Day 14

It shouldn’t have taken all that long to get back to the room, but we got sidetracked halfway there. Sean and Ms. George were just stepping out of one of the classrooms. They looked around a bit, as though they were scared someone would see, and when satisfied kissed started kissing. “I hate it when they do that. I’ve walked by them three times now, the other two times I was with Johnny. It was embarrassing.” Before I could say anything she stepped forward and cleared her throat to let them know she was there. “If you’re going to spend the time looking for people, at least take a look. It’s not like we were hiding or anything. Sure, covered in shadows, but everything in this school is covered in shadows.”

Sean and Ms. George were instantly separated from one another staring at whatever they could besides the other or the two of us. “H-hello Claire, we were just…uhh. We weren’t doing anything-“

“Oh save it, you and I both know what you were planning on doing.” Claire smirked. “If you think you’re fooling anyone you’re wrong. All of us adults know. Justin knows.” She turned to me and winked. “Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if all the kids know. Johnny’s been asking questions.”

I stepped forward, ignoring Claire insinuation that I wasn’t an adult. “Jessica’s been asking questions,” I said to further support whatever point Claire was going to make.

She nodded in appreciation for the help. “You see? Even little Jessica is aware something it going on.” She stepped forward and pointed a finger at both of them. “Seems to me you are just finding ways to occupy yourselves while this blizzard runs itself out.” They both looked at each other and slowly nodded in a agreement I couldn’t help but think that this relationship didn’t just appear out of the clouds along with the snowstorm, but I wasn’t going to make any sort of comment. It wasn’t my place, my accusations would be nothing more than hunches, and I really didn’t care. “Well, I can understand that. Heck, if you two weren’t going at it so often I’d probably ask if I could have a go.” She turned to Ms. George. “No, I didn’t necessarily mean with him.”

Ms. George clearly wasn’t expecting that kind of attention and looked away, playing with the back of one of her earrings. “Do you have a point Claire?” Clearly catching Ms. George’s discomfort he wanted to conversation over. Whether to ensure Ms. George didn’t start thinking about the alternatives or because he wanted to get back to what they were doing before we interrupted I couldn’t quite tell.

Claire put out the cigarette by pushing it into the wall right next to Sean’s head. She stood really close and looked at him directly in the eyes. I knew it was being used mainly as a scare tactic, though it played up someone her other capabilities as well. “If you’re going to have you fun, do it in a back room like normal people. I don’t want to hear your grunts and groans as I walk Johnny to the gym. You may not be in charge here, though Mrs. Snowburn certainly wants to make it look like you are, but I will not stand for you teaching my child things like where babies come from by hearing your passion through closed doors. Do you understand me?” With that she stepped back and flicked her cigarette down the hall.

Sean stood for some time, back against the wall, staring wide eyed at the woman who had just threatened him. She never said what she would do to him, but the combination of cigarette and her proximity to him during the threat gave him enough reason not to think too hard about it. “Y-yes. I will m-make sure I…we u-use a b-back room.” He nodded, grabbed Ms. George’s hand, and the quickly walked down the hallway and out of sight around a corner.

As soon as they were out of sight Claire was leaning on me for support as she doubled over with laughter. “Did you see his face? He was freaked. I don’t know I could have made him more scared than he was.” She stood up after a few seconds and tried to slow her breathing, but it took a while to trying as the fits of laughter would only start again as she thought about why she was doing the breathing exercises.

I smiled at her fun, though I was more shocked than amused at the time. “Hey, which way where they headed?” They’d gone down the hall were had just been walking from. “It looked like they were headed towards the ice out house.” I smiled at Claire. “Think his pooped his pants.”

Claire nodded. “I thought I smelled shit, I thought it was just him.”

***

When we got back to the room hardly anything had changed. Mrs. Snowburn ushered me back into bed and admonished both Claire and myself on the length of time I’d been gone. “I almost sent Johnny back to get you, though I know Sean and Ms. George are doing who knows what in one of the classrooms.”

