Chapter 35 – A Foot in the Door – Holly Hayfield

Just as Val suggested, my homeroom teacher instantly granted me permission to skip study hall. Ms. Kinsley gave me a look of pity when I mentioned why I wanted to leave class. Even she knew that Ms. Logan was troublesome to deal with. She wasn’t straightforward enough to articulate this to me directly. Rather than that, she just wished me luck for my labor. She spoke a lot like my late grandmother.

Jay and I had made arrangements to meet up outside of the library before heading over to Ms. Logan’s classroom. When I say we made arrangements, I actually meant that I insisted on it and set up the rendezvous point. It’d be suspicious if I showed up to help without being accompanied by Jay, after all. That’d kill any chance of bringing up Malorie without looking too suspicious. The important thing was to make everything look as natural and spontaneous as possible from Ms. Logan’s perspective.

It was frustrating to see that Jay was late to our rendezvous point. In my frustration I brought up ChatCat and put her to the question. It was even more frustrating to learn that she was already on her way. After an explosion of protesting by me and Val, Jay promised to wait for me outside of the history hallway. She warned me that I only had two full minutes to meet up with her. What a lovely partner.

So I caught up to her outside of the history hallway. I was completely out of breath and she was standing there with a look like I was inconveniencing her.

“What took you so long?” She asked.

“What took me so long?! We were supposed to meet up outside of the library!”

“Why?”

“Because that was what we agreed on.”

“That was what you agreed on! Not me. Let’s just get this over with before Ms. Logan calls the vice principal on me again.”

“Fine,” I said.

It wasn’t fine. The way she was putting the blame on me was annoying but I wasn’t going to dwell on it. We started walking over towards Ms. Logan’s classroom. It was funny how Jay was pretending to be in a hurry before. Now that she was closer she slowed her walking pace down to a crawl. She honestly didn’t want to be here anymore than I did.

“Val wasn’t wrong about what she was saying before.” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Jay asked.

“We could use this opportunity to start things off right.” I said. “We’ve never seen eye to eye. Maybe we can try to establish some proper footing?”

“Why bother?”

“Because we might be working together all school year,” I said, trying to hold back my aggravation.

She stopped and turned her full body to look at me. She put an index finger in the air.

“The only thing I want to establish is the fact that Val is mine!” She said angrily.

Now it was my turned to get angry.

“Are you blind?! I’m obviously not interested in Val like that! I even let you sit next to her in the student council room! I prefer to sit close to Lilith.”

“Lilith doesn’t even like you.” She said snobbishly in an attempt to hurt me.

This did more damage to me than I wanted to admit. For a moment I decided to bear my claws.

“Lilith likes me more than Val likes you. Get over your stupid little crush! It isn’t going anywhere! I’m the one Val likes!”

This petty little retort had completely knocked Jay’s soul from her body in a single blow. She didn’t have anything cute or witty to say after that. She was in such dumbfounded shock that she couldn’t find the physical willpower to respond in any sense. She was just defeated. Perhaps this was the first time someone had challenged her stupid delusion. She was uncharacteristically meek and quiet.

She took one step back, and then two. Then she turned robotically and began walking in the direction of Ms. Logan’s room. It was like the program that she was operating on had just crashed. She had built her delusion up so much that she simply couldn’t process having it shattered. I slapped my palm into my face. This was a bad way to start our mission. I comprised everything by letting my frustration get to me.

When we walked into Ms. Logan’s room we could see that she was pacing about the center, waiting. Her classroom was messy, not unlike many classrooms in this school for trouble students. The difference was her ability to cope with the damage caused by her rowdy teenage students. This school was short on janitors making student cleaning a necessity. That was probably why Jay and I were here now.

There were two types of teachers at this school. There were the teachers that carried the fearsome demeanor necessary to force their students to clean up after themselves. Then there were the ones who meekly cleaned their classrooms themselves. Needless to say, the students didn’t fear or respect Ms. Logan enough to keep her classroom tidy. To remedy this, the main office would ‘volunteer’ office assistants or goody two-shoe students like me to help her clean.

“J-jay you’re late! I… I told you to be here right at the start of last period!” Ms. Logan said.

The stuttering and shaky words were common for her. She always spoke like she was held together by strings and rubber bands.

“Holly kept me waiting.” Jay grumbled.

Ms. Logan looked over at me as I walked in behind Jay. Ms. Logan always had this deer-in-headlights look that made it her hard to read sometimes. I couldn’t tell if she was surprised, scared, shocked, or maybe all three.

“H-Holly, I didn’t know you were coming. T-That’s good! I… I uhh… have some things I want you to help me with. Leave the cleaning to Jay. I need help grading this homework.” She said.

“Yes ma’am.” I said.

“H-hurry up…!” She demanded.

Both Jay and I put pep into our step. Jay went over to the cleaning supplies in the corner of the room. I went over to Ms. Logan herself. She was going to her desk where papers were sprawled about the top of her desk carelessly. Her desk and the entire area around were like a hoarder’s nest. There was trash mixed in with papers that made it impossible to discern what was what. It was amazing how bad her situation became when left to her own devices for even just a few days.

“I’ll help you clear away some of this stuff first. We’ll throw away whatever we don’t need.” I said.

I started to grab some stuff off her desk. She grabbed my hand before I could start.

“B-Be careful!” She shouted, “Make sure you don’t throw away anything important. Ask me if you don’t know.”

“Yes ma’am.” I said.

The easiest way of handling Ms. Logan was to not put up an argument. To make this quick and painless I focused on clearing her desk of the obvious trash such as wrappers, cans, and other left over lunch items she had just left sitting there. Some of said lunch items that weren’t completely emptied were just going to rot right there on her desk. This wasn’t an environment one could easily work in, let alone teach a class of delinquent students in. She needed more help than we could offer her.

