Peer Pressure by Chris Watt Page B

basket at her feet and opened her handbag, pulling a small business card from her purse. She handed it to Rob.
    “This is my work number.”
    Rob looked at the card then put it in his jacket pocket, before pulling out an old receipt.
    “Do you have a pen?” he asked. Katy rummaged in her handbag before handing him a small black biro. He started to scribble on the old receipt.
    “Okay, here’s my mobile,” he said, handing her the piece of paper, “just in case that turns out to be brain damage and you want to sue.”
    Katy looked at his number, before asking,
    “Would it be worth it?”
    Rob shrugged, before quipping,
    “Not on my salary.”
    “No,” she continued, trying to find the right way to phrase her question, “I mean, I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but would the drink be worth it?”
    Rob’s brow furrowed in confusion, Katy’s sentence rolling about in his head for a good ten seconds before he could grasp what she was getting at. Katy waited for his response, slightly worried that she had been too forward. She stuck by the question though, feeling that she was getting too old for all the usual games and rituals that came with men and women dating. Finally, Rob got it.
    “Oh, you mean you and me? Man, you’re pretty direct. Nobody ever asked me that before.”
    Katy found his sudden flurry of confusion quite cute, but was now overcome with a feeling of regret for having asked him at all.
    “Well?” she asked.
    Rob looked down at her work number one last time, before bringing his head back up, smiling his smile and simply responding,
    “Maybe.”

TWENTY-ONE
    By the end of the following week a number of things happened. For Jodie, the week had started well. She looked forward to her English classes with an enthusiasm that began to affect her other subjects. It’s not that she wasn’t doing her work; it’s just that she was not interested in anything other than what went on for those five hours per week in Rob’s classroom. She would sit and listen to his voice, hanging on every word. However, nothing was sticking in her memory, nothing except the soft lilts in his speech patterns, the way he rolled his ‘l’s and ‘r’s, or how he would clear his throat between paragraphs of Hardy’s descriptions of death and misery. He could have been reading the phone book for all she cared, she was hooked on his voice, and much the same way as someone gets hooked on online gambling. While her ‘addiction’ wasn’t costing her money, it was threatening her education.
    Jodie was a little surprised when she was called in to meet with her Guidance Counselor, Mr. Posner, that Thursday afternoon. He was a beast of a man, with thick wavy white hair and a nose that was crooked, like a parrot’s beak. Yet despite his tough exterior, he was actually something of a teddy bear, a man genuinely concerned with the well-being and education of his students. Jodie, who had always shown such promise, was rather worryingly becoming a firm target on his radar.
    “Jodie, I hope you don’t feel we’re being too forward in calling you in here today.”
    “I don’t think it’s forward, I’m just a little worried. Did I do something wrong?”
    “No, don’t worry about anything. This is just a formality.”
    “Okay.”
    “Jodie, I and some other members of staff are just a little concerned about some of your marks over the last few weeks and we thought it best to meet with you and see if there’s anything wrong.”
    “Anything wrong?”
    “You know, if perhaps you’re experiencing problems at home, or here, or if there’s some reason why you seem to be reluctant to try harder in many of your studies.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Well, that might be the problem. Jodie, we know that you’re one of the brightest students in your year. You show great promise and one day, hopefully, your teachers and I hope to one day look back and say we knew you when.”
    “Really? I always thought that I just got my