Somewhere Between Luck and Trust Read Online Free Page B

should.
    “Shoplifting?”
    “I was still in high school, right before I dropped out. There was a group of girls I liked, girls like me who didn’t really fit in, and they had this unofficial club. They called themselves the Outsiders. To join I had to go into the hardware store down the street from school and shoplift something. Anything, it didn’t matter, except it had to be over a dollar. One of them waited outside to make sure I didn’t go up to the counter and pay first.”
    When she didn’t go on, Sam asked, “So you went along with it?”
    “I was a preacher’s kid. By then my parents thought I was beyond redemption, but I’d never done anything illegal, not anything like that. So I was scared but determined.”
    “And you got caught?”
    “I took the cheapest thing I could find on the aisle farthest from the counter. It was a little pocket tape measure. I figured I would go in later when nobody was watching and tell the clerk I’d walked out by mistake without paying for it, and give him the money. I thought that would make it okay. I stood there for ten minutes trying to make myself slip it in my pocket, and finally I did.”
    Samantha waved a French fry. “Uh-oh.”
    “Turns out the manager had been watching me. He had figured out what the Outsiders were up to, and he’d noticed the girl waiting outside. So they stopped me when I had one foot out the doorway and called the sheriff. I think they hoped nobody else would try to shoplift after that. As small as it was, it was still on my record when...” She didn’t go on.
    “When you were arrested the next time.”
    Cristy nodded. “It didn’t help.”
    “I guess not.”
    They fell silent. Cristy finished half her hamburger, but she realized that was the best she could do. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can eat the rest of this. Thank you for buying it for me.”
    “You’re very welcome.” Samantha flashed her extraordinary smile, and for a moment Cristy felt warmed by it.
    “I noticed a Target in the strip mall over there.” Samantha nodded toward the far door. “That’ll give us a chance to stretch our legs before we get back on the road. You’re going to need some new clothes until you gain back some of the weight you lost. Let’s do a little shopping.”
    “I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. You’re being so nice to me. And you have no reason to.”
    “Reason?” Samantha considered. “Here’s my reason, Cristy. We’ve just determined that I was lucky and you weren’t. So let me make a little good luck for you now. It’s as simple as that. Don’t you deserve it?”
    Cristy didn’t know. She honestly didn’t know what she deserved anymore. And because she didn’t, she just didn’t answer.

Chapter Three
    EVERY DAY AT BCAS was “one of those days.” Georgia knew she was lucky to thrive on variety and problem solving. Even so, by the time the afternoon faculty meeting drew to an end, all the blood had been leeched from her body.
    The faculty had come with the job, which Georgia had gotten after the committee’s first choice left the school board high and dry. Unfortunately that woman had also gifted the school with a handful of teachers who saw BCAS as a demotion, even a punishment for infractions they had committed in their lengthy careers.
    Passive-aggressive behavior reigned. In classrooms that needed constant stimulation to engage students’ attention, these teachers inevitably showed videos, or assigned long passages to be read silently. They used lesson plans that probably hadn’t worked in former classrooms, and talked about not coddling students. In the future Georgia might be able to replace them, but this year, for better or worse, they were hers. Boring students to death was not a good enough reason to send a teacher packing.
    Now, at meeting’s end, she stood to stop one of the worst teachers in the middle of a monologue that was putting the rest of the faculty to sleep. Jon Farrell, a man