Protecting Her Own

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Steph Holfield enjoyed being in her classroom pretty much any time. Classrooms, really, since she had the relative luxury of an instruction room out front and a lab in the back. The chance to sprawl out and get comfortable to her heart’s content.

She took great pride in the instruction room, with its rows of two-student-sized black tables more or less in order, and two huge whiteboards up front waiting to be covered with multicolored words and drawings and formulas. The faint, ever-present paint thinner aroma of dry-erase markers lingered rather than the dusty chalk scent of her own school years in this same building.

A dully reflective black rectangle in the middle—four feet tall and eight feet wide—would display any sort of movie or graphic or diagram she sent to it from her laptop or tablet. Essentially a huge smart TV her gadget-loving father still envied several months after she’d started this job.

Her own desk off to the side, between the front door and the doorway to the lab, changed according to what she was teaching at the time.

Right now a wooden box filled with thin partitions held what most people would call a bunch of rocks. Different colors, yes. Some shiny, other dull. Translucent or sharp-edged, soft or opaque. That was about as far as those Steph sometimes thought of as civilians cared to go.

To her, though, and the passionate rock hounds she knew all over the country, that humble little box her former mother-in-law made for her years ago held the keys to the mystery and majesty of the entire planet.

Igneous and metamorphic and sedimentary. Quartz and coal and granite. Gems and minerals, gravel and gold. Bright yellow sulfur and its flammable stink, off-white talc with a soapy, greasy feel. Formed by pressure or explosions or transformation, and even a few pieces of gorgeous forest green moldavite from an ancient meteor impact.

Her favorite was a slender, snakelike wand as long as her hand that looked like blackened dirt from the outside. Looking into the ends, both open about an inch in diameter, revealed a glassy, smooth dark gray finish lined with bubbles, abruptly closed off like the bottom of a frozen puddle.

A spectacular specimen of fulgurite she’d retrieved from a lightning-struck area near the Lightning Rock itself. Steph was certain the whole town was full of the unusual formations.

Since the first time she’d toured a huge cave as a little girl and picked up a box of rocks in the gift shop, Steph had never tired of collecting and learning and understanding, and later teaching about the slow march of time and weather and erosion all around them.

Even with all that joy of teaching and the excitement of seeing a good number of kids in each class pick up her own enthusiasm, Steph still loved these quiet hours when she had the place to herself.

The lab behind her classroom was already small by the standards she’d gotten used to in college and in her first years of teaching in a big school in Louisville, but it was well-equipped. Long white tables with drawers underneath stuffed full of tools and equipment, and more of the whiteboards along the wall that joined her classroom.

Two of the walls in her corner classroom perch on the third floor were full of windows, bringing in plenty of light to help identify subtle variations in structure or color, or with reading measurements on a scale or thermometer.

Outside those windows, Steph and anyone else who actually paid attention were treated to the view she’d missed during her years in Louisville. Probably more than just about anything else. Out the left side, a breathtaking vista of endless rows of blue and green and black mountains, beautifully sculpted by rain and wind and millions of years.

The low ridge on the edge of town blocked that view from most of Lightning Gap. Her exclusive access alone made the hike up three flights of stairs worth it every day of the week.

Out the right side, a much closer and higher ridge jutted up, evidence of a more sturdy layer of rock that resisted the softening and shaping of the land below. Covered with trees and scrubby brush for the most part, that solid, curving wedge of mountain backed up the high school and the rest of town. Creating a sense of being sheltered and protected, even so high up above the rest of the world.

But Steph’s favorite part—and the feature that drew many of her fellow rock hounds and weather nerds to Lightning Gap year after year—was the jutting gray leading edge of that ridge. Lightning Rock. The towering conglomerate peak of sandstone, limestone, glassy edges, and countless colorful pebbles formed the leading edge for the whole protective ridge.

The gigantic storm that rolled through the night before seemed to have swept all the clouds in its wake, leaving everything bright and washed clean.