Claire and I glanced at each other before laughing like the schoolchildren sitting around the room. “I don’t think they’ll be a problem anymore Snow,” Claire said between breaths. “If they do anything it’ll be somewhere where people aren’t going to pass by.” Mrs. Snowburn gave a skeptical look but didn’t press the issue. We all knew she wanted to them to stop using the classrooms as their play rooms, heck she didn’t even want them sleeping together period. We also knew that she wasn’t going to argue the point, if it kept them out of her hair she was more and than glad not to know why. “Hey, you look like you could do with a good sleep. I’ll take the kids, with coach Z’s permission, back to the gym from some more skating.” Johnny and Jessica were immediately shouting their approval of the idea. “While we’re there you and Justin get some sleep. Janitor-”

“Tim,” he corrected.

She waived her hand in the air as if to waive away the interruption. “Whatever, you can keep and eye on the whiners for a bit?” I half expected Harold, who looked asleep, to wake up at that moment and yell at Claire for calling him a whiner. “They’re asleep so it shouldn’t too much of a hassle. Besides, you get to keep an eye on your precious space heater too.”

Tim stood up to start talking down Claire in an effort to either take her off her high horse, make sure she knew he wasn’t some guy she could push around, or some combination of both, but Mrs. Snowburn was too quick for him. “That sounds like a wonderful idea Claire. Jessica, Johnny, get all your winter clothes on and get ready to head back to the gym. Coach Z, you’re welcome to join them if you want to.” He nodded and stepped out of the room before the two kids were even standing up to get ready. “Tim, I’ll be trying to sleep. If anything goes wrong wake me up and I’ll take care of it.” She paused for a brief second and looked at Claire. “Within reason of course.”

“Why’d you look at me when you said that Snow?”

Mrs. Snowburn smiled. “If the space heater breaks it certainly isn’t something I can do anything about.” It was clear she had other ideas about what ‘reason’ meant, but wasn’t willing to share them. “I’m thinking more along the lines of Dan waking up or if Justin begins running a high fever or something.” So far my almost freezing to death hadn’t caused any major problems, though I still felt cold. If I had said that to anyone at the time they would have laughed and said everyone felt cold, they would have been right and I knew it, I just didn’t want to feel cold anymore.

Claire helped Johnny put his coat on as Mrs. Snowburn helped Jessica. Neither said anything else and, when Claire left, Mrs. Snowburn muttered something about crass women but I tired not to hear. “Where’s Diana?” Tim asked as Mrs. Snowburn pulled one of the few blankets not reserved for Dan, Harold, or myself. “Wasn’t she here a while ago?”

Mrs. Snowburn stopped to think. “I believe she left shortly after Sean and Ms. George did. I haven’t really been paying attention to her though, she isn’t sick.” They both looked at me to find out if I’d seen her but I just shrugged. “If you want you could probably leave us alone for a few minutes to go looking for her. Dan seems sound asleep or you could ask Justin to keep an eye on him.” I kept my face blank so they wouldn’t tell that I really disliked the idea. I wanted to pull my weight, and if that meant keeping an eye on Dan and Harold for short periods of time then I could handle it. Despite what little I’d heard of the two.

Tim saved me the trouble though. “Naw, I was just wondering where she’d gone. She’s a grown woman, if a bit spoiled. She should be able to handle herself and if she can’t as long as she doesn’t leave the building someone should find her eventually.” Mrs. Snowburn made to stand back up, probably to go look for her, or at least to make Tim look for her. “I’ll do a sweep of the building once you’re up and walking around again. Don’t worry about it now. A few hours in the building won’t kill her and if she went outside after she left there’s nothing we can do about it now. She can either wait for a search or she’s too far gone to worry about it.” Mrs. Snowburn clearly didn’t like the argument, though she knew it was true. “Now go to sleep, I can hold down the room until you wake up. I may not be a trained teacher, but I’ve enough control of my surroundings to keep Dan, Harold, and Justin here from dying on us while you’re recovering your energy.”

