Chloe was so nervous, she thought her stomach might fall out of her butt.
Beca drove her to the West Hollywood Academy of the Performing Arts for her first day of orientation, and it felt like Chloe's own first day of school. If Beca had offered to walk her to the office, she would have taken her up on it.
Since she didn't have her own car - yet - and Beca's recording schedule didn't mesh with Chloe's strict 7:30am to 4:00pm schedule, Chloe would be taking the bus to work; today had been an exception, given the circumstance.
"I can't wait to hear all about it," Beca said as they pulled into the school's parking lot.
Chloe nodded. Speaking seemed too difficult at the moment.
"Call me if you need to."
Another nod.
"Chloe."
She looked, and her fear-filled eyes met Beca's serene, proud ones and Chloe felt her heart slow a bit.
"Go dazzle them - Bella style."
She had to smile at that. "Thank you." She leaned over and kissed Beca quickly while reaching for the door handle. "I love you."
"I love you, too, Miss Beale."
Chloe blushed a little at that. She would have to get used to being addressed formally. She gathered her belongings - a backpack with a notebook and pens and pencils, and a couple snacks in case she couldn't make it to lunchtime. The school advised that teachers could begin moving into classrooms over the weekend; this week was for policies and ice breakers.
Chloe climbed out of the car and turned to face the main entrance: multiple glass doors with various welcoming messages painted onto them, a few posters and notices taped up, and the school's name mounted above the doors in huge lettering. There were no children - not yet. A few other adults arrived at the same time, and Chloe took a breath and followed them into the school.
"Hi, are you here for orientation?" asked a peppy young girl.
"Um, yes."
"Great! I'm Miss Valdez, the third grade aide. Head down the hall and into the gym to the right. Be sure to sign in and pick up your name tag at the table by the door."
"Thank you. I'm Chl-Miss Beale. Kindergarten."
"Oh you're the new Kinder teacher! Welcome, welcome. See you inside."
Chloe wondered if her own exuberance was as irritating as Miss Valdez's. But then she thought...nah. She tried to dig up that exuberance as she walked down the hallway, walls covered with decorations celebrating music, and back-to-school, and dance, and reading.
The doors she passed were numbered, some already decorated, some not, with teachers' names. She wondered which one, if any, would be hers. Two propped-open doors gave way to the gym, and she stopped in the entrance. Tables and tables - the same picnic-table kind she remembered from lunchtime at school - lined the floor, and dozens of people sat at them, some talking to one another, others being wallflowers. Chloe was glad she wasn't the only obviously new person, and as she signed in and found her badge, she looked around. It was like high school lunch hour all over again; where she chose to sit could determine her destiny - or at least her clique. Or did teachers have cliques? She wasn't sure. Probably.
"Dazzle them Bella style," Chloe said to herself and pulled out her best and friendliest smile and headed for the table with several people actively conversing. She took a seat, interrupting them all to say, "Hi! I'm Chloe. Beale. Kindergarten."
It worked like a charm. The group greeted her and introduced themselves and their roles - mostly teachers, a few aides and one office staff member who was chummy with a few of them.
And as simple as that, Chloe had her clique.
As was expected, orientation started with ice breaker games. Chloe loved ice breakers. She organized the Bellas' every year. This game, she decided, was pretty lame. All they were doing was introducing themselves, saying one personal fact, and tossing a ball to someone else who would do the same - and around the room it went.
Chloe's co-workers, she quickly discovered, came from all backgrounds. Some were in their twentieth year of teaching. Others were brand new like her, changing careers after a decade in a job they hated. She noticed how few staff members came from the performing arts - most mentioned it as an interest or hobby, not as a past profession or even education.
So when the ball finally ended up in her hands, Chloe was ready to dazzle; she flipped her hair and put on her most charming smile and used her best vocal projection.
"Hi! I'm Chloe Beale. This is my first year at WEHOAPA," she loved their acronym, it sounded like We Hope(-ah), "and my first year teaching. My fun fact is that I helped lead my all-female college a capella group, the Barden Bellas, to three national titles and we are the reigning world a capella champions." She finished with an even brighter smile and tossed the ball across the aisle to a guy who she'd caught looking at her more than once that morning. He was cute, and the attention was flattering, but he was thinking about barking up the wrong tree.
"You were the group that beat Das Sound Machine?" a girl asked behind her.
Chloe turned around, trying not to ignore the continued introductions. "That's right!" She was met, however, with a stern frown and crossed arms.
"DSM for life!"
Chloe was taken aback; the first day at her new job was the last place she expected to run into a DSMer, but it happened, and she had her first, she assumed, enemy. It wasn't the reaction she had anticipated to her introduction. She was a bit of a celebrity in the a capella circuit, and she thought at a performing arts school her championship belts would hold some clout, but here, she was at the bottom of the totem pole.
"Oh my God, you're a Bella?"
Or maybe she wasn't.
It was the last item on the day's agenda, but finally the time came for Chloe to receive her room assignment.
It wasn't any of the rooms she passed that morning; in fact, she had to walk quite a ways down the hall and turn two corners, discovering another entrance to the building, before she found it.
Room 17.
