Sweet Caroline

#22 Clumsy Miss Collins

"Miss Collins, what happened to your face?" Manny Thompson frowns at me and nudges his brother Tommy. "Look, she's all blue!"

I smile at them. The turtleneck and make-up are evidently not enough to look like nothing happened to me this weekend. I'm a horrible shade of purplish blue. Wonderful, really. What a nice way to start my week.

"I'm just clumsy," I lie to the kids. "I fell and hit my head on the table."

"Oh that happened to me once." Tommy nods in understanding before losing all interest in me. He and Manny see Rose and Theresa come in and they head over to them to play before class starts.

Luckily, only a few parents come in today and I give all of them the clumsy Miss Collins explanation, which they seem to buy. It's a relief, but it also makes me sad. It was just one stupid night for me, not a regular occurrence. If I had an abusive boyfriend though, no one would ever know. How many times can someone tell people that she's clumsy before people start figuring out that someone is beating her? It's sad, really. Right now, I am grateful for it, though. I really don't want to explain to the parents what I got up to during the weekend.

Tiffany is harder to lie to. She sees me during the lunch break and she immediately pulls me aside to ask me what happened. She knows I went out with my friends from back home and she instantly assumes that something bad happened. It's nice to know that she's concerned about me and that she's not even given me a finish my 'I fell' excuse. Still, I don't feel like talking about it. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. It just keeps bothering me and I'm not even sure why. Danny called me at least fifty times, but I'm not picking up and luckily, he doesn't know where I live, so he can't just show up at my place.

I throw myself into work the entire day, which is quite easy since Tiffany and I still have to do a lot of work for the Christmas dance this Friday. We order some food around dinner time and eat it at the school so we can get some more work done before heading home. It's her day off tomorrow, but I'm sure I can get John to help me out of I need to. I've lost most of my initial excitement about the celebration, and it's all Danny's fault. I just hope I can get my mojo back before the dance. The kids deserve me at my best.

I get home late, in the dark, and for the first time since I moved here, I feel uncomfortable walking through the empty streets in the dim lamp light. Stupid, of course, ridiculous, but true nonetheless. I even consider calling someone just to talk on my way home, but that's just childish. I do pick up my pace involuntarily, so I get home in record time.

The first thing I notice when I get home is the fact that right behind my car is Nathan's. He's not in it and Annabel's lights are on, so I guess they're on yet another date. At home. So, they're having sex again. Great. Just wonderful.

I don't feel as gutted as I did last time, but I don't like it. Not even a little bit. It's for the best though. I'm done with men anyway. After everything with Dshawn, Danny, Darius, Nathan... Yeah, I am done with them. I'm just fine on my own.

It's not until I reach my front door that I realize I don't have my keys. I know where they are, though. On my desk. At school. The school that Tiffany locked up behind us. I don't even have the keys to the school on me, so I'm locked out. Crap.

Cursing, I take out my phone and call Tiffany. She picks up right away and tells me that she's just getting in the shower, but she'll be right over to hand me my spare key. I'd walk there, but she lives a little far for that. Crap. It'll be at least twenty minutes before Tiffany will get here. That leaves me three options: sit on my own front porch, see if Mr. Galf from next door is home and wait there or ring Annabel's doorbell. I decide to see if Mr. Galf is home, but his lights are out and he doesn't answer, so I grunt and walk back to my front door and sit down on the damp ground, cursing myself. I really need to put a chair or a bench out here if this is going to keep happening. At least it's not raining and I've got a friend with a key nearby.