As she so often had since she’d first taken possession of these rooms in the old brick high school a month before school started in September, Steph gazed out at the tower of stone to calm herself. To relax after the hectic morning of teaching and the rush to eat lunch.

She’d heard people in town and her own family talk about the magic of Lightning Gap and how it was somehow tied to that jutting stone since she was in pre-school. Every time she sat here and stared at it, felt herself connect to it in a fundamental way she didn’t yet understand, she believed in that magic a little bit more.

She had a precious hour of preparation time, most teachers called it, and she understood why. The endless river of tests to grade and labs to set up and presentations to create sometimes felt like a tide she could drown in.

But she did everything she could to carve out this part of her day by herself, for herself.

She’d even reclaimed a tiny corner of the lab for just that purpose.

The oddly shaped half-hearted closet had been set up as a makeshift storage area by past teachers. Tucked away along the same wall as her desk, opposite the views of the rolling mountains below, the space was only a few paces across in either direction. A few rows of rickety wooden shelves were jammed against the inside walls, with the remaining wall an extension of the windows that looked out over the sheltering ridge.

Steph suspected the shelves were made of scrap wood from the shop department at the far end of the school. The heavy, scratchy brown fabric that had been tacked up as a curtain in front of the windows and across the narrow entry was surely a Home Economics reject, maybe meant for a class on making a duffle bag or something equally unappealing.

All manner of books and papers and samples and tools had been stacked into the little space when she first saw it. Some of it likely from her own high school days or even before that.

After cleaning a bunch of that out, she still used the shelves for storage of her own. More rock and mineral and gem samples and displays, and various weights and measures for the general science classes, too.

As for the precious bit of reclaimed space, she’d found a compact but amazingly comfortable meditation chair that fit perfectly in the corner by the windows. The low-backed seat held a bronze-colored cushion, with little wings to support her knees if she sat cross-legged. She’d never quite managed a proper lotus position with each foot tucked on top of the opposite thigh, but she got close enough.

Steph had cleared the whole strange room of antiquated academic clutter, and the shelves closest to her of everything. Then she set up her own soothing oasis.

A small collection of rocks, of course, one that some of the new-age types she’d come across would assume she’d chosen for their energy or healing power.

Sharp-edged quartz and other clear stones in various colors. Gleaming lumps of pyrite, entirely unlike gold to her practiced eye.

Like the smooth, heavy, charcoal-gray bits of hematite, some simply felt good in her hands.

Others looked wonderful when the sun hit them, so she had those lined up on slender shelves right against the windows for their best glittering and prism-casting effects.

One great example each of meteor-created moldavite and lightning-created fulgurite completed her personal collection.

She’d replaced the ugly window curtains with midnight blue blackout blinds first thing, and left them open most of the time. The only exception was when she had a rotten headache or she’d had a particularly challenging morning.

No matter what her day had been like, Steph closed and locked the classroom’s outer door when she retreated to her personal space in the lab. Mainly for privacy, because unless she had a need for darkness, she left the little closet’s entry curtain open.

In that ugly bit of cloth’s place, she’d hung a curtain printed with a deep-space telescope view full of every color, shape, and size of galaxy imaginable.

That way she could stare out at the spectacular ridge from inside her own peaceful and quiet shelter.

The first half of the day’s classes hadn’t been bad at all, so she settled into her mediation chair with the door open and the blinds raised out of the way. The morning’s thick fog had burned away, leaving a beautiful clear blue sky dotted with perfect cotton ball clouds.

A wonderful view as a background for either reading or scribbling a bit in her journal. She’d added the plain spiralbound notebook to the shelf a couple of weeks ago, curious what might happen if she finally took her therapist’s ongoing advice to make her own investigations of what went on inside her own head.

She took a long drink of hot ginger tea, steeped on her normally hidden hot plate. Then she let out her customary long, deep sigh, her mental signal that she was on her own time now. Student and school time would be back soon enough. She’d be ready to dive right back in.

