Chapter 2

Ru Robertson ran around her quaint two-bedroom house, attempting to get to work on time without actually starting a fire, a feat that was somehow more complicated than most would’ve expected. Today was the day teachers reported back for duty, and with a new school year looming in just a couple of weeks, Ru was both excited and anxious. Both of those emotions tended to stir up a hornets’ nest within her, and if she wasn’t careful, she was going to wreck another straightening iron or toaster.

She had one earring in and was struggling with the other as she approached the kitchen, thinking perhaps it would be more economical to skip the toast and just grab a breakfast shake, although there was a chance she could take out the refrigerator, something she’d only done once before, but she didn’t know how much she was willing to risk. It was usually small appliances that died at her hands, not the more industrial sized ones, although her mom insisted she was the cause of at least one hot water heater expiring, flooding the first floor of their home when she was seven. It had taken her months of chores in retribution. The refrigerator she’d destroyed had also been her mother’s. Ru didn’t like to think about that. Now, pausing before her own fridge, Ru wasn’t sure she should take the chance.

“Meow,” her cat, Piper, called, perhaps in encouragement, or maybe she was just hoping for some milk to wash down her Meow Mix. The cat rubbed up against Ru’s legs,  orange and white fur tickling her bare skin.

Giggling, Ru bent and stroked her soft head and ran her hand down her back, thankful her curse only seemed to affect inanimate objects. “Good morning, little kitty.” Piper began to purr. “Are you having a good day?” The cat turned and licked Ru’s hand, and while she’d much prefer to stay there in the kitchen and love on her cat all day, like she had much of the last two months, summer was over, and it was time to get back to work.

Grabbing a pot holder out of a nearby drawer, Ru pulled open the refrigerator door and was relieved that no sparks flew. She grabbed a premade breakfast shake and her lunchbox, which she’d packed the night before. With one more look around, she discarded the pot holder and picked up her keys. Luckily, her Enclave had remote start, which had turned out to be a great alternative to actually trying to start a car manually. Even though she was still required to turn the key in the ignition slightly and shift, she’d had much fewer problems ruining her starters since she’d gone to this more hands-off approach.

“I’ll see you this afternoon,” she promised Piper, and then, slipping on her ballet flats, which she’d left strategically by the door, she grabbed her purse and her teaching bag and headed for the car. She knew one day soon, she’d likely have four or five other various bags slung over her shoulder and was grateful that this time of year was still free of papers to grade and parent emails to answer.

She made sure the front door was locked and walked the few steps to the driveway where her car was already humming. The small two-bedroom house wasn’t much, but on a relatively new teacher’s salary, she was glad she could afford a place of her own at all. Ru slid into the driver’s seat and cautiously turned the key just enough for the car to recognize she was there. Nothing unusual happened, and she let out a loud sigh before shifting into reverse and backing down her short driveway.

The drive to Thomas Elementary was only about ten minutes long and usually through light traffic. Today, the teachers didn’t have to report until 8:00, though on a typical school day with children, they would have to be there by 7:00, which meant almost no traffic at all since the students wouldn’t arrive until 7:30, and many residents dropped their children off on their way to work. Reaper’s Hollow was a small town, and most of the people who lived there worked somewhere else, some of them even commuting the nearly forty miles to New York City every day.

Ru tried to keep calm as she navigated toward the school. The new school year was always exciting. She was anxious to catch up with her teammates, only one of whom she considered a true friend and kept up with during the summer. Candice Stein had been teaching for a couple of years longer than Ru, and when she’d first taken the job teaching fourth grade four years ago, Candice had been her mentor. The principal, Sherry Long, was just about the most supportive person Ru could ever dream of working for, and she’d paired Candice and Ru that first year predicting, “a match made in heaven.” She’d been right, and the two had happily worked together ever since. Now that Ru was beginning her fourth year, she felt much more capable of contributing to the team and had collected lots of ideas to share at their team meeting that day. She hoped to make it in a little early so she could run some copies for her teammates.

There were only four fourth grade teachers since Thomas Elementary was fairly small. They would be getting a new teammate this year, Mrs. Long had advised them, as one of the teachers from the previous year had decided to stay home with her baby. Ru still hadn’t heard who the new person was, which made her a little anxious. She hoped that they could be friends. The balance of power on the team fluctuated haphazardly between Ru and Candice and their nemesis, Ms. Jane Owen, three-time teacher of the year. If the fourth person took to Ms. Owen readily, it could end up being a bad year for Ru and Candice.

Ru was never sure exactly what it was that made Jane dislike her, but it had been evident from the very beginning that Ru was on the veteran teacher’s list. Perhaps it had been the incident in the cafeteria that first week when Ms. Owen had sat a student by himself until the lunch line died down so he could be last. Unknowingly, Ru allowed him to join the end of the line before the other teacher was ready. That was the first time Ru had felt the wrath of Ms. Owen, and from that point on, she tried to avoid it. Being labelled “incompetent” and “novice” from the beginning had done very little for her self-esteem. Over the years, she’d grown a bit more accustomed to Jane’s tongue lashings when they occurred, but that didn’t make them any more pleasant. One might think having grown up in a similar environment would make it easier, and perhaps it had to an extent, but Ru had always been overly sensitive, despite her mother’s solid attempts to ridicule it out of her.

