Snyder loved the smell of his empty office in the morning. Smelled like… sanctuary.
Getting away from the poetic touchy-feely crap the English department tried to warp the kids' deviant little minds with, it smelled like percolating coffee and the freshly-sharpened pencils that were lined neatly between his telephone and notepad. He approved.
He poured himself a steaming cup – Janelle had tossed out all the decaf, thank God – and sipped it almost meditatively, settling into his big chair. This was his favourite part of the day. It was tranquil. Ordered.
His school was free of shouting, messy, running, shoving, noisy, bratty, troublemaking children. Call him conservative, but he just thought it would be a better world if children were grown in tanks until they were twenty-one.
The peace didn't last. It never did. The bell jangled, and he could nearly feel them swarming into his hallways. Bragging to each other about what a cool time they'd had and how stoked they'd got at some crack party the night before – a school night! Stashing god only knew what contraband into the lockers that some stupid law said he wasn't allowed to arbitrarily search. Cutting class to get to second base under the bleachers.
Snyder caught himself actually making airquotes as he mouthed the words. He cleared his throat and went to wash out his empty mug.
By the time he got back Janelle had been and gone, leaving only a faint, sickly afterscent of lavender perfume and a tidy pile of files on his desk, the note on top informing him that the janitor hadn't turned up for work. He tsked. That was the third in as many months. There should be some kind of budget allowance for schools directly over Hellmouths. And he wasn't the only one to think so, he knew it. He'd had some bitterly commiserating phone discussions with Principal Buckmeiler in Ohio about the constant extra demands on their time. The insurance claims. The employment forms that had to be filled out in quadruplicate, that extra copy going straight to the Mayor.
His day's paperwork was all in the files. He flipped through the papers, the colour-coded paperclips telling him instantly which were to do with recently ex-students, which were about members of faculty, and which were special business. Those were always flagged in white, and meant Mayor Wilkins had something special that needed done. There were no white clips today, and he laid the others into neat piles. He'd deal with hiring a new janitor first.
But before that, he had to take a walk in his domain.
"Spit out that gum. In the trash, Martinez. You! Get that tuba out of the hallway, there are pedestrians coming through here. Mr. Mears, I'm sure you have a hall pass?"
He prowled past music rooms and science labs, master and king of all he surveyed, and by the time he was breathing in the fresh air of the quad (a relief after the stale and sweaty gym) he was both deeply satisfied and working up a good dose of outrage. Most of the students scurried like rodents when they saw him coming, as was his proper due as a high school principal. That was the satisfying part. But the state of the school left much to be desired. There seemed to be plants everywhere out here, obscuring parts of the path, even growing between the cracks in the stairs.
They hadn't been there when he left on Friday afternoon.
He glared around at the plantlife as if he could will it into wilting, and then he turned to go back inside.
Behind him, there was a rustle of leaves. Nonchalantly as he could, he peeked back over his shoulder. Nothing there but a patch of yellow flowers. A moment before, there had only been grass.
Snyder narrowed his eyes.
Botany, the resume said. Carlo, their amazing disappearing janitor, had a bachelor's degree in it.
"Plants," Snyder sneered, dropping the file back onto his secretary's desk. "Going to school to learn about plants."
Janelle gave him a nervous smile. She was a plump, fluffy woman who reminded him a lot of his cousin Doris, the social worker.
"He did know a lot about flowers," she said. There was a small, glass vase on her desk, filled with a posy of yellow and pink blooms. She toyed with one of the petals, a wistful note coming into her voice. "He knew all the meanings. These are for a working relationship that possibly grows, over time, to something deeper…"
"Hallmark crap," he said, completely failing to notice the meaningful way she'd been staring up at him, or how she sagged in disappointment. "He's done something. That tree-hugging plantnik's turning my high school into a greenhouse."
"Maybe you should ask that nice librarian what he thinks," Janelle suggested, picking up her pen and tidying the papers she'd been working on. Her tone was noticeably cooler than only moments before. Women, he thought. They were such inexplicable creatures. But the insinuation that he might need help from Rupert Giles wounded him.
"This is my school," he said, tapping his chest for emphasis. "I'll deal with any problems here." Cue his exit, except he got ten feet from the office and thought of something else. "We don't need the English," he told her, poking his head back through the door. "We said sayonara to the limeys in 1773, Janelle. You think about that."