Here I was concentrating on helping her while forgetting that I was here for another reason. I was here to learn more about Malorie. The difficulty was going to be how I brought up subject. A quick glance at Ms. Logan made me ask myself a question. Was today the right day? She always looked so stressed that I had to ask myself a follow-up question. Would any day be the right day?

The more I thought about it the more I began to realize that I didn’t need any sort of aggressive plan of attack. Just looking at her as she we cleaned off her desk revealed how much of a dark place she was in. I always thought that it was some untreated medical condition she was suffering with, but maybe that was only part of it. Could she be suffering because of what happened to Malorie?

It was a Hail Marry guess considering how long ago in the past that was. Then again, was 10 years or so really all that long? How long did it take to recover from the loss of loved ones? The answer to this had serious implications for me as well. After losing Ellie and even Opal I often found my place in a dark spot. Those two weren’t dead, however. Malorie was. Was that weighing on Ms. Logan’s conscience the same way Ellie weighed on mine?

“Ms. Logan,” I called to her, “I’m a little concerned about things getting like this. It seems like every time I come to your classroom it is in a dire state.”

This was a risky way to open my conversation with her. She turned towards me with a look of rage. How dare I say something so insolent, right?

“I don’t know who you think you are young lady but you have no idea what I have to put up with!” She shouted.

Her voice was coming out clear now. Her anger seemed to be overtaking her awkwardness.

“Every day stupid kids come in here and trash everything. Every day I have to put up with…”

I took her by the arm, causing her to stop her episode mid-sentence. She looked at me with a mix of her residual anger and confusion. As she seemed to be baffled by my behavior I stepped closer to move my hand from her arm to her back. I patted her on the back gently and rubbed her the way my mother used to rub me on the back as a kid.

“That’s not what I’m saying Ms. Logan. I’m saying that it seems like you aren’t getting the help that you need.” I said.

Her eyes softened and her face turned red. She must’ve been embarrassed that she mistook my words as an attack rather than support. It looked like she wasn’t sure what to say. She turned her head dejectedly and looked back down at her desk.

“I want you to know that I’m here to help you whenever you need me.” I said. “I understand what things are like here and if you ever need my help then call the front office. They’ll get me out of whatever class I’m in to come and help you when you need it.”

This wasn’t something that I actually wanted to do but it was an important step to gaining her trust. Jay had slowed her cleaning to look over at us. My words were having an apparent effect on Ms. Logan. She sat down in her chair and gave me a heartfelt look. With the way everyone felt about putting up with her this type of display of sincerity was likely a rarity for her.

“Thank you, Holly. You’re really such a good girl. You’re the only one here that really cares.” She said

I went to the closest student desk to borrow a chair. I brought it back and sat down in it right next to Ms. Logan. She took my hand as I sat down and I held onto her hand tightly. This was my foot in the door.

“Excuse me for prying but do you have the help you need at home? Do you have a spouse or family member that helps you outside of school?” I asked.

This was a touchy question for a student to be asking but now that Ms. Logan was getting emotional she didn’t give it any deeper thought. She instantly shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye.

“I have no one. My family and I aren’t on good terms. All my other relationships went sank not long after setting sail. It’s been very painful for me to deal with.”

She had gone from wiping away stray tears to just letting them go. Now she was fully crying.

“One of my cats died just last week and I don’t have the money to bury it in the same pet graveyard as my other dead cats. My landlord is always on my back about damage to the house and late payments. She doesn’t understand how hard it is to take care of multiple pets. No one in my life ever tries to help me out.”

None of this was useful information. She was just openly venting her troubles now. That meant I was ready to start pushing into Malorie territory.

“There must be someone that helps you every now and then. Do you have any close friends you can talk to about this?” I asked politely.

Ms. Logan shook her head furiously.

“No! I told you! There’s no one in my life that’s close to me like that! The people I have around me aren’t my close friends. Hell, the people I have probably can’t even be considered my real friends. I’m so sick of what things have become.”

That sounded like relevant information. This seemed to be heading in the right direction. Now I just needed to press her a little further.

“There must be someone that you’re close with. For example, my closest friends right now are part of my student council group. Think back to your college years. Think back to your high school years. Was there ever someone you were close with back then? Maybe you could reach out to them.” I said.

Ms. Logan was tearing up and crying only a little before. Now she was outright bawling. This was right on the mark.

“There was someone like that!” She confessed. “There was a girl as sweet as you and I betrayed her! I don’t deserve anyone’s love after that. Maybe that’s why everything is in shambles right now! I’m so sick of everything!”

She was crying so much that I had to put my arms around her to try comforting her. She turned her head towards me and cried into my uniform. She couldn’t see me smile once I realized the plan had worked. This gave me what I needed. Confirmation. The betrayal she spoke of was what I wanted to learn more about. It was going to be hard to get information out of her now that she had completely broken down.

“It’s okay, I’m here for you.” I said. “Can you tell me more about what you meant by betraying her? I want to help you but I need to understand.”

I don’t think Ms. Logan even heard me over the sound of her own sobs. She was a mess with make up running down her face. Jay was watching the entire time, completely distracted from her cleaning task. I was going to have to wait until Ms. Logan calmed down to try getting more information out of her. I rubbed her back some more to try encouraging her to relax.

“Ms. Logan you can talk to me about anything you feel you need get off your shoulders. I…”

Just as I was trying to reestablish our conversation the door flew opened and a girl walked in.

“Sorry I’m late! Ms. Sampson held me up in…” Erica started to say.

She stopped talking and froze mid-sentence when she saw me hugging onto a very distressed Ms. Logan.

“Holly…?” She asked, “What are you doing here?”