Chapter Text
“When I decided to go to school to become a teacher, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind…,” Amity grumbled to herself as she flipped through yet another page of chicken scratch handwriting and an essay with the word ‘and’ used so many times that she wasn't even sure when this sentence started or stopped.
She groaned and let her head fall to the dining room table with a muted thump.
Emira, standing behind her at the stove, snorted but didn’t turn away from the eggs cooking in the pan.
“You did the student teaching, you knew exactly what it could be like in a classroom,” she reminded, more than a hint of amusement creeping into her voice, much to AMity’s rising ire.
“That’s behavior, that’s totally different than… this!” A loud crinkling made Emira glance over her shoulder where her sister was holding up a piece of paper. Yet another essay she was grading, only this one, nearly blinded her…
“Is that… highlighter?” she asked, only for Amity to make a low grumbling noise in her throat before slapping the paper back onto the table and sighing.
“I can’t wait for the next break…” She buried her face in her hands and groaned.
“You just had winter break… it’s only been a week since you went back.” Emira frowned and Amity made a distressed noise into her hands.
“Is that the sound of academic despair I hear along with the smell of food?”
Edric popped his head into the room with a grin and his sisters rolled their eyes.
“Yes, and yes,” Emira answered before turning back to the stove.
“Well, it must be dinner time then!” Ed sauntered into the kitchen and plopped himself into the seat across from Amity, who shot him a disgruntled look, earning a winning smile in turn. She just sighed and turned her attention back to the papers at hand.
He slipped a few of the papers from the graded pile and slid them over to himself. Amity made a quiet growling sound but he was undeterred as he flipped through them.
“Whoa, you gave this kid a five out of fifty?” he asked, looking up. Nearly identical amber eyes flickered up from what she was doing to look back at him.
“Did you read it?” she asked cryptically. Ed cocked a brow at that before turning back to the paper.
Amity watched as his eyes slowly widened as they made their way down the page.
“What the fu-“
“Yeah, I’m turning that one into the counselors on Monday,” she said, plucking it from his fingers.
“Yeesh”
“Mhmm,” Amity hummed, going back to the task at hand until the pen was plucked from between her fingers and the papers scooted aside for a plate laden with bacon and eggs in the shape of a smiley face to be laid down in front of her with a side of toast.
“You can bring those red flags to the attention of the proper people on Monday, it’s time for breakfast for dinner,” Emira said, ignoring the sour look her sister was giving her right now as she set a fork down in front of her.
“Sweet!” Ed grinned as his plate was set down in front of him, not waiting for his sisters at all before chowing down, making them both roll their eyes.
“Thanks, Em,” Amity mumbled as her sister sat down in the chair next to her.
“Try not to look so dreary, it’s Sunday, you don’t have to deal with any of that until tomorrow.” Emira jabbed her fork in her direction.
“If only that were true,” she sighed, dragging the edge of her toast through the yolk of her egg. “If I only worked at work, I’d never finish anything,” she grunted.
“You’re the one giving out these assignments. Give less?” Ed offered around a piece of bacon.
“Then I won’t be able to cover everything I want to cover, on top of all the things I have to cover so they’re ready for the school test!” She nearly tossed the toast across the room when she threw an arm up, nearly smacking Edric in the face.
“You’re gonna drive yourself insane though…,” Emira mumbled, reaching out and lowering Amity’s raised arm for emphasis.
“If she hasn’t already,” Ed grumbled, earning a scathing look from the English teacher.
“How was last night’s stand-up act at Hexside?” The youngest Blight sibling bit back, making Ed frown before stuffing a bite of eggs in his mouth and chewing defiantly as he glared back at her. Amity smirked until he opened his mouth to show her his half-chewed food.
“Oh, that is disgusting! What are you, four!?” She screeched.
“Okay you two,” Emira interjected with a sigh. “That’s enough, Ed close your mouth, and Amity, leave him alone.”
“He started it,” she grumbled but returned to her dinner.
“You’re more irritable than usual,” Em observed and Amity sighed.
“I know, they started renovating the big classroom across the hall from me and I was really hoping to get into it for this semester but it turns out it’s going to be an art room for the new art teacher that’s starting tomorrow…,” she huffed.
“In the English department?” Em cocked her head and Amity sighed, nodding.
“Yes, they condemned the old art room on the other side of the building because the pipes kept bursting and ruined the walls. They’re in the middle of building a new one but it won’t be done for a while, so they’re putting the new teacher there.”
“So you’re just upset that an art teacher got it?” Ed piped up, smirking not so subtly behind his fork. Amity’s nostrils flared in annoyance.
“No!” She bit. “I love art. I just think dibs on the biggest room in the department should have gone to someone who is actually in the department!” she huffed.
