Page 33 of The Headmistress

12

Of Soy Milk & Hero Felines

The next morning at breakfast, after her usual early run, Sam found herself in the strange situation of being entirely alone in the Mess Hall, despite it being her regular repast hour. She’d seen Joanne in the faculty dormitory earlier, the two of them crossing paths at Lily’s, checking in on the girl after their adventure last night.

Sam was not surprised that the story about the live wire and potential electrocution had spread like wildfire, with everyone at school being not only fully apprised, but making damn sure the rumors grew exponentially by the hour. The way Joanne had retold the story back to Sam and Lily—as the girl was excitedly bouncing around her room helped by a single crutch—had made it seem like they’d waded knee-deep through massive electrically charged rivers, overflowing and drowning them both while simultaneously electrocuting them.

“Oh, the drama of gossip and teenagers.” Sam had just shaken her head and taken a better look at Lily’s gait. She was coming along nicely, according to the still sullen Doctor Franz. Once an asshole…

Joanne had announced that she’d be going to the mainland later today and wouldn’t be attending breakfast, or as she’d put it ‘saving her appetite for all the donuts she could eat at Dunkin’ in Boston’.

“Orla came by earlier since she has a meeting with Headmistress Nox later about the history classes curriculum.”

“That’s a meeting that’s bound to go down like a lead balloon,” piped up Lily from the bathroom where a toothbrush could still be heard whirring.

“Lily!” both Sam and Joanne yelled at the same time and exchanged equally exasperated glances.

“What? Fenway hates Nox, ‘cause she thinks she is destroying her legacy at the school out of spite, and Nox doesn’t care about anything Fenway thinks. Plus Nox is hot and Fenway feels her alpha bitch position is under threat. But that’s ‘cause both of them are alpha bitches, is what I’m saying.” The sweet face, smudged in toothpaste on the corners of the mouth, peered into the room innocently.

Both Sam and Joanne just stared at her, completely floored. Smiling sweetly, Lily wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and both of her teachers winced. She regaled them with a sheepish but unrepentant look. Feeling like she had to say something because even for a senior, Lily’s assessment crossed into highly disrespectful, Sam took it upon herself to step in.

“That’s ‘Headmistress Nox’ and ‘Professor Fenway’ to you, missy.”

To her surprise, Joanne laughed.

“That’s what you take issue with, Sammy? Out of all the psycho-babble this little egghead has just thrown our way?”

“I resemble that remark,” Lily shouted in mock outrage.

“Ha, which one? The one about you making assumptions about people you have no business assuming anything about, or the one where Joanne said you were an egghead?”

Lily looked at her, stumped, and now it was Sam’s turn to laugh.

“Gotcha, kiddo.”

Before either of them could continue their bickering, Joanne stood up.

“Sammy, my baby, she has the right to draw any and all conclusions about anyone. But Lily, my other baby, you have zero right to gossip about people. It’s not polite and in this case—especially in your case—dangerous to you, love. Keep your opinions to yourself.”

Lily had the good sense to look sheepish and remorseful. Sam just closed her eyes and shook her head. Joanne was right, and they all needed to be a lot more circumspect in what they said and where they said it.

With Lily pronouncing herself not hungry—or more likely waiting for the other boarding school girls to wake up closer to brunch time—and Joanne departing for the mainland, Sam ended up preparing her first cup of coffee from the communal table where the Mess Hall staff had set out all the trappings, her movements mechanical at this point; three-thirds of liquid gold poured into a massive mug, two chunks of brown sugar followed by a generous splash of milk from the jug kept warm on a special burner.

She sat facing the grand glass windows overlooking the school’s back garden, where sparsely planted flowers and bushes ran into the forests that fully inhabited that part of the island. It was a beautiful morning, and Sam enjoyed the sights and sounds. She inhaled the steam from her mug deeply, but for some reason, it did not evoke the same mouthwatering response today. Given her level of distraction, Sam didn't find the lack of her usual olfactive reaction surprising. She was about to take her first deep swallow of her one major addiction—if she didn’t count a certain Headmistress who was rapidly becoming coffee’s massive rival in terms of how much Sam seemed to need her presence in her life—when raised female voices sounded from the foyer.

Well, one voice was raised, the other was at first not clear, but as the women progressed closer to the Mess Hall, Sam could finally discern it. Orla was shouting, her ire loud and clear in several chosen expletives. None of the said expletives were exceptionally bad, but all were angry. Magdalene was answering calmly. At least an untrained observer would think it was calm, as coolness laced her deadly tone. But Sam was not an untrained observer anymore where Magdalene Nox was concerned. She had come to know those subtle inflections of the beloved, husky voice, and she knew Magdalene was distressed, with a large splash of annoyance thrown into the mix.

The voices warred outside the doors to the Mess Hall for several minutes, when Orla finally seemed to lose her cool entirely and with a parting, “you will regret this,” Sam heard her comfortable sneakers squeak away on the polished granite floors.

The doors opened, and Magdalene’s arrival was heralded by Willoughby, whose absence from his morning pillow on the windowsill Sam had noted earlier. The tomcat seemed to be bewitched by the Headmistress and had proven to be her shadow, completely abandoning his routine of chasing sunspots that he had honed over the course of years. Instead he was following Magdalene around the school, incapable of being separated from her. It was doubly funny to Sam, who had often heard Magdalene grumble about the ‘mangy cat’ and how he ‘should be put outside’ and ask ‘why was there so much hair everywhere?’ She had also seen her scratch his ears absentmindedly as she read or conducted calls, or feed him delicious morsels from her own plate. She was such an adorable fraud, honestly, who did she think she was fooling with her professed outrage over the presence of a cat who was completely enamored with her? It was obvious that the massive crush was entirely mutual, no matter how loudly Magdalene professed to hate cats.

Wearing a lovely pinstriped skirt, one of those tight pencil ones that hugged her hips and ended just below her knees, the slits allowing the thighs to peak tantalizingly as she walked, Magdalene was a vision.

Well, what else was new? Sam had believed her to be a vision even with disheveled hair and smudged makeup, mussed and ravished in the early hours of dawn, with only the dim light of the Manhattan street below trickling into the small hotel room. Perhaps Sam thought her even more appealing then because she had been the one doing the disheveling and the ravishing and the makeup smudging. But this Magdalene had an allure of tantalizing unapproachability, and Sam just licked her suddenly dry lips and watched her stroll in with that brisk yet sensual gait of hers, belying the four-inch heels she wore, that made her legs go for days.

As always, her thoughts must have been written all over her face, because Magdalene raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow and the corners of her lips twitched before she schooled her face into its usual haughty expression. When had arrogance become so attractive to Sam? She wanted to tell herself she had no idea, but she was certain that it had a lot to do with a certain redhead whose hips swayed as she doctored her coffee and made her way down to where Sam lounged.

“You look comfortable, Professor Threadneedle.” The slightly raspy voice did more to awaken Sam than the aroma wafting from her coffee mug.

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