It had a really easy-going, friendly kind of atmosphere. You could hear people laughing. Every person we passed said, “hi”. And Mrs Darling couldn’t have been happier to see me if I’d been teaching English for the last fifty years. “If Zebediah recommends you, then that’s good enough for me,” said Mrs Darling. It took me a second to realize she meant Cooper. Nobody I knew called him Zebediah. And nobody I knew paid any attention to his opinions – not in a positive way, at least. Mrs Darling said that if I did decide to join there was a workshop where I could learn the basics, but for now I could just sit in on a class and see what I thought. I explained that I probably wouldn’t be able to stay too long because my friend was coming for me. I stayed all afternoon. I sat in with the youngest class, which was taught by Mrs Hendricks from the hardware store. It was the second time since elementary school that I’d been in a group where everyone else wasn’t taller than I was.
