Second Chance Romance

1994

Math class bored Kip Turner. He was bored at school most of the time. He did well without trying. He didn’t need to be the best. He only needed to maintain an eighty-percent average and his parents would let him play sports. He managed that without too much effort.

His raised hand caused Mr. Parker to sigh. “Yes, Mr. Turner.”

“Can I have a hall pass?” Parker’s eyes narrowed. Kip took a bathroom break daily. “I’m done with the assignment.” The teacher’s shoulders dropped, and he waved Kip to his desk at the front.

On the way to the bathroom a bulletin board display beside the English room caught his eye. When he realized it wasn’t his English class on display, his heart slowed. He didn’t want his crap on display for the entire school. He read an uninspired, regurgitated essay and rolled his eyes. He glanced at the title in bold, pink and blue letters, “My Future Plans.”

He turned to go back to class, when another poster drew his eye. A full page of meticulous handwriting, twice as many paragraphs as the others. He glanced at the attached picture of a child with a pile of stuffed animals on her bed. She held a stick and pointing at something unseen behind her. Intrigued by the story behind the picture and what someone could be planning so thoroughly, Kip began to read.

My Future Plans by Mandy Green

My Great-Grandmother was a teacher. I didn’t know her, unfortunately. My grandmother still tells me stories her mother told her about teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. That sounded really great to me. I set up my own one-room schoolhouse in my bedroom as a child.

Ever since I was five I wanted to be a teacher. I used to line up my stuffed animals in rows and teach them whatever it was I happened to be studying. I always tried to make it more exciting than my teachers had. I don’t know if I succeeded, but it did succeed in making me a better student. Thus proving that teaching someone else something is the best way to learn.

Throughout my school career, as a student, I’ve had exciting teachers and I’ve had boring teachers. The teachers who are excited are the ones who care about the students and the subject matter.

I once had a teacher who didn’t just teach us subject lessons. Her lessons went beyond the classroom. Her caring went beyond the schoolyard. She helped many of her students out of what felt like hopeless situations. She gave us confidence to tackle our lessons inside the classroom. We carried that confidence into the world. I want to pass her spirit onto others as it was given to me.

I had another teacher who made lessons come alive. If we were studying fractions in math, we were measuring. If we were studying a story, we were making it into a play. I want to teach children that even the most boring of subjects, like History, can be exciting.

These are just some of the reasons I am going to be a teacher. I want to show someone all their potential as it has been shown to me.

Kip stared slack jawed at the poster. He drew his eyes away from the words back to the accompanying picture. The girl, about eight, and the described stuffed animals in neat rows, while she held a book in front of them. A photograph of young Mandy Green, while she taught her stuffed animal class in her one-room schoolhouse.

Kip read two more posters, finding both similar drivel. They wanted to follow in the footsteps of their parents or aunts or uncles, because the job was rewarding and fun. Kip rolled his eyes and moved to another. The English teacher opened his door and came out into the hallway. “Back to class before I report you for loitering.”

Kip found it easier to agree with the pompous man. “Going,” Kip walked back toward his classroom.

His eyes rolled in his spinning head. How could one person, one high school student, have so much conviction? Not one other essay contained half her passion. She was singularly focused on the goal of becoming a teacher, on inspiring others.

He returned to his class and picked his pencil back up, pretending to study the math text that lay open on his desk.

What would he answer if asked about his plans for the future? Only one thing had any long-term interest for him: hockey. He wasn’t particularly good at anything else, nor did he have interests outside sports. He had a natural talent for playing goal and he loved nothing more than being on the ice. Too bad hockey season ended three weeks before. His second favorite sport, baseball, was gearing up for a new season.

He scrawled the answer for a question on the page that followed the current assignment. Sitting here sucked; he could be outside playing catch. He couldn’t imagine working at some boring desk job for the rest of his life. He couldn’t imagine working with his hands either. Any of those jobs wouldn’t challenge him. He had to make a career out of hockey, because he could think of nothing else he could do nor anything he wanted to do.

He started to panic about it when Parker raised his head. The chair his fat ass sat on squeaked backward. “Mandy Green, come here, please?”

Mandy Green. Holy crap. His new heroine was in his math class. She must be completely beautiful and full of life. He could introduce himself after class. He turned, openly watching, the girl with the beautiful name.

He blinked as he saw a tall, overweight girl stand up next to him. She kept her head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone. He recognized her as the girl with the best marks in the eleventh-grade. He’d thought about trying to beat her, but playing hockey was far more interesting than studying.

