Chapter Text
Elizabeth Saltzman was one of the most popular teachers at Salvatore Elementary School; her quick wit allowed her to make her class of rowdy third graders laugh, her patience in teaching said rowdy third graders spoke for itself, and not to mention she was as much brains as she was beauty. The amount of staff members who hated her were about the same as the amount of those who admired her. Needless to say, she was the self-proclaimed queen of the school, and not because her mother was the principal. No, she spent many years working hard to separate her work from her mother’s - no way in hell was she going to let someone tell her she was simply handed her position.
After graduating from college, she spent a year as a substitute teacher, then moved onto being a full-time teacher’s aide for a class of kindergarteners for a couple of years; she loved the little rascals but dealing with kids that young was not for her, so, after that she got her first real teaching job at Salvatore Elementary, after her mother told her there was an opening for a third grade teacher at the beginning of the next school year. Caroline had told her that she didn’t need to apply and go through the whole interview process, but Lizzie insisted, saying that she needed to earn her place fair and square, which had the older blonde rolling her eyes.
As if you don’t have more experience than over half the staff, she had told her daughter.
Nonetheless, Lizzie applied online, waited the longest two days of her life for someone to call her to schedule an interview, and one thing led to another, and now she had a shiny, large desk, and a bunch of eager, wide-eyed third graders ready to listen to her every word.
“Miss Saltzman.” One of Lizzie’s students, Marcy (short for Marceline, because the little girl would never let you forget it) called her over. She had lost one of her front teeth a few months prior and the adult one was slowly coming in, but the little gap had made it so she had trouble pronouncing the “t” in Saltzman, which Lizzie found adorable. She walked over to the little girl’s desk and bent over so she was eye level with her.
“Yes, Marcy?” Lizzie asked, looking over the child’s paper. The kids were learning multiplication, and she knew that it would take a little longer for them to grasp the concept, as multiplying was many times (no pun intended) harder than simple addition and subtraction. Marcy’s pencil was hovering over a word problem that essentially asked what fifteen times three was.
Marcy had a little frown on her face, her tongue poking out between her lips in concentration as she re-read the problem again. “I can’t do it,” she stated, head hung in defeat.
“Of course you can,” Lizzie encouraged. “May I?” she asked, pointing at the girl’s pencil. Marcy nodded and handed it to her teacher. Lizzie pulled up an unoccupied chair and sat next to the struggling third grader.
“Multiplication is just a faster way of adding,” the blonde began, drawing a square with fifteen circles inside of it, “so if one box has fifteen apples in it, and another box has fifteen more apples in it…” she then proceeded to draw another square with fifteen more circles in it, “then how many apples total are there in both boxes?”
“Thirty!” The little girl exclaimed, her legs swinging underneath the desk in glee.
Lizzie smiled; her students were brilliant, if she did say so herself, and she was always glad to see when her kids were able to use what she’s taught them to solve a problem.
That’s right, Marcy,” the teacher nodded, “so two boxes with fifteen apples each means there’s thirty apples total, but the question doesn’t ask for that, does it?” She waited until the little girl shook her head to continue. “It asks for how many apples does three boxes have in total.” She drew a third square with another fifteen boxes in it.
“So what’s thirty plus another fifteen, Marcy?” Lizzie handed the child back her pencil and watched as she counted each circle, struggling a bit around forty-one, but eventually got to her answer.
“Is it forty-five, Miss Saltzman?” Marcy looked up at her teacher with hopeful eyes.
“It absolutely is, Marcy, good job! So now you know that fifteen times three is just fifteen plus fifteen, which is thirty, plus another fifteen, which all equals forty-five.” Lizzie gave her student a high five as she got up, putting the chair she was sitting on back in its place and returned to her desk. As soon as her butt touched the seat, however, another student called her for assistance.
She sighed, albeit fondly - as poor as their timing was, she’d never get tired of helping her students.
“Apparently there was another fight between some sixth graders again before class this morning,” Mr. Landon Kirby said as he entered the teacher’s lounge for lunch. He plopped down next to his fellow fifth-grade educator Miss Cleo Sowande and began taking his food out of his lunch box, handing Cleo the fruit snacks he brought her every day.
“Was it the same kids as last time?,” Fourth-grade teacher Milton Greasley asked from where he was sitting on the couch next to gym teacher Ethan Machado, tv remote in hand and channel surfing, trying to find something to watch that wasn’t the local news.
“Nah,” Landon said, throwing his tupperware full of leftover lasagna in the microwave, “different kids this time. But how do any of them have enough energy to get into a full on fight at eight in the morning is my question.”
Kaleb Hawkins, the music teacher, snorted as he stirred his third cup of coffee that day. “Jesus Christ, Jed, what are you teaching these kids? If you want to teach a martial arts class you can always get a part-time job,” he teased as the disgruntled and disheveled sixth-grade teacher entered the break room.
Jed shook his head. “You know, I blame the hormones they’re putting in the food nowadays,” he declared, making a beeline for the couch and snatching the remote from MG’s hand, the latter throwing his hands up in surrender. “I swear Ricky was five inches shorter last week, now he’s a giant!”