Mrs. Snowburn reluctantly lay back down and covered herself in the blanket. A soft snore spread through the room very shortly afterwards. “She goes to sleep quick doesn’t she?”

Tim looked up from a new game of cards and looked at the old lady for the briefest second before looking back at his game. “She’s tired and working very hard to keep everyone from killing each other. Heck, we’re all tired and ready to get back to our daily lives.”

“And for you that would be fixing this school back to the way it was before the storm?”

Tim nodded. “As best I can yeah. Though I’m sure the Sean and that parent-teacher whatsit aren’t going to give near enough time to get it in working condition. As long as it’s up to health code the kids will be back whether I feel it’s done or not.” I had to admit that he was passionate about his work.

However, I still had to question why he was so passionate about the grade school he went to years ago, especially if his claims of having the world in the palm of hand were true.

“You said earlier that you basically had to do anything that you had a mind to do, and you chose working here because you wanted to help the next generation succeed. Why did you choose facilities though? I mean, you yourself just said you don’t have the education to teach, but I figure you could have gotten them easily. Why did you choose janitorial work?” There, it was all out there and he had to give some kind of answer, straight or not.

He thought about the question for a bit. “I have to admit that you caught me, I wasn’t being one hundred percent truthful.” I new it, he had been lying through his teeth. Though not in any harmful way he probably built up this whole story and made himself believe it was truth. Truth enough, at least, that no one would suspect a thing. “When I said I’ve been single most of my life I was bein’ truthful. When I said I had the world in the palm of my hands I was bein’ truthful. When I said I’ve never had children or that I went to this very school as a child I wasn’t quite tellin’ everything as it truly is.

“You see. The missus and I did have a child. Her name was Samantha James, named after her grandmother on my side of the family. She was a sweet and pretty girl with skin and hair the sparkled in the sunlight. As she grew up she could be nothing other than my little angel, though the missus new different. She kept telling me that Samantha was going to get herself killed with the friends she’d chosen and the activities she found herself in the middle of, but I wouldn’t listen. Every time the topic was brought up I closed my ears and never heard a word.

“I guess I got what I deserved, though poor Samantha took most of the heat. You see, she came home one night crying and I asked her what was wrong. She refused to tell me, but asked to talk to her mother. I let them talk over what had happened and pushed the incident out of my mind, if it was something I needed to know about I’d heard of it sooner of later.” Dan rolled over in his bed, but beyond that seemed sound asleep. Tim made sure just in case and, when he was satisfied the boy was okay, returned to his cards.

He never picked them up however as he returned to his story. “It wasn’t until a few days later that I began to suspect something was wrong, and by then it was already too late. You see, I hadn’t seen Samantha for some time by that point. She neither entered nor left the house, whether at the time we prescribed or the times she usually came home. Finally, I asked the missus as she made breakfast one morning.

“To my further concern she replied to my question with a simple ‘what daughter? I ain’t got no daughter.’” Tim stopped for a time and stared off into the dark hallway. I came very close to asking what happened next, but each time I opened my mouth I convinced myself he was going to talk any second. Eventually he did continue to conversation and, thankfully, he didn’t wait so long that Claire and the kids came back to interrupt us, but it still required that I be almost more patient than was willing.

So I sat there and waited some time, not quite sure if I should speak or not, but never quite building the courage to force Tim to continue the story. And, when he eventually did, I’d almost given up on the conversation all together. “I eventually, through mini interrogations of the missus and Samantha’s friends, figured out what had really happened.

“She’d gotten her fool self pregnant. She was sleeping with some guy without using protection and, of course you know how that ends. She came home that night looking for support and thought that it would be the straw that broke this camel’s back. I can’t say she wasn’t right, but either way she went to her mother instead. Let me tell you, that camel’s back had been broken months before this incident; she’d just been waiting for an appropriate time to give Samantha what for. And boy, was it a big what for.