Plus, he’d been dating Cassie Morgan almost the whole hockey season, the prettiest girl in eleventh. For that reason, Kip managed to keep the relationship going, but eventually he grew tired of her lack of interest in anything besides herself and her friends. Cassie had no interest in Kip, except being seen with him in his Mustang. Despite that, he let Cassie take up much of his time.

When she returned to her desk beside him, he looked at her openly. Under her glasses, she had dark brown eyes. Her hair was long and stylishly done, soft curls falling around her face. She was intently writing on her paper and he could see that she wasn’t working on her math. Her paper half-filled with the same meticulous handwriting that was on the hallway essay.

She must have felt his eyes and looked at him. When she saw he was staring at her, she looked away, flipping her page until she was back on her math work.

Kip tapped his pencil on his page. Under those terrible glasses, a few years out of date, she was radiant. Or she could, if she smiled and showed some confidence.

When the bell rang, his buddy Matt called his name, interrupting his plan to approach her. By the time he pulled himself away from that conversation, she was gone.

She was at her locker in the hallway when he passed a few minutes later. She glanced his way, but when she noticed his gaze, she buried her head deep in her locker.

Okay, Mandy Green was painfully shy. That made sense. No one knew if she had any friends. Now he recognized the girl. Most of what he knew of her, he had heard from his friends, while they made fun of her. She was an easy target, spending her lunch hours alone in the library.

* * * *

2006

Oh, to be sixteen again, Mandy Green thought as she added her young cousin to her Facebook friends list.

Maybe not sixteen, she amended. Sixteen wasn’t a good year. It was the year they moved from where she’d grown up to North Battleford, SK. She made no friends in her new high school and had no way to meet any. She had at least four strikes against her. She was overweight and taller than average. She wore thick glasses that were several years out of date. And she couldn’t find stylish clothes that fit her properly.

Near the end of that horrible school year, her life turned wonderful. She met Kip Turner, the most popular boy in school. The boy she had a crush on since the moment she walked into the new school. The boy she never thought would talk to her in a million years.

She pushed that out of her mind. She didn’t want to remember anything about her teenage years. She would not think about the Battleford years, not now.

Mandy shook her head and closed her browser window. Next she’d wax romantic and dwell on lost love. None of which helped anyone pay bills, get housework done. And romance wasn’t helping her raise any children.

In Mandy’s case, child. Down the hall she could see her son’s bedroom light still on. She made her way there. Propping herself on the door frame, she leaned into the room. His attention fixed on the book he held in his hands.

Giving her a moment of sentimental thought, she moved in and sat on his bed. He barely glanced at her. She reached out and stroked his hair for a moment, until he pushed her away.

She snapped to attention. He was eight now. The man of the house in his eyes. So he proclaimed to her a month ago, shortly after his eighth birthday. She’d had to bite her tongue, literally, to refrain from laughing. He had been so serious when he’d said it.

With a sigh, Mandy stood again. “Five more minutes, Colton.”

“Sure Mom,” He didn’t even notice when she kissed his head and stroked his hair. Small wonders. Until four months ago, he ignored the written word. Then this new series came along, and now she couldn’t stop him from reading. At dinner, in the bathroom, instead of watching television.

Mandy puttered around the house for five minutes then shut his light off. He protested with a whiny, “Mom! I was nearly done with this chapter.”

She flicked the light back on and took the book from his hands. “Colton, time is up.” She shoved the bookmark against the spine of the book, and put it on his dresser. “Do I need to tuck you in?”

That got her a glare. But he got under the covers and flopped his head on the pillow. His back was to her, his body rigid. She kissed his cheek again, and he wiped it off. “I love you, Colton,” she whispered. “See you in the morning.”

“Yeah sure,” he said, pulling the covers up further on his body. Mandy shrugged and walked to the door. She heard him turn in bed and stopped. “Mom, I love you too.”

“Night,” Mandy returned to the living room to curl up on the sofa with her latest book.

Across the room, the beep of her computer startled her. She thought she shut off the computer. Rolling her shoulders, she went over and peered at the screen. “You’ve got mail,” she muttered, using the over used AOL e-mail greeting, as she leaned over the desk, grabbing at the mouse.

She clicked on the screen, finding the right folder her mail had been diverted into. She stared at the subject line: Kip Turner has added you as a friend on Facebook.

Mandy dropped into the chair. She rubbed her eyes for a moment then looked back at the screen. Kip Turner. Motherfucker. The one person she was determined not to think about tonight. The one person from the one place.

