One day ago…early evening…

Dustin called in sick. It was more of a mental health day than anything physical. But there were two perks to using a random personal day now and again. One, he could have a three-day weekend to mentally recover for the next week. And two, he was able to interact with Ms. Brenna Scott, a vibrant substitute teacher he thought of more often than he wanted to admit. She was always put together and had a beautiful smile which she bestowed upon him even when his jokes weren’t particularly funny. 

Plus, the best remedy he knew of for a severe case of brain fog was to cancel plans; it offered a sense of relief few other things could compete with, and he’d sleep better knowing he wasn’t expected to figure out how to act like a human for another day in a row. 

He settled onto his couch in his pajamas to finish typing up his class notes to send to Ms. Scott for the following day. Though it was unusual, she had given him her personal email for whenever he needed to request a sub for his class and to send his notes. This also meant that if he wrote an email intriguing or comical enough, she’d answer in a way that would give away details about her personal life. He saved all her emails in a folder and would look back on them whenever he was bored in between classes. Which was often.

He clicked on the last email from earlier that day and reread her response to him asking if she’d be available to sub for the next day. Her reply was surprisingly quick, saying she’d ‘free up’ her schedule just for him. It was probably just a normal pattern of speech for her, but he still felt warm inside when he read it.

Though he had interacted with her at least once a month for his entire first year of teaching history at the local high school, she was still an enigma. Because of her immaculate appearance he assumed she controlled a team of minions that waited on her all day, administering spa type treatments. Thus, when he would contact her, these minions would hold up her phone so she could read, she’d remove a cucumber slice from one eye and then dictate her response, never having touched the screen at all. Her nails, both her fingers and toes, were too pristine and perfectly painted with seasonal images to be doing anything more than that all day. 

And he would’ve kept up this silly imagery if she hadn’t abruptly burst his mental bubble a few weeks ago when she told him she enjoyed hunting and was an expert marksman. He wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not because she appeared to be the farthest from someone that would like to get dirty and/or hunt down animals. But she also said it with a straight face, and it made him think it had to be true. He just couldn’t imagine her climbing up trees to a hunter’s perch with her well done nails and tiny feet. Yes, little fairy feet. Though he usually didn’t stare at feet in general, she had the habit of wearing striking red bottom heels that drew attention to the interesting fact that she had the smallest shoe size he had ever seen on an adult human. 

He meant to look up red bottom shoes and see what they meant culturally and how much they cost, but always seemed to be in the middle of something else when he thought of it. And he couldn’t derail to satisfy his curiosity on this occasion either, since he was presently trying to finish his time sensitive email to her.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard. What could he say to her this time to spark a comical response? 

We’re on the American Revolutionary war unit. Don’t worry, I know how this one ends.

No, that might sound like less of a joke and more of an insult to her intelligence. She was a fast, witty speaker and he didn’t want her to think he thought otherwise.

You must be really busy; I appreciate that you freed up your schedule for this. 

No, that sounded too obvious and searching. Why not simply go for the throat and ask, Hey, what the heck is your real job? You’re like a sparkling fairy princess walking through a den of trolls, so I know you don’t belong in a High School. 

Or maybe this more direct one:

I’m an overthinker and you’ve already rejected me a thousand times over in my head, but I just wanted to confirm the reality. So, would you want to go to dinner later? No? Yeah, I figured you’d go for more of the tall, dark, and handsome type. But if you find anyone that’s into the short, red, and organized type, let me know. 

After this unproductive fifteen-minute thought detour, he finally wrote:

Ms. Brenna Scott, 

Here are the class notes for tomorrow. If you have any questions let me know. 

He debated using exclamations points, but when he read it back, he wasn’t saying it in an excited manner, so he went for the more conservative period. 

I hope your weekend is filled with hunting or whatever makes you happy.

Exclamation point? No, a smiley face was better. Then he signed his name at the bottom. He reread it over several times before hitting send. 

Then he obsessively reread it several more times and saw a dumb typo in his notes which he corrected then resent. 

