A guy who’d just finished checking out in another lane came up to me. “That was pretty good, man. Where’d you learn that?”
“Oh, y’know,” I said.
“He’s a teacher,” Bert said.
I felt my face flush and not in a good way. “Bert…” I said. I had a bad feeling about this.
“A teacher?” the stranger said. “Where?”
I looked to Cassie’s dad. “Bert, don’t!”
The old guy had heard his name chanted in warning for so many years he’d just tuned it out. “He works in the pre-kindergarten unit out there in Oakshire Elementary.”
I saw a lightbulb go off behind the stranger’s eyes. “Oakshire? Isn’t that that Amazon school?”
“Not…exclusively…”
He narrowed his eyes at me. I froze as he spit right in my face. “Damn’ Helper!”
