THREE

I was more nervous than I thought I'd be on Monday morning.

It had been close to twenty years since I'd attended a day of school and, as it turned out, the old anxieties hadn't left me – they'd just gone into hibernation. I had trouble sleeping and was up earlier than usual. Emily frowned at me as she moved through the house – from her bedroom to the bathroom and back to her room – getting ready. I'd decided to let her ride the bus and keep her usual routine. She was already wigged out enough by my presence at the school and I didn't want to make it worse than it already was. My stomach wasn't much for breakfast and I spent the better part of the early morning, getting the other three out of bed, dressed and fed so that Jake could get them to Brenda's on his way to work. By the time they finally left, I was rushing around to get myself ready and make sure I was at Prism by nine.

The street around Prism was lined with cars, a product of a small parking lot and too many drivers. Most of the area businesses had signs warning non-customers who used their lots would be dealt with swiftly. Most had not been happy about being so near a school, simply because of the traffic hassles it created . a a nd they did everything in their power to make sure their territory was not impeded upon.

I found a spot about a block away and hustled into the the two-story brown building.

“I need to use the lab,” an irritated boy of about seventeen was saying to the woman behind the desk in the main office. “Our teacher promised that we could use it this morning to print out our projects but the door is locked and the lights are out. I have to use it before third hour.”

The woman he was complaining to – string-bean thin with a brown head of curls and a beak-like nose – looked sternly at him. Or at least she tried to. “Benjamin, I've already told you it's not open today.”

“But I have to use it.”

“But you can't and I'm sorry,” she said. She pushed the sleeves of her thin red sweater up to her elbows and gave him a sympathetic look. “There's nothing I can do about it.”

“Who can do something about it?” he asked, cutting loose with a disgusted sigh. His blue eyes narrowed. “Or should I just call my dad and tell him that once again nothing works at this place?”

It was a complaint that I'd heard often from Emily. Prism billed itself as the most technologically advanced school in central Minnesota – it was on their letterhead, their website and their brochures – but yet the computers never seemed to work, the Internet connection always conked out and the website was down more often than it was up. She'd taken to always printing things at home because she knew she could never count on working printers or even the computer lab being open.

“Benjamin, you can call your father and tell him anything you'd like,” the woman told the boy. “But it won't change the fact that the lab is not – and will not be – open this morning.”

Benjamin made the same disgusted sigh, muttered something under his breath, and trudged past me out of the office.

The woman took a deep breath and refocused on me, forcing a smile onto her lips. “Good morning. How can I help you?” Then something flashed through her green eyes and she snapped her fingers, taking a closer look at me. “Wait a moment. Mrs. Savage, correct? You're here to volunteer, I believe?”

I nodded. “Yes, that's right. I'm Daisy.”

“Emily's mother,” she said, smiling and it seemed more genuine than the one she'd had to dig for when she'd first said hello. “She's a lovely girl. I'm Ellen Peterson. Thank you so much for coming in this week. We can really use the help.”

“I'm happy to be here.”

“Well, come on back, and we'll get you situated,” she said, motioning for me to come around her desk.

I followed her to a small conference room and she had me take a seat in one of the oversized chairs. She brought me a small stack of papers that I had to fill out, mainly agreeing that I was there to volunteer and so that they could record the hours I was there. She also had to take my picture for my I.D. It took me fifteen minutes to fill out the papers and when I was done, she returned with a laminated badge on a lanyard that had both my name and picture on it.

“Here you go,” she said, handing it to me. “Make sure you wear this each day that you're here. It will also function as a keycard for any rooms that are locked.”

I slipped it over my head. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling again. “For agreeing to give so much of your time. Things are a bit...busy, this week, so as I said, we really appreciate you coming in. Not everything will be terribly exciting, but I'm sure we'll come up with a few things for you to do that won't put you to sleep.”

“I'll be fine with whatever you'd like me to do,” I said.

She seemed relieved by this. “Excellent. I think what I'd like to start you with is sorting a back log of mail. Would that be alright?”

“Whatever you'd like,” I said, relieved that the task sounded relatively easy.

I followed her back out to the main area and a girl about Emily's age was standing at the desk, chomping on a piece of gum and looking annoyed.

“Is, like, the computer lab, ever going to be open?” she asked, in the way only an entitled teenager can speak. “I have to print out my paper for Mr. Ledger's class or else I'm gonna, like, fail.”

“The lab is closed this morning, Deirdre,” Ellen told her calmly. “It will not be open today.”

Deirdre raised a thin eyebrow and chomped harder on the gum. “So I'm gonna have to, like, fail?”

“That's for you and your teacher to work out, dear,” Ellen explained. The sleeves of her sweater had fallen and she pushed them back up to her elbows. “But it will not be open today and I can't tell you when it will be open again.” She paused. “And remember, we don't allow gum-chewing in class.”

“Well, that's just awesome,” Deirdre said. She made a big show of taking out her wad pf pink gum and dropping it into the wastebasket by the door. “Such a joke.” She snorted, turned on her heel and stomped away.

Ellen took another long, deep breath and forced the earlier smile I'd seen back onto her lips. “As I said, things are a bit crazy at the moment.”

“It's Monday,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “Mondays are always long days.”

“And then some,” she said. “Now, let's get you that mail so we don't waste any more of your time.”

She reached under her desk and pulled out a giant plastic bin overflowing with envelopes, magazines and advertisements. “This is it. If you could just sort it into piles by the names they're addressed to, that would be great. I can show you where the mailboxes are.”

“Okay.” I looked around the cramped office. “Any specific place I should do this?”

She thought for a minute. “You can use the conference room to spread out.”

“Sounds good,” I said, picking up the crate and following Ellen into the conference room.

I stood at the long table in the middle of the room and started pulling out handfuls of mail. It wasn't the most glamorous job, but I told myself I'd rather be overqualified for a volunteer job than under-qualified and scrambling.. I set the crate on the middle of the table, and ninety minutes later, I had about sixty different piles spread out on the table and the crate was empty. Most of it was catalogs and junk mail, trying to get teachers to purchase materials to use in their classrooms, stuff I imagined they would probably just end up tossing. It wasn't hard to see why it had been set aside.

I walked back out to the office to tell Ellen that I'd finished. With any luck, I could find out where the teacher mailboxes were and get the mail delivered to the appropriate boxes before lunch.

I turned the corner and saw Ellen seated behind her desk, a nervous smile on her face, pushing at the sleeves of her sweater.