“Well, maybe when they get the new art building built,” Emira offered. “Don’t you think with all the supplies and stuff an art class needs that they would need more space?” she asked.
Amity just grunted in response as she continued to eat her dinner.
“See, she’s just mad,” Ed smirked before a piece of bacon slapped him in the face.
~ ~ ~
Amity felt better Monday morning as she was setting things up on her desk, the door open and half-listening to the kids milling about the halls. The bell hadn’t rung and it wouldn’t for some twenty minutes now, so most of them were still congregated in the cafeteria. The dull roar was echoing down the hall to her room.
The door to the new art room across the hall had been closed since she arrived and she couldn’t tell if the light was on or not inside. She frowned to herself as she moved around her room.
At this time of the morning, only the laziest teachers had yet to show up.
Or those with enough tenure that they sometimes came in after the bell had rung. Something that drove Amity absolutely crazy.
Eda Clawthorne, in particular. She usually strolled into her chemistry classroom five minutes after the bell, mug in hand and wearing her fuzzy pink slippers, hair a barely constrained mess and looking like she hadn’t slept in days.
It drove the principal, the other Ms. Clawthorne, crazy.
The previous principal, Mr. Bump, had been wise to retire the day Eda had gotten tenure.
She shook her head and busied herself with preparing things for class. When the bell finally rang and her first class of the day shuffled in, she completely forgot about the closed-door across the hall, and continued to ignore it at the end of the day when she left and it was still sitting closed and she wasn’t sure if it had ever opened or not.
She was more sure the next morning when she walked down the hall to her classroom and had to stop.
The large bulletin board on the wall across from her room, which had been blank when she’d left yesterday, was now bursting with bright and colorful drawings and paintings. A mish-mash of shapes and colors like a rainbow had thrown up on it. She couldn't help but stop and stare at the garish display, dripping glitter onto the floor. Student artwork obviously but it was jarring nonetheless.
The English department was not known for its bright displays in the halls so much as signups for the SATs, writing clubs, and other such things.
That definitely answered whether or not the new art teacher had started.
Once again the door was closed and she pursed her lips, thinking, before turning and walking into her own classroom.
That billboard belonged to that room and it wasn’t the worst thing that could be hung out in the hall.
She was resolved to ignore it, there wasn’t much else she could do about it either way.
The things that came after were increasingly harder and harder to ignore though.
On Thursday, no less than three students tracked dark purple paint into her room on the bottom of their shoes from a major spill that happened just outside the art room door, and on Friday, she could hear the music thumping through the wall from across the hall.
What kind, she couldn’t tell, she could just hear the distant base thumping through the walls from across the hall.
She grumbled under her breath as she tried to ignore the sound and explain the premise of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ to her class. Her finger tapped on the book every time the music thumped.
It was after class that she noticed the plethora of little doodles on the three-ring binders that she had bought for the class. Weird little symbols in circles that she reminded herself to address the class about on Monday.
She sighed and packed up the folders and papers that needed grading, shoving them into her backpack before flicking off the lights and stepping out into the hall.
It was mostly quiet, the kids long gone for the day and the few people that remained were tucked away in their classrooms, finally free of kids and getting things finished or the janitors, moving up and down the halls, cleaning up the mess the throngs of teens left in their wake.
At least, it would have been quiet, if not for the music she could hear coming out of the room right across from her. It hadn’t stopped all afternoon, and although it wasn’t blaring loud as to disturb her classes, she had been able to hear it with striking clarity during her planning period when her door had been open. It continued to thump even now.
She frowned at the closed door that had been blank just yesterday, but now bore bright, glittery purple letters.
‘Ms. Noceda’
Amity growled to herself and took a half a step toward the door before stopping short, hesitating, hand raised, and about to start knocking. Slowly, it powered back to her side and she sighed.
There were easier ways to deal with this…
With her mind made up, she walked quickly down the hall toward the main office. Most other staff had already hightailed it out for the weekend but she knew one person, in particular, would still be here. She turned down the hall that led to a large wooden door with a little black and gold outlined plaque on it.
‘Principal Lilith Clawthorne’
She was the last person that Amity wanted to bother but letting her boss know about the going ons in the room across the hall, rather than getting into it with the woman herself was the more…. diplomatic way to go about it.
She rapped her knuckles against the wood.
“Come in,” echoed out through the door. Taking a steadying breath, Amity pushed it open and stepped inside the principal's office.
It was spacious, with tall narrow windows lining the entire left-hand wall as she stepped in. A table sat directly in front of her to the left, four, plush leather chairs pushed in around it. Tall bookshelves lined the other wall, filled to the brim with thick leather-bound novels and thick files, all neatly in their places from what Amity could tell. A large, dark wooden desk on the other side of the room sat imperiously, its polished surface shining under the overhead lights.
