by T. N. King
Holding the shoulder of his jacket, she pushed him away from the photographs and down the hall.
Liam was always surprised by her strength, she was so small and slim, it didn’t look like she would be able to push him around, but she could. More importantly, he let her. If it had been anyone else, he would have decked them as soon as they touched him, but Caroline was different.
She pulled him down the hallway, towards one of the stairwells. “I said no,” he whispered to him, pushing him against the wall, making sure no one could see them. “You wouldn’t know how to handle her or what she needs.”
“You don’t know that.”
Caroline’s face was close to his. Her face had gone red, but her eyes were icy cold. “You have to stay far away.”
“Didn’t you just say I needed another girl?”
“Not her. She’s not what you need and you’re definitely not what she needs.”
“But she’s what I want.”
Caroline shook her head. “And I want a chocolate cake all to myself, but that doesn’t mean I should get it. Just because you want something, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. It doesn’t mean it will give you the best future.”
“Okay mom, thanks,” Liam answered, rolling his eyes at her.
His attempt at lightening the mood fell flat, her face stayed hard and set. “Do not make light of this. I’m not saying this for my own benefit. I’m only thinking of you.”
“How do you know that? She could be exactly what I need,” Liam argued, struggling to keep his voice low. He could feel it now, the edge Caroline had been talking about, the sharp feeling. She was right about his needing a new girl, he just couldn’t accept her refusal. This woman was something he was going to fight for.
“She wouldn’t good for you.”
“You mean she’s too good for someone like me.”
Caroline closed her eyes, and sighed deeply, letting go of his shoulder. “That isn’t what I meant. That’s never going to be what I meant.”
“That doesn’t make it less true.”
“No, it isn’t true. She isn’t too good for you. It’s that she isn’t good for you. She isn’t going to be what you need.”
They were both quiet again for a moment, she put a hand on his shoulder again, this time light and gentle. “You understand the difference right?”
“Yeah, sure. I understand,” he answered, nodding his head slowly, his voice distracted.
Caroline stared at him, studying his face. She moved to stand in front of him, resting her hands on his arms. “Please, for me. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“That doesn’t leave me very many options,” he answered, sighing, trying to paste a smile on his face. “I always was a stupid kid.”
Caroline sighed an answer to this, “Just stubborn. Always so very stubborn.”
“Sometimes that’s the same as stupid.” Liam shrugged.
CHAPTER NINE
Miranda sat at her desk, head in her hands, elbows propped up against the hard top of her desk. The day had gone badly, and the parent meeting only made it worse, her student Mark’s parents had stormed out of the room, banging the door against the wall. His father especially didn’t want to hear about Mark’s English grade, or how it could be improved, he only wanted to hear about football. This explained how he got on so well with Harrison. No wonder Mark was so eager to do anything Harrison wanted. Rubbing her forehead, she sighed loudly. Adding Harrison to the mix only made things more complicated. She’d known splitting up with him would be hard, and had known that he would do whatever he could to make it hard, but this was more than she’d anticipated.
People had messy divorces all the time, without it affecting their work. Jim in the math wing split up from his wife a couple years ago, but they never stooped to behavior like this. It seemed unbelievable that he would get students involved. She didn’t know if he was asking the students to harass her, or if they were just picking up on his anger toward her. But why should she be surprised, the evidence was there all through their marriage, she’d known he was petty and vindictive, she had seen him treat other people that way when they had disagreed with him, she just hadn’t thought he would do it against her. And if all this wasn’t enough, Miranda suspected that he was following her outside of school, keeping tabs on what she was up to.
“And there’s still the meeting with Caroline to look forward too,” she said to her empty classroom.
Maybe it was time to move on, to find another school. They all needed English literature specialists, and it would get her away from Harrison. A sick feeling curled around her stomach, no matter where she tried to transfer to, he’d never let her go. What would he do if she tried to leave? He had friends in other schools and he could talk to them. But they wouldn’t agree to harass her, would they? It was part of the reason they’d started together at the same school, he’d said he would look out for her, he said he’d make sure that no one took advantage of her, that sometimes high school students manipulated their teachers into compromising situations. How could she have been so stupid, so blind? There had been red flags everywhere, and she explained them all away until it was too late. It was too late for her, and too late for her daughter. Now she needed protection from him, she needed someone to make sure he didn’t take advantage of her. What kind of role model did that make her for her daughter and for her students?
“A good example of what not to do,” she muttered to herself.
With a sigh, she pulled open the top drawer of her desk, looking at the picture of her daughter, in its heavy silver frame. It used to sit on her desk, where she could see it all the time, the girl’s curly bright blonde hair shining in the sun always making her smile, but she couldn’t leave it out now. She was always worried that Harrison, or one of his students, would do something to it. She didn’t even want to imagine what they would do to it. With a sigh, she pushed the drawer closed and reached for her reading glasses, those Shakespeare papers weren’t going to mark themselves.
