CLAIRE TOOK DEEP breath after deep breath as she sat in the empty chapel of Oceanside Prep and listened to a Bach cantata on her iPod. It was an old trick of Gaby’s. Bach usually soothed her nerves, but this time Johann Sebastian was letting her down. She made an L with a thumb and forefinger and touched it to her forehead: Loser. That was her.
As soon as the Bach ended, something unfamiliar came through her earphones. Then she remembered. Gus had commandeered her iPod a few nights before. He said he was determined to blast her into the twenty-first century.
She laughed. She was suddenly listening to Daft Punk singing “Something About Us.”
But there’s something about us I want to say
Cause there’s something between us anyway.
The music, the words, the beat, the wacky combination of Claire Donoghue and Daft Punk in a prep school chapel, made her shake her head. Unfortunately Daft Punk was no more successful at soothing her than Bach, but it did make her think happily of her son. She loved Gus so much, in spite of himself. Hell, everybody loved Gus, even the teachers who were flunking him.
She remembered as a child seeing a photo of mothers in a visitors’ room at a state penitentiary. She’d asked Gaby why all those moms went to see their sons if the sons were criminals. Gaby had the answer: “Claire, sweetie, love trumps everything.”
Claire snapped open the old pocket watch that hung from a gold chain around her neck. Inside was an antique watch face on the right, and on the left a tiny photo of Gaby, age sixteen. Very pretty. With attitude.
“Now you have me with you all the time,” Gaby had said when she gave her the watch. “Even when you don’t want me there.”
Time for class. Her students—Curtis, Andy, Reggie, Timbo (real name Timothy)—would be waiting for her. If she wasn’t on time they’d shout “Class canceled!” and take off.
She clicked the watch closed. She upped the volume on the iPod, and Claire and Daft Punk dance-shuffled down to her tutoring classroom.
I’m not a loser. I’ve just been acting like one.