Just as Steph picked up her ink pen, she heard a knock at her outer classroom door.

No students should be roaming around during class hours, and the faculty and staff knew how much she treasured the time to herself. The fact that she never spent it in the faculty lounge jammed in with other teachers made that pretty clear.

The knock rang out again, loud enough that the biology class next door or the chemistry class across the hall were going to hear it.

Steph closed her eyes for a second. Much as she treasured and fought for her privacy, especially about her years in Louisville, the school administration had a description of her ex-husband.

No possible way that could be him.

She brushed out the wrinkles in her forest-green pants and straightened her burgundy blouse as she walked, and automatically glanced around the classroom. Nothing out of place or in need of attention. A quick check of her frequently misbehaving curly red hair, and she opened the door.

The neutral expression she always cultivated when faced with the unknown (and especially the potentially unwanted unknown) took a mighty blow, but held. At least she hoped so.

Waiting outside the door was one of the most potent ghosts out of Stephanie Holfield’s past before Louisville. One she wasn’t at all sure she was ready to welcome back into her adult life.

Kim Mullins, looking almost exactly as she had all those years ago in these same hallways. Thick waves of brunette hair falling around her shoulders, neat blue jeans and black button-up shirt. Huge brown eyes lighting up as they met Steph’s, full red lips curving into a smile.

Oh no.

Steph wasn’t ready for this particular ghost. Not one little bit.

“May I help you?” she said, gripping the door hard so Kim wouldn’t see her hand shaking.

Kim’s brow wrinkled for a second, and Steph saw the signs of years passing all at once. Kim’s cheeks were more hollow, no longer holding the plumpness of youth. Lines marked her lovely eyes and around her mouth. That brow wrinkle seemed quite comfortable on her face, too.

“I...I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, and I obviously did. I feel silly but I have to ask. You are Steph Holfield, aren’t you? You went to school here, same as me?”

Steph gritted her teeth, torn between wanting to be honest and wanting time to regroup.

To decide if she was ready to reconnect with this part of her past.

“I am Steph Holfield, and I went to school here. I apologize, but I’m not that great with names and faces.”

Despite her reluctance, Steph’s heart sank at the way Kim blinked and drew back, clearly confused. That made perfect sense. She’d remember how well Steph remembered pretty much anything and everything she ever encountered. Whether she wanted to or not.

Including names, and faces.

“Okay, now I’m going to sound more awkward and weird than I feel, which isn’t easy. I’m Kim Mullins. We...well, we were pretty close for a while there in high school. A long time ago.”

A little smile crept out despite Steph’s firm advice against it.

“Now I remember a bit more. You were more into English than science, right?”

Kim’s smiled seemed pained, and Steph knew it wasn’t because of the science. It was more because of the stupid, fake question.

“I wasn’t bad at either one. Listen, I really am sorry to bother you. I was down here signing up for Career Day next week, and I thought I’d say hi. But maybe we can catch up another time.”

Kim turned to go. In one of those lightning-fast mood shifts Steph disliked so intensely in herself, she felt awful about making her old friend feel worse.

“Career Day?” she said. “What will you be talking about? What are you doing these days?”

“I’m a technical writer.” Kim turned back and crossed her arms. “Pretty much since college. Freelance for the last month or so, since I moved back here. HVAC and engineering firms before that.”

“Wow,” Steph said, her eyes widening. “You’re right, that’s not someone who’s no good at science. That’s exactly the kind of thing our students need to hear about, too.”

Kim’s tense features relaxed a little.

“Yeah, I thought so. I’ve never done anything like talking to a bunch of kids before, but I’m looking forward to it. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. Take care, Steph.”

And Kim was gone, walking along the hallway with the same graceful stride she’d had at seventeen.

All Steph could do was wish she could regain the confidence and certainty she’d had back then. She closed and locked the door again, and retreated into her little closet.

With the curtain closed and the black-out shades drawn this time.