Sprout

through her blonde hair and said:
    “Would you like a ‘drink’?”
    She used her fingers to make the quotation marks, which kind of threw me. No teacher had ever offered me a “drink” before, or even a drink for that matter. I wondered if “drink” was a synonym for something—or, God forbid, a euphemism.
    “Okay … ?”
    “Okay what?”
    “Okay … Janet?”
    “‘At’s my boy.”
    “I got married when I was twenty-one,” she called through the kitchen window, her voice barely audible over a roaring blender. “Divorced at twenty-three, but that’s a whole ’nother story. Somehow during the past decade and a half I never got around to taking my name back. I tried doing the whole ‘Ms.’ thing, but I couldn’t even get my head-in-a-bucket colleagues to say it, let alone the students. Kansas ,” she added, as if that explained everything.
    I glanced up from my dictionary ( thermotype: a picture obtained by wetting an object with hydrochloric acid, then taking an impression, then heating it ) when the sliding-glass door slid open. Mrs. Miller was hunched over a tray containing a couple of glasses with cactus-shaped stems and a pitcher filled with icy yellow liquid sloshing over the top.
    Oh, and a bottle of tequila.
    “Anyhoo,” she set the tray on a table, and a little more liquid sloshed out of the pitcher, making me wonder if she wasn’t a bit sloshed herself. “Since, technically speaking, I’m not your teacher during the summer, I thought we’d stick with first names. Okay, Daniel?”
    I put the dictionary on the floor. Sometimes definitions don’t help much. (For example: do you have any idea what a thermotype is based on what I just told you? I don’t, and I’m sure not about to splash acid on my face to see if it takes a picture.) Mrs. Miller’s “I’m not your teacher” left me similarly unenlightened, and all I could do was stare at the bottle of tequila. I mean, even my dad doesn’t drink tequila at 11:30 on a Monday morning. He drinks whiskey, but that, to borrow a phrase from Mrs. M., is a whole ’nother story.
    “Uh, it’s Sprout.”
    “Sprout.” Mrs. Miller glanced at my hair, then followed my eyes to the bottle. “Yes, Sprout, it’s true. Teachers are human too, surprise, surprise. Relax, the pitcher’s virgin.” She poured some in a glass and pushed it towards me. “I’ll doctor mine separately.”
    If you’re a virgin-margarita virgin, it tastes a little like a lime rickey. If you’re a lime-rickey virgin, it tastes a little like a limeade with something dissolved in it—a peppermint pattie, maybe, or a Ricola, or several bags of mint tea. Since margaritas aren’t supposed to have any mint in them, this was especially weird, or maybe just gross. Luckily I wasn’t thirsty.
    “Wojadubikowski.”
    I looked at Mrs. Miller, again wondering if she’d had a nip in the kitchen, or maybe an epileptic fit. Her hand was steady enough as she dosed her drink.
    I held up my glass. “De lic ious!” When in doubt, hide behind a compliment.
    Mrs. Miller laughed. “My maiden name. Woy-a-du-bi-kuv-skee.”
    “Oh! Woya, Woya—wha?”
    “Don’t bother. I couldn’t say it myself till I was six. There are some benefits to Miller.” She poked a bendy straw into her drink and took a sip, made a face, half grimace, half smile, and again I wondered if she were having a fit. But:
    “Ooh!” was all she said. “ Ow . Brain-freeze.”
    “So,” her wet voice going all teacherly: “The essay contest is timed. One hour, which means you can write six, maybe eight good pages. The topic is selected randomly, but always falls within certain parameters. ‘If you were president, what would you do?’ ‘If you had a million dollars, how would you spend it?’ ‘If you could invent one thing, what would it be?’ ”
    Oh.
    Right.
    Essay contest.
    I’d almost forgotten about it, what with the novelty of a teacher picking me up at my house and serving me frozen margaritas, virgin or otherwise.
    I have to admit, though, in the two weeks since Mrs. Miller had put the idea in my head, it had grown on me. The truth is, I do enjoy playing around with words (if you’re still reading, you might’ve noticed that). And I was also beginning to think maybe I had something to say. Like, you know: I’m a creep, I’m a loser, I smell like Teen Spirit but I’m beautiful, no matter what they say, and I’m bringing sexy back, yeah! Does that make me crazy? Probably. But now it