by Robin Roseau
They both chuffed.
Lara repeated the rules several more times, then said, "Let's run." She and I shifted right out of our clothes after loosening them, and Lara led us into the woods.
The following day was Friday. Ron and Vivian called an emergency council meeting.
"I have to teach!" I complained to Lara.
"Yes, but I need you there. I'm sorry. I don't like the timing, either."
Ever since the wedding, I had been attending council meetings seated to Lara's left with Elisabeth to her right. I normally sat quietly, preferring to counsel Lara and Elisabeth in private. I didn't care for the politics, but it was becoming evident I could be good at it if I tried. I really didn't want to be good at it.
"What time?"
"Ten," she replied.
"Fine," I said. "I'll get Scarlett to help with class."
"You can just hand them to Francesca," Lara said.
I grabbed my phone and called Scarlett. She sounded sleepy. "Sorry to wake you," I told her. "I need your help teaching school today. Do you mind?"
"Michaela?" she asked. "No, that will be fun."
"Take your time, meet me in my classroom whenever you're ready."
"I can be at your house in fifteen minutes," she said. "If you prefer that."
"You need to dress like a schoolteacher today, Scarlett."
"Half an hour," she said. I could hear her stretch. "Your classroom."
"Thank you."
I hung up and turned to Lara. "What do you want me to say? I don't like lying."
"We do not fully understand," Lara said. "That statement is absolutely true."
"And misleading. Can't we refuse to answer?"
She pursed her lips.
"To the best of our knowledge," I said, "I am the only one able to teach this. We don't know why that is."
"Every single one will demand you teach them immediately."
"Not happening," I said. "Can they order me?"
"They can try," she said. "It would be dicey. Technically they cannot order me. I am alpha, and they also accept you as alpha. However, a pack where the council and the alpha are at odds is a pack in trouble."
"If I hadn't taught Serena and Emanuel, we could claim I had to have a close personal relationship."
"Serena and Emanuel worship you after you found their kids. Everyone who you have taught worships you, Michaela."
"I wouldn't use that word, worship," I said.
"Fine," Lara said, smiling. "Pick another word."
"Let's not get sidetracked over semantics," I suggested. Lara chuckled. "All right. So our story is, it takes a certain amount of, um, adoration on the part of the person I am teaching. And clearly no one from the council is going to feel about me that way."
"We don't need to describe the close personal contact involved," Lara said. "So if anyone asks for a demonstration, they won't feel anything if you are more standoffish."
"Under this explanation," I suggested, "I have taught everyone in the pack I could teach."
"Not entirely," she said. "Kaylee, some of the other kids, they probably feel pretty strongly about you. And Rory too."
"I'm pretty sure the council isn't going to suggest I teach more people if I'm not teaching them."
Lara laughed. "I think that would be a safe bet."
"Honey," I said. "To be clear, I am teaching our pups. And when Angel, Scarlett or Elisabeth have pups, I am teaching them as well."
She smiled at me. "Absolutely."
Lara and I discussed it a few more minutes before descending to breakfast. We ate, kissed, then she grabbed Elisabeth while I got my escort the thirty steps to the school. I began preparing extra notes for Scarlett and rearranging the schedule to keep the day's lessons in keeping with what she could teach. Francesca stopped in.
"Good morning."
"Good morning," I replied. I told her the plan.
"I'll keep an eye on things, but Scarlett will be fine," she said. That's when Scarlett herself arrived wearing some of her mother's clothing. She would fit right in at a schoolteacher's convention.
Well, a schoolteacher convention populated by Amazonian women, anyway.
"Just so you know," I said after she stepped in and closed the door, Francesca on her way to her own classroom. "This is your fault."
She smiled. "I'm sorry?"
"Have you been getting questions from the other kids?"
"Both Angel and I have," she said. "We avoided the questions twice then told everyone if they pestered us, we were obligated to report them to the alpha. That shut them all up."
"Lara is pretty frightening," I admitted, smiling.
Scarlett smiled sweetly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't speak clearly. I meant report them to you."
I laughed. "Yeah, because I'm so scary."
She cocked her head. "No one wants to disappoint Lara," Scarlett said. "But all of us are deeply terrified we'll disappoint you."
"Oh honey," I said, my voice cracking. I pulled her into a hug. "You couldn't ever disappoint me." I found myself wrapped in warm wolf arms. When had she gotten so big?
I pushed away and said, "Well. Here are the lesson plans. The meeting isn't until ten, but I'll want to leave before that. I am going to introduce you then let you teach everything. Is that all right?"
"Yes. Are you sure?"
I gave her a pep talk, then we went over the lesson plan. She was smiling at the end. "I loved this material when you taught it to us. But isn't it a repeat for Derek and Jeremy?"
"You'll notice your plans are short on senior level material. Edward is playing catch up, so he's with the sophomore group on all of this material." I showed her the sheet with the plan for the seniors. "They can help each other and shouldn't need help from you. You just need to crack the whip so they don't screw around."
"So just threaten to report them to the alpha..."