“That’s called puberty, Tien,” Jed’s neighboring sixth-grade teacher, Alyssa Chang, quipped. She said a little louder, “At least my kids aren’t picking fights and being disruptive.”
Lizzie snorted as she downed a spoonful of yogurt. “That’s because you rule with fear, Chang.”
Alyssa shrugged, having no problem with it. The room was silent for a few minutes, with some of the teachers eating and the rest staring mindlessly at daytime television; the silence was broken when they heard the door creak open again.
“Hey, Hope!” Landon happily waved at his auburn-haired friend. Lizzie had the opposite reaction, rolling her eyes and scoffing as she started to angrily stab her salad with her fork - in doing so she missed the way Alyssa looked back and forth between the two women before shaking her head and returning to her spaghetti.
Hope Mikaelson, the school’s only second-grade teacher, gave everyone polite smiles and sat down across from Landon and Cleo, taking her own food out of her lunch box.
Hope began teaching at Salvatore Elementary not too long after Lizzie had (a year and sixteen days, not that the blonde kept count) after the previous second-grade teacher quit to marry her rich husband and hadn’t been heard from since.
Good, Lizzie said at the time, I didn’t like her anyway.
Little did she know she wouldn’t like her replacement either. Lizzie would never admit it, but Hope Mikaelson was the walking manifestation of all of Lizzie’s insecurities: effortlessly flawless, got along with everyone, and her achievements were always recognized and celebrated while Lizzie had to struggle for people to even acknowledge her existence at the beginning of her career. Hope was beautiful and smart and Lizzie hated that it apparently came so naturally, so easily, to her. So, at some point she decided to stay away from the shorter woman and rebuffed her attempts at being cordial, telling herself that they were coworkers and nothing more…they didn’t need to be anything more than that.
“So, Hope,” Jed said from where he was slowly sinking into the couch, snapping Lizzie out of her thoughts, “I heard you were nominated for the “Teacher of the Year” Award for the state of Virginia. Congrats!”
Hope turned a deep shade of red as a round of applause and cheers erupted around the room. “Thank you, guys,” she said quietly, “but I haven’t won yet.”
Kaleb waved aside her humility. “You think you’re gonna lose to some chump teaching at Mystic Falls High or some other low-ranked school in the state? Nah, girl, that award is yours.” He held up his coffee mug in a toast. “To Hope!”
“To Hope!” Everyone else echoed.
Well, everyone except Lizzie Saltzman.
“You know, you can cut the sexual tension between you and Mikaelson with a knife,” Alyssa said out of nowhere as she and Lizzie supervised their kids’ recess.
The blonde whipped her head around, making sure there weren’t any children around to ask what the word “sexual” meant. After confirming that the coast was clear, she raised an eyebrow at the sixth-grade teacher.
The shorter woman scoffed. “You’d think I’d say something inappropriate in front of the kids?”
Lizzie raised her eyebrow even higher; Alyssa sighed, conceding the point. “Anyway, it seems like everyone else is blind or something because I don’t understand how people think you actually hate her.”
“I do hate her,” Lizzie muttered, crossing her arms. The dark-haired woman mimicked her, crossing her arms as well, and adding an exaggerated pout for good measure.
“You’re such a child.”
“Says the one crossing her arms like one of her third graders.”
Lizzie uncrossed her arms, instead choosing to rest her hands on her hips like the adult she was. Alyssa chuckled at the action.
“Careful, Saltzman, you’re three seconds away from stomping your foot and storming away like Angie did when Ethan told her she couldn’t tackle her classmates in gym class. Does the mere mention of Mikaelson rile you up that much?”
Lizzie groaned, “It’s the fact that you mentioned her at all! And here I was having a perfectly good day.”
“Oh, don’t lie to me. I saw the way you almost murdered your lunch earlier when all she did was walk into the break room. It only takes one look at Hope for you to get all moody.”
“Stupid Hope Mikaelson and her stupid award nomination,” muttered the blonde while kicking a rock. “And her long, beautiful hair and her ability to get along with everyone. You know, you must be right about everyone being blind or something because there’s no way no one else doesn’t see what I see. I shouldn’t be the only one who sees right through her. Like sure, she has the workload of two teachers and the weight of the entire second-grade curriculum on her shoulders and carries it gracefully, might I add. But it doesn’t give her the right to be, well, her,” Lizzie finished, panting after seemingly ranting in one breath.
Alyssa nodded, “So, you’re jealous of her.”
“I am not jealous.” Lizzie was fuming; there was no way she was jealous of Hope, of all people. No, absolutely not. It’s completely laughable - or so she told herself.
Alyssa blinked at her colleague, then proceeded to mouth the word “wow” as she turned and walked towards the playground, rounding up her students to go back inside.
Lizzie narrowed her eyes at Alyssa’s retreating back. The hell does “wow” mean?
She shook her head and sighed. Recess was over, and she spent half of it thinking about perfect Hope Mikaelson.
She wasn’t jealous, was she?