“Not that any of them would care,” she said to herself, pulling a small of papers towards her.
Miranda flipped through the stack, pulling one out of the middle of the pile. She started reading, but found it was too hard to concentrate, her mind kept spinning off in other directions. By the time she got to the end of the paper, she couldn’t remember what the beginning had been. Dropping the paper back to on the desk, she pulled off her glasses and dropped them on top. It was almost possible to guess what the papers would be like, just by the name, but she had promised herself she wouldn’t do that to her students, and to herself. She wasn’t going to be one of those teachers would just coasted along until she could get her pension.
“Okay,” she told herself, straightening her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
The second try didn’t go any better than the first. After the first page, the words started to swim in front of her eyes. The letters seemed to swirl and come together in different formations. She closed her eyes, hoping to clear them, but when she opened them, the words were still there. Instead of the essay it was all the things she had seen written on the walls around the school, Ms. Carter is a hag, and Ms. Carter sucks dick repeated themselves over and over across the page. No matter how many times the caretaker washed them away, the words always showed up, they were always somewhere. She never knew when she would turn a corner, and see them, or see a picture on a student’s phone. That was the worst part, even the students were starting to look at her differently. It was getting to be too much. Her heart started beating faster, her breath coming in gasps, picking up the essay, she dropped it back on the pile, and knocked the whole stack off her desk. The sound of the falling paper seemed so very far away, like it was happening to someone else instead of her.
It felt like she was suffocating, like all the air had been pulled out of the room, leaving her gasping for breath. She stumbled to the window, pushing chairs and desks out of her way, and pulled the window open, taking deep breaths. Slow
ly, she started relaxing again, her heart beat slowing down. Maybe she was blowing things out of proportion. Maybe this was coming from one student, and she was just being paranoid about Harrison. As she calmed down, it felt like the energy was being sucked out of her body, and she sagged against the metal of the frame, feeling it cool against her forehead. Running her fingers through her honey blonde hair, she closed her eyes. It was easy, with her eyes closed and the fresh air on her face, to pretend she wasn’t here, to pretend that all her problems were gone.
The sound of remotely unlocking their car startled her out of her calm. Opening up her eyes, Miranda looked out the window. A sleek red car was parked in front of the school, and she quickly recognized the man in the dark leather jacket walking towards it. It was Liam. He was back. He must have accepted the job. Miranda felt a flutter of excited in her stomach. She watched as Liam walked quickly to his car, as if eager to be away from the school, opening the door, he turned to glance back up at the building. She felt herself flush, it was like he was looking right at her, his eyes serious and intense. She pushed herself against the wall beside the window, trying to hide, and immediately regretted it. She was silly to think that he was actually looking at her… he was probably just looking up at the building.
“Why would he be looking at me?” she asked herself, peaking around the edge of the window.
He’d climbed into his car, and was just starting the engine.
She felt an odd feeling of sadness, watching him drive away, but she didn’t move away. Miranda stood at the window, long after the car had disappeared into the distance. She stood there until a knock on the door brought her back to reality, she jumped slightly, startled by the noise. It took a few seconds for her to remember where she was, and what she’d been doing. Without even thinking about it, she walked back through the classroom, straightening the desks as she went. Miranda patted her hair, and picked up the pile of essays, making sure everything looked the same as it had before, and then opened the door.
“Hey, Ms. C!” a girl called, as the students streamed into the room.
“Do you have the essays marked yet?” another asked.
Miranda laughed. “They were only handed in yesterday!”
The student shrugged. “Maybe you pulled an all-nighter to mark them fast? Seeing as how we’re your favorite class.”
Miranda laughed again and looked around the classroom. Three students were still missing, stars of the football team, so maybe that was no coincidence. No doubt, there would be some new graffiti somewhere after school. With a sigh, she looked around the empty hall, and pulled her door shut. “I know you’re all disappointed the essays aren’t back yet, but I do have something else to give you. The tests from last week have been marked, and we will be going over them today.”
The reaction was what she expected, and pretty well split evenly between the students, half were excited, and have groaned.
She walked over to her desk, and pulled a sheaf of papers out of the filing cabinet. “Some of you are going to be very happy with what you see, and some you really won’t be,” she announced walking up and down the aisles handing back the papers. “And some of you might want to see me later about your marks.”
