The Good Daughter Read Free Page B

freshman English to the very advanced AP British lit. It meant she had six different preps, but she liked it that way, as the varied curriculum held her interest and allowed her to teach far more novels, poetry, and plays every year than she’d be able to teach otherwise.
    Kit loved books. Reading was her thing. But being a teacher wasn’t just about sharing great books with young, bright minds. It was also about managing, controlling, organizing, disciplining, advising, as well as assuming extra duties to keep the school’s overhead down. At Memorial, the faculty all had duties outside their classroom. Yard duty, cafeteria duty, extracurricular jobs,adviser jobs, coaching positions. Teachers wore many hats. Kit was spending her lunch hour in her classroom wearing her Drama Club adviser hat now.
    Kit had founded the Drama Club her first year at Memorial High, and for the past fifteen years it’d been one of the school’s most prestigious clubs, putting on wonderful, if not extravagant and exhausting, productions every spring.
    But this year she was beginning to think there wouldn’t be a production. The club was small, with less than a dozen students. Her die-hard thespians, the most talented kids she’d probably ever worked with, had graduated in June, and she—and the club—missed those nine kids. The seven students who’d remained in the club had managed to recruit only one new freshman, and the eight club members couldn’t agree on anything.
    “You’re running out of time,” Kit said from her desk, raising her voice to be heard over the rustle of paper bags and crumpling plastic and conversation taking place at the student desks. “You don’t meet again until next month, and then it’s auditions. So you really need to discuss what kind of production interests you and get some consensus. If you can’t agree, then I think it’s time you accepted that there won’t be a spring show.”
    “What kind of show can we do again?” one of the sophomore girls asked.
    Irritation beat at Kit. She hadn’t slept well last night, had woken late, and had dashed to school without breakfast and was starving right now. Her gaze fell on her sandwich. It was looking bruised inside its plastic baggie but it made her mouth water. But she couldn’t eat it here, in front of them. She might get grape jelly on her white blouse. She might need to answer a question. She might choke…and these kids, helpless as they were, might let her die. Or worse, they might try the Heimlich maneuver on her.
    Better to go hungry.
    “You can do virtually anything,” Kit said, hiding her exasperation with a wry smile. They were just teenagers, after all. Fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds searching for identity, meaning, and clear skin. “Remember the list you brainstormed last month? You could choose a comedy, musical, drama, a series of one-act plays…it’s up to you. Perhaps you’d like to take a vote?”
    Alison Humphrey, the current president of the Drama Club, and the only senior in the club this year, came to life. “We’re going to vote now,” she said decisively. “It’ll be anonymous. Write down on a slip of paper what you’d like to do for the spring production, fold the paper up, and pass it to the front, and then we’ll tally the votes. Okay?”
    The classroom door opened while the students were scribbling down their preferences. It was Polly Powers, one of Memorial’s math teachers and Kit’s closest friend, in the doorway and she gestured to Kit.
    Kit left her desk and stepped out into the hall.
    “Are you going to be stuck in there all lunch?” Polly asked.
    “Looks like it. They can’t agree on anything.”
    “Which club?”
    “My little thespians.”
    Polly rolled her eyes. “No wonder.” She didn’t get theater, or theater kids. Thought they were weird.
    And perhaps they were, but Kit liked that. “How was lunch? Anything interesting happen in the staff room?”
    “Lunch was boring. Fiona