She clicked the link accompanying the e-mail. But as it asked her if she wanted to accept or ignore the request, she hesitated.

Mandy leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. She let a picture of Kip form in her mind. Kip as she remembered him, not the Kip she watched on television. That Kip was not HER Kip. The two had some similarities. He was still strikingly handsome, and even behind the mask, his green eyes glowed. Making him look like the Tiger Goalie he was sometimes called. He even painted a tiger on his mask.

The Kip she remembered was the handsome young man who strolled up to her as she sat in the library at lunchtime. His carved face, framed by hair obviously in a grow-out period. He was so handsome, so confident as he stood next to her.

It scared Mandy to even look at him, so she turned her attention back to her writing. He couldn’t possibly want to talk to her. Wasn’t he dating queen bee of eleventh grade, Cassie Morgan? “Hey, uh,” he snapped his fingers, “Shit, I can’t remember your name. But uh, you’re in my math class right?”

She looked at him and shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she mumbled. Why wouldn’t he go away? She wasn’t about to give him the answers to their math homework or anything.

“Sure, you sit behind Sherry. Across from me.” He sat beside her, placing his binder on the table. “I’m totally not asking you for the answers. I missed class yesterday and if I fail the next test, my parents won’t let me play in the baseball tournament next weekend.”

Mandy gave him a brief look. Her face flushed every time she realized his attention was on her. He was so good-looking it hurt. She glanced around. His friends must be watching somewhere. This was obviously a practical joke they were playing on her. Get answers or make her look stupid somehow. She wouldn’t fall for it. She steeled herself against his charm and good-looks.

“Please?” he added.

She shook her head. “I’m not waiting here to be your practical joke,” she said. Where had the confident sound in her voice come from?

“No joke. I really need those notes.” She glanced at him again and met his eyes. He looked sincere. Her resolve melted from that one look. She opened her binder and pulled out her notes from the previous day’s math period.

“Thanks. I’ll sit here and copy them, so you don’t think I ran off with them. If that’s okay? I won’t disturb you. I’m Kip Turner, by the way.” He offered his hand.

She knew who he was. The most popular boy in school. The best athlete in the entire region. Everyone knew that. He would play professional hockey, the newspapers proclaimed. She saw him the first minute she walked into the school. He was so good-looking; she had a crush on him in those first seconds. She knew she never had a chance with a guy like Kip so she was stuck with her fantasies of him. That was good enough for her.

“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled. She’d never talk to him again after this. She couldn’t figure out when he noticed her.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

So much for not disturbing her. “Mandy.” She kept her eyes on her paper.

“Mandy, that’s a nice name. Can you help me here? I can’t read this part.”

Forcing herself not to sigh, she turned and looked at her paper. He grinned at her. “Just kidding. Your writing is typewriter perfect. I wanted you to look at me.”

In spite of herself, she smiled. Giddiness, an unusual emotion for her. He wanted her to look at him. Her. She wanted to hug herself with glee.

“That’s better,” he said. “I was afraid you didn’t like me.”

Hah! She shrugged. “I like to be alone, y’know.”

“Nope. I better let you get back to work then.”

She smiled again and looked back at her paper. A few minutes later, he tapped her shoulder. “Uh, can you explain something to me? I’m totally not getting this.”

She spent the remaining lunch hour explaining the concepts to him, while he stared at her with open interest. The bell rang, and she gathered her things to go. “Thanks,” He offered his hand. She shook it, trying not to tremble from mere contact with him. “Can you help me tomorrow with an English assignment? Cause you’re like this really awesome teacher.” He glanced at his feet.

Mandy looked around again. “Sure. I guess. If you want.”

Lunches in the library turned into meeting after school in the library. Three weeks from when they met, he invited her to his house after school. Within a month, he asked her to dinner.

Mandy pulled herself out her memory. Next she’d start thinking about her first kiss, or losing her virginity. Or when Kip left. She let him go, actually she pushed him to go. He would be the next professional star goalie.

She felt the overwhelming sadness in her chest. A repeat of the sadness she felt the day he moved out of their shared apartment in Saskatoon. She hadn’t shown any emotion that day. She knew if she did he wouldn’t leave.

Mandy shook herself out of the past. She wouldn’t decide on the Facebook friend tonight. Maybe not this week. She didn’t need to rush the decision.

As she shut down the computer, her limbs gained ten pounds each. So did her eyelids, as the lights took on a blinding sheen. She stacked her school papers and put them in her bag, ready for the morning.

After checking Colton once more, she locked the front door and shut off the lights. Another day as single mother, over.