"Smart ass. Were you always a smart ass, Scarlett?"
"No. It started about two years ago," she said, grinning at me. She was blaming me.
I paused, thinking about it.
"I was teasing," she said.
"I know you were. But... is it teasing based on truth?"
It was her turn to think. Finally she said, "Probably. No one ever smarted off to anyone around here before you came along. Oh, I suppose the adults did amongst themselves, but never in front of the kids. Could it just be that we're adults so we're included in the banter?"
"That might be part of it," I said. "But I probably need to take some blame."
"I don't think blame is the right word," Scarlett said. "I think the pack is happier with your influence. Lara certainly is; my parents have commented on it."
"Still, I think I need to talk to Lara about this."
"Please don't mention my name," Scarlett said.
"I won't. Do you need to study any of this before you teach it?"
She looked through the list and asked a few intelligent questions. Then she asked, "Do you have any advice?"
"Act like you expect them to behave," I said. "I clearly couldn't discipline anyone who acted up, but I have never had a discipline problem, and I think it's because I don't expect any."
"And because everyone loves you," Scarlett added.
I smiled. "You're very sweet."
"It's true you know."
"I know," I said in a small voice. "But they love you, too."
She shrugged. "Your new students don't know me."
"No, but Derek and Jeremy will clunk heads if necessary."
She laughed. "No way. I'll clunk any heads that need clunking." She studied me for a minute. "Why me and not Angel?"
"Angel is flying or I would have asked the two of you to team up."
"Thank you for trusting me," she said.
"You might want to practice talking while writing on the board," I said. "It's harder than it looks."
"At least I can reach the top of the board," she said, smiling down at me.
The kids used
to play tricks on me. They would write things on the board, higher than I could reach, and then snicker when I used a chair to erase it. One day there was a limerick about foxes. I left it on the board but immediately called for a pop quiz. After that, every day that I found something out of reach on the board, I immediately called a pop quiz. It took a few times, but they finally figured out the relationship between things written out of my reach and pop quizzes. The little sayings didn't stop entirely, but they reduced in frequency.
Scarlett and I talked for a while about my first days teaching. She admitted to one of the pranks I was sure had been committed by Derek, Alan and Jeremy. "Angel doesn't even know I did it," she said.
"Who wrote the limericks?"
She laughed. "Sophia wrote that first one. Then she and Ava alternated, I think."
"I couldn't believe it took you guys so long to figure out the quizzes were punishment for the limericks."
"Don't kid yourself," she said. "We figured it out right away. We just didn't care. But finally we got together and decided we couldn't let our teasing actually affect the teaching."
"You didn't care I was making you take quizzes?"
"Your quizzes are always fair, Michaela," she said. "And they helped us figure out when we hadn't studied properly. You were never cruel with them. Sophia and Ava stored things to write on the board, and whenever we wanted a quiz, one of them would put something on the board."
"Oh hell," I said. Scarlett laughed. "Seriously?" She nodded.
"Michaela," she said. "You made us want to learn. You made us want to understand. Okay, all of us already had that attitude, but you really brought it out."
"Oh honey," I said. "Really?"
She nodded, smiling.
"So, do you have any other revelations for me I should know? Or advice?"
"Probably lots of revelations," she said. "Advice? Be tough. That's what we all want. We want you to be tough."
I looked away. "You earned a C on that math paper last year. Writing a C down was the hardest thing I'd ever done as a teacher."
"I felt horrible," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be. I felt horrible not because I'd gotten a C, but I saw the look when you gave it back to me, and I knew I put that look in your eyes. I had disappointed you."
"No," I said. "I felt guilty I hadn't taught you better."
"You did. No one else got a bad grade on that paper." She paused. "I didn't study. Angel and I. Um."
"Angel got an A," I said.
"I know. She got up early the next morning and studied. I slept in until the last minute. It was my fault, Michaela, and I felt horrible for it."
"You recovered," I said.
"I know. My sex life suffered for it, too."
I shoved my fingers in my ears and started humming, trying to drown out Scarlett's mentioning her sex life. She laughed and pulled my fingers from my ears.
"Will college be harder?" Scarlett asked.
"I'm the wrong one to ask," I replied.
"But you took all those classes," she said.
"At a different school," I replied. "And I audited them. That means none of my work was ever graded. I don't know what grades I would have earned. But you're right. I tried the best I could to prepare you for college. Still, I think it will be harder. And I didn't give you as much of an engineering background as I would have liked for someone who will become an architect."
"I've checked," she said. "You gave me more math and physics than any other high school in the state offers. Thank you."
I smiled. This was the first conversation I'd had with any of my students or former students about what I'd been trying to do for them, and I couldn't believe she understood. I only hoped what I'd been teaching them had been the right choices.
We continued to talk until the kids began to arrive. They all knew Scarlett by now, but they were puzzled to see her. Derek and Jeremy tried to draw her into a conversation, but she said, "That's Miss Scarlett to you guys today. I'm your teacher."
"Really?" Derek asked. "Party!"