He clicked his laptop closed before thinking of something else at the last second. He opened it again and typed in ‘red bottom shoes.’ The search led to some very expensive footwear. This only proved that substituting wasn’t her main job, and she wasn’t doing it for the money. Something interested her about the experience, and he wished he could figure it out. 

But aside from direct interrogation, he couldn’t determine a good way to ask her why she wanted to do something so thankless with her time.

He didn’t have to wonder for himself, however. His reasons were more direct and could be summed up into two main explanations. One, he had to fast-track through high school and college in order to finish his schooling and get a job before his mother succumbed to cancer, and two, history was the easiest for him, so he ran with it. 

And he just barely made it in time. 

 His mom watched his graduation remotely and he was able to show her his first official job offer letter. Despite his general awkwardness and unusual personality, she didn’t have to worry about him anymore. He made it.

But things slowed down since she died. He was so focused on showing her he would be alright so she could stop hanging on despite the low quality of life she was leading, he never thought of what would happen after. 

But here he was in the after.

And in the after, the loneliness was intense and instead of the unhealthy habit of going to her grave every day, he would talk aloud to her photos on the wall. These conversations had sparked a troubling new mannerism: he would say his thoughts aloud in front of living people without knowing it. Yep, if his approach to the world wasn’t odd enough, this was yet another added sign of his peculiarities. 

Though his conversations to his mom’s pictures were admittedly less now than they used to be, it was mostly because he had a hard thing to confess to her and hadn’t been able to accept it himself. The difficult truth that he wasn’t where he wanted to be; he felt like a fraud constantly having to pretend to be something he wasn’t. This life was like someone else’s, and he was just managing it for a time. He could do it, but then the brain fog would build up, and nothing seemed meaningful enough. But it felt ungrateful to admit this. She gave him everything as a single mom, working for the sole purpose of raising him to adulthood. She didn’t have a life, he was everything. And what could he do to show her it wasn’t a waste of her best years?

While pondering all these things, he stood in front of her framed pictures on the wall and decided to say it aloud for the first time. Deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” He began, “But I lied. I’m not okay. I only did this because I didn’t want you to worry about leaving. And I think it worked okay then. But now I have to find something I can live with for the rest of my life. There’s a different path somewhere that I need to find.” He scratched his head and smiled at a memory. “Remember when I used to complain that I was shorter than everyone else? You always told me that I was small because I was meant for something big.” 

It was a funny saying of hers and made him roll his eyes even if she really believed it.

He sighed and his eyes were instinctively drawn to a folder he kept on the mantel. It was an application for his dream job: analyst for the CIA. And it would definitely fit his mom’s wishful thinking as well as his own.

But the application still wasn’t complete, and he retrieved it from the ledge above the fireplace again for the thousandth time that month.

He stored it in this unusual manner specifically because it didn’t quite fit on the mantel and thus would draw his attention every day in passing. This was also a tried-and-true technique he used for making sure he didn’t leave his phone in class or on his office desk. If he set his phone down with one corner hanging off the surface, it would be out of place in his peripheral vision enough to ensure he never left without it. There was probably a metaphor there about how he was the human equivalency of a corner sticking out, but he did it strictly as a memory trick and not for philosophical reasons.

He placed the folder on his clean dining room table. Though the original was a digital file saved on his computer, which was the preferred submission method, he also liked to keep a full printed copy so he could search for typos.   

He scanned through the completed pages one by one, placing the viewed sheets upside down in a neat pile. This time he found a double space where there should’ve been a single. He went back to his computer, fixed it, saved the file, then printed off a new corrected copy. This perfect version was placed in the folder, while the messed up one was discarded in recycling. 

Someone looking on might argue that this was overdone perfectionist behavior. But if he was going to be an analyst, then his application had to reflect the attention to detail and clarity the job demanded. Besides it wasn’t something he did only for show; he sincerely liked putting things in order. It was as though a light came on inside when he first heard about what an analyst did at the CIA while attending a recruitment meeting a few months ago. It was what he liked to do naturally. Gathering or looking over huge amounts of data, discovering what was relevant, and presenting it clearly and accurately. It was the most satisfying experience he could imagine. 

