Even though Josie Nixon had graduated from college and gotten married and knew how to hang curtains and had opened a retirement account, going to this conference still felt like the most grown-up thing she had ever done. Something about being sent somewhere for your work, about being paid to travel, about attending a professional event that had an acronym, just seemed so fucking adult.

After checking in at the long table in the student union building of Shepaug University, accidentally standing in the A–M line instead of the N–Z, Josie was given a cool tote bag with the AEC logo on it. It was white canvas, designed to look as though it were paint-splattered. She took the bag with her to one of the vinyl couches along the side wall and sat down. Inside the bag was her name badge, plus a lanyard to hang it on, and the program for the three-day-event. There was also a bottle of water, a bag of locally made potato chips, and a chocolate bar, also from a local company. She loved free stuff, and all her loot made her inexplicably happy. After snapping a picture on her phone of the other teachers checking in, she sent a text to Travis, even though he’d already told her that he didn’t need a play-by-play of her weekend. He wanted her to feel independent, do whatever she wanted, but she did want him to know she’d arrived safe. She’d have felt that way if the roles were reversed. He texted her back right away, one red heart and one black.

She studied the program even though she’d already read it online, pre-picking the workshops and panels she hoped to attend. What was cool about the Art Educator Conference was that even though it had a pedagogical bent, many of the workshops were simply art instruction. She was most excited for collage, and for the puppet-making workshop. Two teachers wandered over and asked if they could share the couch. She slid along and they plopped down next to her, a man and woman, the man with a gray ponytail and the woman tall and fairly ravishing. Together they looked at the program. They were clearly colleagues, they’d been to this conference before, and they were making lots of jokes about the content. When the man read the name of the puppet workshop out loud, the woman said, “Hard pass.”

When Brian, her supervisor, had told her that she’d been approved to attend this conference, she’d let him know it was going to be her first work trip. “Be prepared,” he’d said, “teachers are the worst at conferences, like poorly behaved children. They do things they’d never let their own students do.”