Free The People Next Door by Christopher Ransom Page B

the students attended and didn’t kill anybody,
     she was expected to pass them. After all, some of these kids were supporting their families.
    But breadwinners or not, Eric Pritchard and Jason Wells frightened her. They were tall. They stank. They looked at her with
     rapist’s eyes. She feared that if she turned them in for this bit of graffiti, next week it would be her tires slashed, a
     broken windshield, a blouse-ripping assault, her face pressed to the chalkboard.
    She hated herself for allowing their juvenile insult to gain traction in the ruts of her self-esteem. But she couldn’t ignore
     the fact that this was, in essence, what she was to them. The randy, jack-booted, ADD-afflicted teen boys –
men
, when you accepted the reality of theirfacial hair – in her class did not see her as a milf or slut or hotbox or some other insulting but at least suggestively attractive
     being. To them she was porcine. A tusked pig. A beast with eight hairy gray teats.
    Whatever happened to the harmless nicknames of yore? It seemed like only yesterday her wily fifth-grader Tyler Sampson had
     admiringly referred to her as Muggle Nips. She’d sent him to the principal’s office, of course (and vowed to start wearing
     thicker bras), but she’d at least been able to laugh at that one over a glass of wine. No matter how you looked at it, there
     was no silver lining in warthog tits.
    Of course it wasn’t just the awful insult. Or the vandalism of her car. It was the decision to take on a class she was not
     prepared for. It was her vivid nightmares of becoming an Obese American. It was the pressure of this job, how frighteningly
     important the extra income had become. In short, Eric and Jason’s real crime was not defacing her window with the red tip
     of their inhalants. It was that they had successfully boiled down everything that was wrong in her life to two words.
    ‘Warthog tits! Warthog tits!’ a voice squealed behind her, giggling with delight.
    Amy looked up to find Briela standing behind the car with Ingrid, their family assistant, pointing at the obscenity.
    ‘Briela, noooo,’ Ingrid said, pushing B toward the house. They must have just gotten off the 205, at the bus stop across Jay
     Road. ‘Don’t say that. Go inside while I talk to your mom, please.’
    Briela ran by as Amy powered down the window, dabbing her eyes.
    ‘Amy? You okay?’ Ingrid said.
    ‘Fine, I’m fine.’
    ‘What happened to your car?’
    The rags and turpentine would have to wait. ‘Just another fun day at Vo-Tech. How are you? You two have a good afternoon?’
    ‘We’re all right. Now. Do you have a minute?’
    Amy cringed, preparing for more bad news.

17
    Trouble follows this family around like Pigpen’s dirt cloud, Ingrid Gustafson thought. Thank effing God I’m outta here in
     August.
    Ingrid had graduated from Colorado State University two years ago, her red-and-black cowboy boots a proud remnant of her aggie
     heritage. Her parents were good old-fashioned non-organic farmers, but the rest of their daughter, above the boots, was all
     Boulder. She favored hippie skirts and her straight black hair fell to her waist, swishing around the armory of bracelets
     and rings adorning her thin limbs.
    She had been the Nash family assistant – which let’s face it really meant glorified maid and abused babysitter – for two years
     and had somehow given them the impression she would do just about anything for eleven bucks an hour: make lunch, fold laundry,
     schlepp B to the zoo, and make that ridiculous salad every day to save Amy the headache that was chopping vegetables. Funny
     how most of that salad was still sitting in the fridge the next morning. The Nash compost heap was a regular arugula and balsamic
     Bugs Bunny all-you-can-eat buffet.
    If she had one trump card up her sleeve at all times, it was that she was great with Briela. Amy would be lost without her
     and both of them knew it. Briela’s teachers had been hinting