She felt herself slipping into the role, putting on her professional world, where nothing could touch her. It was one of the only places she could go to forget about everything. She was even calmer now than she was with her daughter. With her daughter she was always worried, wondering if, Harrison was going to show up to take Elise away from her. It wasn’t that she was hiding Elise from him, or that she didn’t want them to have a relationship, but that she thought he would hurt Elise, only because it would hurt her too. Miranda wasn’t sure he truly loved his daughter, while they were married, he hardly seemed to have the time of day for the little girl, he only saw her now as a weapon. It was the best weapon he could have ever had, losing her would be worse than anything he could do at school. Sometimes, she imagined that the only thing holding him back from taking her too, was that looking after Elise would take too much time away from the rest of his life. He couldn’t even be bothered to always show up for the visitation he currently had. She let the calmness wash over her as she finished handing out the tests, and went back to the board, picking up one of the dry erase markers.
“I think a lot of you really have a good grip on the characters and motivations in King Lear, so I don’t think we have to spend too long going over that. Instead, let’s focus on the failure of authority into chaos, and its mirror in the descent from sanity to madness.”
As she got into the zone, she let herself really enjoy the conversations, it reminded her of why she’d gone into teaching.
As she predicted, when the bell rang at the end of the day, there were four students wanting to talk to her. Most were about what they could do to raise their marks, any extra projects that they could do. One student, who she’d saved for last to get her mark raised. For some people even 84% wasn’t enough. Aside from those few stragglers, the school cleared out pretty quickly. No one wanted to be there more than they had to be, even the teachers.
Miranda usually made a point of staying later, because football practice was right after school, and she wanted to wait until they’d started before she left. That way, she could be sure Harrison wouldn’t be in the hallways to trap her. Today was going to be different, the meeting with Caroline meant that this would be the first time in weeks she’d left her classroom before football practice had started.
Looking out into the quiet hallway, she glanced around, but it was just as empty as it seemed. Slipping out the door, she pulled it shut behind her, and checked that it was locked. When the problems had started, Caroline had changed the key to her door, making sure that only Miranda and the caretaker had a copy, even Caroline didn’t have a key to her door, though Miranda always wondered if that was allowed. She walked briskly down the hall leading to the main atrium. She always used the stairs at the main atrium, they were in full view of the lobby, no one could sneak up on her there, and if anyone tried, everyone would be able to see and hear them.
Rachel, the secretary smiled as she walked into the office. “Have you seen the new assistant coach for the football team,” she whispered, glancing back to Caroline’s closed door.
“I have, did he accept the job?” Miranda asked, leaning her shoulder against the wall.
“He did, although, just temporarily. Caroline was giving him a brief orientation today and had him sign some papers. I wouldn’t mind having him here full time if you know what I mean?” said Rachel giving Miranda a knowing look.
Miranda nodded unconsciously and then let out a giggle. “Do you know what his deal is?” she tried to ask non-challantly.
“Not sure. I know he used to be a student here. Back when Caroline was a teacher. Then he went into the army or something.”
Interesting, she thought to herself, but that still didn’t answer the question.
“His first official day is tomorrow,” the secretary winked, and Miranda laughed with her, blushing slightly. “I can’t wait to see more of him and I mean that in every kind of way.”
“I did see them looking at the weight room yesterday.”
The secretary nodded. “Too bad the weight room doesn’t have more windows. I might find a reason to go down that hall.”
They both laughed again, until a voice cut them off.
“Miranda. Did you want to come through?”
Miranda blushed again, turning to see Caroline standing at the open office door. How long had she been standing there, listening? “I’m glad you could fit me in so quickly,” she said, her blush fading as she slid into a chair. “I’m sure you have a hundred other things you need to do right now.”
Caroline sighed, shutting the door and sitting in her big chair across the desk. “Yes, you’re right, I’m sure I do. But the health and safety of my teachers comes first. If you can’t teach, there’s no point in having students.”
Miranda let out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding, every time she stepped into this office, she worried, would Harrison have changed her opinion, would he have pulled her over to his side, but once again, he hadn’t. “I’ve just been thinking, maybe staying here is a mistake. Maybe I’ve been holding onto this for too long, and I just have to move on.”
Caroline just looked at her for a long time.
Miranda felt herself shrinking back into her seat.
“If that’s what you really think is best, I won’t stand in your way, and I completely understand your reasons for this decision,” Caroline said briskly, folding her hands together and resting them on her desk. “However, if you’d like to stay, there are other plans we can put into place.”
“What kind of plans?” Part of Miranda flared in annoyance, if she had plans they could do, why hadn’t they been mentioned sooner? Why let this harassment go on, if she had plans that could stop it?
Caroline gave a half smile. “I don’t want to say anything yet, not until everything is nailed down.”
Miranda nodded, a puzzlement running through her. Is this why she hadn’t said anything about a plan sooner, because nothing was nailed down?
Caroline must have caught the confused look, because she smiled again. “I know it’s looking bad, but you know that until we have some evidence that Harrison is involved, we have to treat this as if it were students only. However, we can have the complaint ready for the moment we can show Harrison is involved.”