The door was closed and lights were off. She was given keys to the building, her room, the office, teachers' lounge, and she shuffled through them, unsure which was which. Choosing one, she reached for the door knob and grabbed it to unlock it but it turned easily. She held her breath, and pulled.
The room felt miniaturized. The desks were tiny, the chairs were tiny, the classroom water fountain was below her waist.
The dry erase board was gleaming and white.
The teacher's desk - her desk - was empty.
An electronic piano sat, dark, in a corner.
The walls were bare, screaming for life.
Chloe sat at her desk - the teacher's desk - and looked over the rows of tiny desks and chairs.
And her mind buzzed at the possibilities, the colors, the shapes she would bring to it.
And the miniature people she would teach.
She took the bus home. Los Angeles mass transit left much to be desired, but Beca was tied up in the studio, and even though she offered to pick her up during a break, Chloe declined. The recording studio was nowhere near the school.
On the bus, she reviewed the massive binder assigned to each teacher. Hers was specific to kindergarten coursework, and she was relieved that the example lesson plans mirrored the practice ones she worked through for her first certification class. Teaching things like the alphabet, the colors of the rainbow, and counting wasn't difficult content, but she had a pretty good idea that corralling a couple dozen five-year-olds would be.
The thought of it was thrilling.
She also had a massive shopping list - endless supplies, both required and suggested. She dug out a pen and began adding to it all the things necessary to bring Room 17 to life.
It wasn't until Saturday she was able to move into her room. As impatient as she was, it was for the best. It gave her enough time to look at other teachers' rooms, to read more teacher blogs about classroom management, to scour Target and the arts and crafts and instructional supply stores for what she needed and wanted.
It also was for the best because Beca could drive her and her five heavy boxes of supplies to campus, and even had the day off from the studio.
"Room 17, right?"
Chloe was pushing a cart stacked with her boxes down the hallway, following Beca. "Yeah. On the left."
"This one?" Beca stopped, pointing.
"That's the one."
"Awesome. Ok come here."
"Why?"
"Just come here," Beca repeated.
Chloe abandoned her cart and obliged, only to have Beca grasp her arms and wrangle her to stand in front of the door.
"There. Stay." She backed up a few steps and pulled out her iPhone, and Chloe smiled for the photo. "This is a big deal. We should document it."
"Thank you; I don't think my selfies have really captured the significance."
Beca laughed, but Chloe was serious. Selfies could only do so much! She heard the shutter sound effect from Beca's phone a few more times as she unlocked her classroom door and navigated the cart into the room.
"Everything's so small!" Beca said immediately.
"I know! Isn't it the cutest?"
They worked on setting up Chloe's classroom well into the night. Beca had left her computer at home, and it was a nice change of pace to have Beca helping and observing her, after so many years of helping and observing Beca's musical magic.
It was pushing midnight when they left, but Chloe had transformed her classroom into a safari theme, with laminated cut-outs of lions, zebras, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and hippos taped to the walls that would feature her students' names, and grass-patterened scalloped borders around the board, door, and windows, and a student mailbox system for homework return and delivery that used clothespins decorated to look like crocodile mouths that she learned how to make on Pinterest.
She finished the decor with a laminated lion on the door, with Ms. Beale written on it in clear print.
Beca documented the entire process; she was trying to be sly about it, but she didn't always remember to switch her phone back to vibrate before snapping a picture, and the sound effect gave her away, resulting in a sheepish "Sorry" and an emphatic "It's okay, I really appreciate it!" from Chloe.
She wasn't sure why Beca was trying to hide her picture-taking at all, since Chloe was fully aware of it. But she figured, now that she knew Beca had surreptitiously documented most of their life together as revealed by the photos that showed up after the move, that maybe Beca simply enjoyed working behind the scenes. It made sense, given her chosen career. And so, Beca held the stapler and the tape dispenser and the other end of the whatever to help make sure it was straight, and photographed Chloe building her first classroom.
Chloe was so nervous, she thought her stomach might fall out of her butt.
She walked the block to campus from the bus stop.
The first day of school.
Three weeks of orientation and a few online classes and she was jumping headfirst into being one of the first instructional presences in young lives. She remembered questioning the lack of preparation and training required to be a teacher - a degree and a certification, which she could earn while on the job, was all she needed. The leniency played in her favor, but the knowledge certainly made her take notice and consider the state of the American education system.
But that was a thought for another day.
She breezed through the front entrance, saying good morning to the office staff and the couple teachers milling about the time clock where she swiped her ID card.
"First day - nervous?"
Chloe didn't need to be reminded. "Yes. But I'm excited to get started."
At the recent Meet the Teacher Night, she had opportunity to meet her students and their parents and guardians - all twenty-one munchkins - and it was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. Much to her relief, however, all the children but three seemed to love her immediately, and the three who refused to speak to her seemed to refuse to speak to their parents as well, too shy or scared to do anything.
Kindergarten was scary, after all.
Students began arriving, escorted by older siblings, parents, and grandparents, and before Chloe realized what was even happening, the bell rang, the guardians were gone, and she was standing in front of twenty-one little humans either staring at her, talking to their neighbor, or, in the case of one little girl who was sitting in the beanbag chair in the reading corner, crying quietly after finally allowing her mother to leave.
"Good morning, everyone! Welcome to Room 17."
And suddenly - Chloe Beale was a teacher.