Sitting behind the desk, bent over a laptop was Lilith Clawthrone, the head principal.
“Ms. Clawthorne, do you have a minute?” she asked as she stepped into the room.
Lilith glanced up, eyes locking on Amity as she finished typing something and sat back, regarding her coolly from the other side of her desk.
“Ms. Blight, please, come in.” She beckoned, standing and motioning Amity in. “What can I do for you?” she asked as Amity closed the door behind her and walked into the office to seat herself in one of the two chairs in front of the desk as Lilith sat back down in her high back chair.
“I was just on my way out and I was wondering if you had a moment to talk about the new teacher across the hall from my room…”
“Ah, Ms. Noceda, yes. How have things been going, is she settled in alright?” Lilith cocked her head curiously and Amity had to bite her tongue from saying anything about making herself too comfortable too quickly.
“It would seem so,” Amity started before getting into all the annoyances she had encountered over the course of the week, from the paint that had stained her classroom floor a deep indigo and the music that had been thumping through the walls all day.
Lilith nodded along as Amity explained her complaints.
“Yes, you weren’t the only teacher to complain about the paint issue, though it was more a maintenance issue. The shelves they put up in the room to hold paint were not properly installed and gave under the weight, causing the spill that had more than just a few students leaving colorful tracks in their wake,” she explained and Amity, reluctantly, nodded along. She, grudgingly, couldn’t hold that against the woman.
“If you can hear her music across the hall, doubtless your students can as well. I will speak to her about the volume Monday, thank you for bringing it to my attention, Ms. Blight.” Lilith said and Amity nodded.
She knew a dismissal when she heard one.
“Yes, thank you, Ms. Clawthorne. Have a nice weekend,” Amity bid her farewell before hurrying out of the office, fully satisfied that her issues would be taken care of by Monday.
She didn’t exactly relish the idea of putting anyone under Lilith’s scrutiny, especially just after their first week but she hadn’t been able to tune out the music for the life of her, even if she closed the door, she could still hear the thumping bass reverberating through the walls.
Maybe a small but stern talking to from Lilith was all that was needed.
As she thought about it, her phone jingled in her pocket and she dug it out to see a text from her brother, asking if she wanted to do pizza for dinner. She turned her attention fully to that as she started back down the hall, forgetting all about Ms. Noceda, till dinner anyway when her sister had asked her how the day went.
“I haven’t even met them yet and they’re already annoying,” Amity grumbled before taking a bite of her pizza.
Emira hummed as she sat in the chair across from her while Ed had already shoved half a piece into his mouth, a string of cheese hanging from his chin.
“You know, you could just ask them to turn the music down and the paint thing was an accident, you know kids are a hazard when it comes to anything that can be spilled.” Emira looked up at her as she picked up her own pizza.
“I could have but what if they said no? I don’t want to get into it with another teacher, I talked to Lilith instead before I left this afternoon…,” Amity grumbled to herself.
“So, you’re a tattle-tale,” Ed asked and Em snorted, making Amity frown severely at him. “You’re just mad about the room thing still,” he mumbled around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni.
Amity scowled at him and he shrugged with a knowing grin.
“I am not mad about the room!” she snapped.
Ed and Em shared a look, only annoying her further.
“Can we please stop talking about the room?” She huffed and Ed snickered.
Originally, moving into a house with her brother and sister had seemed like a great idea to save money by splitting rent and utilities three ways and not having to live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment downtown for the same price the three of them paid together and that would add nearly a half-hour to her daily commute, but it had its drawbacks.
Her siblings namely, though, when she thought about the alternative, living at home and having to deal with the judgemental and condescending stares of her mother and apathetic withdrawal of her father.
In comparison, the normally light teasing of her siblings was easily digestible.
“Yeah, that’s enough, Ed. Let’s talk about something else… any romantic prospects?” She asked with a sly grin.
Well, it was usually digestible.
“I’m eating in my room,” she grumbled and stood from the table.
“Hup hup hup, no eating in bedrooms!” Ed said before she could take a single step away from the table. “We all agreed on that, so we don’t get bugs.”
“Only because you’re disgusting,” Amity sneered at her smirking brother.
“I am the pinnacle of hygiene!” He slapped a hand to his chest and gasped in mock affront.
“We made that rule because you brought down dishes once after sitting in your room for weeks and milk, literally, peeled, out of the bowl of cereal you brought down.” Emira leveled with him with a flat look.
“It wasn’t that bad!” He asserted, frowning.
Amity and Emira shared a glance before turning back to Ed, who slumped in his chair, pouting.
It was later that night when her phone buzzed on the bedside table, making her glance up from her book, brows furrowed in annoyance only to check it and find an email, reminding her of the monthly faculty meeting in the library first thing Monday morning.
She sighed and set it back on the table. That was a Monday morning problem.