Pulling into the parking lot, Ru saw only a handful of other cars and hoped that meant she’d be able to access one of the two copy machines before there was a line. Mrs. Long had asked them all to be there by 8:00, but the first staff meeting of the year wouldn’t start until 10:00, which would give them a couple of hours to start getting their classrooms situated.

Ru found her usual parking spot next to a side entrance and grabbed her belongings, careful when she shut the car off and pulled the key out not to do any damage. Her electronic key card had also given her fits for the last three years, and she’d had to have it replaced so many times that she’d been the only teacher issued an actual key as back up, just in case. She prayed her badge would actually scan today so she didn’t have to go have the secretary, Mrs. Fitz, log her in. That was always an uncomfortable situation, almost as bad as forgetting to take one’s attendance.

She approached the side door, the one closest to her classroom, and scanned her badge. A few seconds later, she heard a little click and whispered, “Thank goodness,” as she pulled the heavy, blue, metal door open. The hallway was dark, but she didn’t dare approach any of the light switches for fear she’d blow a bulb. Hopefully, her classroom lights were still on and the motion sensor would work when she walked in.

Room 393 was just a couple of doors down. Once again, Ru prayed her badge would work. She ran the plastic in front of the scanner several times before the red light finally turned green and her classroom door unlatched. She pushed it open and stumbled inside. The lights did not come on, and with a sigh of frustration, Ru crossed to her desk and let all of her bags fall on top before she went back to confront the light switch. She flipped it on quickly, and even though there was a slight pop and the scent of ozone, the lights flickered on. “Another obstacle down,” Ru said. Before she forgot, she grabbed a piece of Scotch tape off of her desk and taped the light switch up. She’d have to teach her kids to leave the lights on when they left the classroom, the exact opposite of the rule most teachers enforced.

She also propped her door open. Anyone could open it from the inside, so there was no reason to be cautious as she grabbed the silver handle and pulled it open. She had a few stops to make today, and she may as well just leave it open. She actually propped her door for full weeks at a time these days, and Mrs. Long didn’t say a word because she knew how exasperating it could be to get maintenance over to unlock the door when the black box was shorted out.

Grabbing her lunchbox and the stack of papers she wanted to copy, Ru headed down the hall toward the teachers’ lounge. None of the other classroom lights in her hall were on, which likely meant none of her teammates were there yet. She was a little surprised Jane hadn’t shown up early, but then some teachers might think that no one would notice if they were a little late since the meeting didn’t start until 10:00. Candice was probably on that list; she was often late anyway.

Ru made her way into the lounge and cautiously approached the refrigerator. Thoughts of the time last year when she’d accidentally blown a fuse that made the lounge go dark and appliances temporarily stop working came to mind, so she looked around for something to use to open the door. Seeing nothing, she decided the hem of her flowing, blue shirt would have to do. She gathered it into her hand and used it to open the door, shoving her lunchbox into an open space before quickly releasing the door and using her foot to secure it closed again.

Heading toward the copy room closest to her classroom, Ru looked down the hallway and noticed the light was on in the room across from hers. That would probably be the new teacher’s room since their ex-teammate, Melinda Blank, had vacated it over the summer. Absently hoping that the new teacher was nice, Ru entered the copy room.

The machine wasn’t on, which was a huge problem. Even though she could see it was plugged in, the last three times she’d attempted to actually power it up, the machine had shorted out on her. She could head across the building to the copier in the other wing, but she knew the primary teachers hated it when the intermediate teachers used “their” machine. She stood contemplating what to do for a few seconds and then decided to go for it. After all, she’d been having a good day so far, and it had been months since she’d actually ruined an electrical device of any sort—except for her last phone. It had died a few weeks ago when she’d thought it might be a good idea to take the protective case off and clean it for some reason. She’d learned her lesson and had the guy at the AT&T store put an Otterbox on her new one before it even left the counter.

With a deep breath, Ru reached around and quickly flipped the power button on the copier. She sighed in relief when the machine came to life. “Yes!” she said, quietly, thinking perhaps it was going to be a great year.

Once it was warmed up, she set her stack of papers in the automatic feed tray and set it to make three copies of each of the twenty or so documents. There were four of them on the team, so that would make one copy for each of the other teachers. She knew Jane would probably throw her set in the trash as soon as Ru gave them to her, but that didn’t prevent her from trying.

She keyed in her code, pushed the start button, and the papers started whizzing through the tray. Thinking her luck was about to change, Ru couldn’t help but smile. She began to daydream about what her new students might be like. She was certain they would be the most brilliant fourth graders to ever grace the halls of Thomas Elementary.

Not paying attention to what she was doing, Ru set her hands down on the copier. There was a zapping sound, as if the outlet had let a surge of electricity through, and the machine began to smoke, bringing the methodic thut of the papers passing through to a halt.

“Oh, no!” Ru said aloud. She still had about three pages to pass through, but more importantly, the other teachers would need this machine. It was the week before school started. Frantically, she flipped the power switch on and off, but not a light on the panel illuminated, and the smell of electrical smoke hung heavy in the air.

“What am I going to do?”