"I am right here, Derek," I said pointedly.
"Oh, didn't see you there, Alpha Fox," he said.
"Smart asses," I said under my breath. "I have trained a bunch of smart asses."
Then Jeremy got up from his chair and began writing a limerick about a wolf named Scarlett on the board. Down at the bottom. He grinned at both of us when he was done then sat down in his seat.
To this our beautiful Scarlett,
Angel’s very own harlot.
She is strong most of times,
Except around mimes,
Who push her back in the closet.
Scarlett stared at it, suddenly not sure what to do.
"Have fun with the pop quiz," I said quietly into her ear. Then I turned to the boys. "You two, out in the hall."
They followed me down the hallway, and when I felt we were sufficiently removed from a direct audience, I turned around.
"We'll help her," Derek said immediately. "You don't need to lecture us, Michaela. But it's Friday."
"It's Friday?"
"Quiz day."
"How did you know to have that limerick ready?" I wondered how word could have gotten around so quickly that she would be teaching.
"She's seen it before," Derek said. "Sophia wrote it."
"No, it was Angel," Jeremy said. "She just let us believe Sophia wrote it."
"We won't give her a hard time," Derek said. "Why is she teaching?"
"I have to be somewhere later on," I said. "You two set a good example but let her teach. If she asks for volunteers, your hands better be the first ones in the air. If you make this hard for her, I will find out, and I will have you cleaning the horse stables for a month."
"We don't have any horse stables," Derek pointed out.
"Then I will make you build them, and then I will make Lara buy horses with gastrointestinal issues. Do I make myself clear?"
They smiled at me. "Yes, Michaela," they said.
"All right," I said. "Back to class." I followed them into the room, arriving just in time to catch Catherine, one of the new sophomores, writing a limerick on the top of the board, out of my reach, about a teacher with red hair.
There once was a small, red-haired vixen,
Who loved to always go missin'.
She runs and she hides,
With no friends at her sides,
'Cause the alpha is always left chasin'.
"You know," I said. "You guys aren't supposed to get caught! And Scarlett-"
"Catherine asked if she could share her poetry with the class," Scarlett said sweetly. "And I don't think I can write the quiz for the seniors."
I smiled and let Catherine finish; it was really quite clever. "Catherine, do you have that written down?" I asked when she took her seat.
"Yes, Michaela," she said.
"Give it to me," I demanded. She pulled a piece of paper from her notebook and walked to my desk to hand it to me. "Sit," I said.
I called the class to order and explained Scarlett would be teaching. "But, contrary to the lesson plan, it seems we will be having a pop quiz." I gestured to Scarlett, who took the left side of the board and began writing out five questions for the younger kids. I wrote five for the seniors. Mine were based on the material they should have read last night, but that I hadn't taught yet. We told them to begin, then Scarlett and I stood in the doorway.
"Why do the seniors look so nervous?" she asked.
I told her what I had done.
"Oh god," she said. "Tell me that's not my fault."
"I want to know if they have read the assignment."
The kids finished their quizzes. I turned the class over to Scarlett, taking a seat in the back. I kept a half an eye on Scarlett while I graded the papers. The kids all did well, and Scarlett was doing a good job teaching. She gave the older kids their assignments then began teaching the math class to the younger kids. She explained things well. Her
style was different from mine, but I could see elements of my style in her presentation.
I was so proud of her.
She finished the lecture and gave them a problem set to work on then stepped back to me. She was sweating.
"Oh my god," she said quietly. "I didn't know that was so hard!"
"You're doing great," I said. "The kids did well on their papers. Glance through them before you hand them back. There was consistent trouble with two of your questions and one of mine. Go over them."
She looked through the papers. "I don't know this material," she said, referring to the questions I had written. I showed her what the right answers were and told her to let the kids spend time figuring it out themselves.
"I have to go," I told her. "Francesca is right next door. If those limericks are still there on Monday, there will be another quiz, and no one is going to enjoy it."
She smiled. "Yes, Michaela."
"Thank you, Scarlett. You'll be fine."
She looked at me with a little worry as I stepped out the door, but then she turned to the kids and stepped in to answer a question. She'd be great.
I pulled out my phone and texted Lara. "Where are you?"
"Our house. We were about to walk over."
"OMW."
I picked up my security detail and took the thirty steps to the front of the house, and found Lara and Elisabeth waiting for me.
"All right," I said. "This doesn't count as complaining. But seriously?" I gestured to Rory and Eric, following me around. "Seriously?"
"If they follow you everywhere," Elisabeth said. "Then they follow you everywhere. No judgment calls to quibble over."
"Look," I said. "It doesn't matter to me." I turned to them. "Aren't you guys bored?"
They just shrugged.
I looked at Lara. "It seems like a waste of resources."
"It's a fixed operating cost," she said.
"You both think this is necessary?"
"We think it's the right habit," Lara said. "All right? And my interpretation of a recently lost wager is you will not try to ditch them."
"What about during runs?" I asked. "Did I give up my fun for six months?"