So, what was keeping him from finishing the application and submitting it?

Simple. The dreaded background check. 

If his application was accepted and advanced to the next stage, they would need to conduct an extensive background investigation which included interviewing friends, family, co-workers, bosses, and nearly everyone he’d ever associated with. This was going to be a major problem given that he was part of a pitifully small world that only really included himself. He didn’t have any family left to speak of, except his biological dad who was into financial fraud as a hobby, and he had virtually no contact with. And although he had past teachers and current co-workers, he was confident they wouldn’t be able to say anything complimentary since they avoided talking to him whenever possible.

Ideally, this would be perfect for the covert part of the job. If he lacked associates in general, then all secrets were safe with him. But, of course, they’d also run into the opposite problem that there was no way to determine his trustworthiness if they couldn’t interview anyone. So, it would simply cycle back on itself continuously like the age-old chicken vs. the egg debate. 

And so, as per usual, he tapped the papers straight into a neat stack, and put them back into the folder, returning it to the mantel. Just a subtle reminder that his dream job was always in sight but relied on having tons of friends and associates that would vouch for him, which was never going to happen. But he couldn’t discard the idea completely until he had a suitable replacement in mind along with a way to accomplish it. It just seemed wrong to throw away one dream before he had another one in sight.

He turned back to the wall o’ photos of his mother for a few reflective minutes before deciding that he needed something familiar and comforting to end the day with. So, he pulled out his favorite book from the shelf: The King’s Table. It was a retelling of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table with specific emphasis on equality. The King’s Table was a platform where there was no head or foot or rank, but a place where all were equal and heard.

But even before he understood the impressive symbolism, he had always been obsessed with King Arthur and his Knights. He used to fashion armor of cardboard and foil and fight the enemies of Camelot with his makeshift sword composed of an empty paper towel roll and attached cardstock crossbar. Sometimes he would even draw said cardboard roll from the stone represented by two couch pillows and become the rightful King. When he wasn’t slaying dragons, he was making excuses to bring Excalibur to the water and talk to the Lady of the Lake since she was filled with wisdom, and he had a major crush on her. 

Suddenly he heard an email notification. It was Ms. Scott. 

Dustin, 

Thanks, got it. 

Just a heads up, this is my last time on the sub list. But I’m going to leave something on your desk for Monday. Be sure to look for it.

Brenna

 He read it over many times, his stomach sinking. Whatever she had been doing, she decided it was time to move on.

And to add to the mystery, she was going to be leaving something on his desk before she made her exodus for good. What could she possibly be giving him? A handwritten card? That didn’t seem like the socially acceptable thing to do because, if anything, she had been doing him a favor. Was it a parting gift? School supplies? A good will gesture or personal? And if it was personal, what could she possibly give him? They’d never exchanged gifts before, and he didn’t know he should have one ready. What would he get her? When would he give it to her if tomorrow, during his scheduled absence, was her last day at the school ever?

If these questions weren’t enough, his mind was also panicking. Should he ask her out? If he didn’t do it now, would there ever be a chance? 

He didn’t even know if what she was going to leave on his desk would make this challenge more or less difficult, but he had to give it a shot. 

Great…and now he had only himself to thank for a self-imposed three-day weekend in which to continuously agonize about a plausible way to ask her out and preemptively consider how to recover from all the devastating possibilities of rejection…

Okay, that needed to go on the back burner. Right now, he had to clear the brain fog and go to bed on a positive note. This called for immersive reading.

Fixing his glasses straight, he closed the email and his laptop and went back to his book where he could hit pause on his worst-case scenario reel for an hour and dwell in a different place entirely. In the legendary tales of Camelot, he knew that even when King Arthur struggled with relationships or matters of the Kingdom, he always had a next step. Arthur never gave up hope in a beautiful dream… and neither would he.

Want to learn more about this and other fantasy sci-fi books I'm working on? For more on maps, world building, and stunning art by amazing artists of my two worlds - Drea and Hiraeth - check out my website at: Corrinamp.com