children's needs tends to cause the kids who do understand to lose interest."

Principal Price wrote something on her clipboard.

"Can you tell me about the class? What are the children like? Have most of them gone through the previous classes together, or do you have a high turnover rate in the classrooms?"

Principal Price opened her drawer and pulled out a spreadsheet. She slid it across the desk and Ellie looked it over.

"Our fifth-grade students scored above the national average in every area tested in the spring. Overall achievement was at the sixtieth percentile, ten points higher than the national average of fifty." Principal Price continued rattling off statistics and milestones.

Ellie redirected the question and asked about the morale of the students, hoping to glean a little insight into the children themselves, their behavior, their attitude toward school.