The basement was strictly off-limits to students, so he wasn't at all surprised that the textbook he found, spine cracked and pages face down on the ground, had Buffy Summers' name on the inside. He tucked it into his pocket and shone the flashlight a little higher. The regular lights didn't seem to work down here. Maybe if Carlo spent a little more time worrying about those kinds of bulbs…
The beam fell on something orange. He walked over, realizing when his feet started to crunch what he was standing on. Terracotta plant pots, all smashed.
He looked around, expecting to see some kind of artificial lighting set-up (running from the school's electricity supply, of course, was there anyone not out to leech him dry?) but there was no machinery. Not even any dead plants. Just the pots, and dark brown soil.
Something creaked, off in the corner, and he swung the light around. There was nothing there, but he'd really seen enough. He'd just go back up to the school, maybe stop by the library to return Summers' book…
He'd carried out the first part of his plan when a tide of children surged down the hallway at him.
It was like something from a deep, dark nightmare.
"Stop right this second!" he roared over the tumult of voices, and when that didn't get him any less trampled he shoved his way through the crowd and singled one of them out. "You! Tucker Wells."
The boy stopped, glancing uncertainly around. "That's my brother, sir, I'm Andrew, I'm a junior?"
"Whatever." He made it through the throng, tugging the Wells boy by the arm. They ended up relatively unscathed on the other side, but had to flatten against the wall of the chemistry lab till the stampede was past. "What's happening? Gangs? Drugs?"
Wells' eyes widened. "Um. Well… we were playing dodgeball, and my team was getting their asses kicked…"
Without actually threatening the child – damn bleeding heart liberals had made that illegal – he tried to give the impression that he could do some ass-kicking himself if a point wasn't reached soon.
"And then the gym went Jumanji," he finished quickly.
Hmm. Obviously some new hip street lingo.
"Something happened with plants," he guessed.
The boy nodded enthusiastically. "A tree exploded right through the floor, like, right where Coach was standing. It was cool." He frowned. "And then some of the seniors ran in. And the librarian, and some other guy in a suit who I think might be another librarian. And a blonde girl told us we should run."
"Buffy Summers," he said grimly.
"I don't know her name. She had shiny hair."
"Get to your next class," he ordered. "Everything's under control."
Wells scampered gratefully away.
Snyder turned towards the closed doors of the gym, squaring his shoulders. The floor was vibrating beneath his feet. There was a tree in his gymnasium. He didn't want a tree in his school's gym. The health and safety regulations were almost definitely against it.
He was going to take this thing down.
Janelle brought him a cup of milky coffee and he drained it in a gulp. It was decaf, but he didn't complain. He was shaking enough already.
"Are you sure you're all right?" the English guy – the one who wasn't Giles – asked.
His head beginning to clear a little, Snyder looked him up and down. He looked like Giles; a younger, darker-haired version of Giles, yes, but he had the glasses and the stiff upper Britishness. He sounded like Giles. But he wasn't Giles.
"I don't remember hiring you," he said.
"Mr. Wyndam-Pryce is a… colleague of mine. From England," the real Giles said.
Snyder was pulled together enough to spot the telltale pause, and the warning look Giles shot the other man. So, that was it? Not that he hadn't suspected. The English thing, that was the giveaway. For shame, he thought, the sudden annoyance making him feel better than a hundred cups of coffee could. Not that he was prejudiced. He was as open-minded as the next red-blooded American male, but for Giles to sneak his… his special friend into his workplace while the children were there…
"I don't want you in my school again," he told Wyndam-Pryce, and was deeply confused when Giles smirked, covering it quickly.
"Mr. Snyder, I really must…"
"I'm sure this can be dealt with later," Giles said.
"Wesley's on suspension and I found my Math book," Buffy said, sweeping it off the floor. "Nifty."
The book must have dropped while that thing was tossing him in the air like a majorette's baton. Snyder glared at her from above his cup. Somehow, some way, this was all her fault.
"Get this mess cleaned up," he snapped, rising from the bench, the emergency blanket that someone – Janelle? – had draped around him falling to the floor. His secretary picked it up and folded it over her arm as she trotted after him.
"Mr. Snyder, are you really all right? Maybe Mr. Giles's friend was right about taking you to the hospital."
"I'm fine," he said impatiently. He hated people making a fuss. "Everyone in detention today can spend the hour getting those dead weeds out of the gym."
"Yes, Mr. Snyder."
"And put Summers, Harris and Rosenberg on the detention list."
"Yes, Mr. Snyder."
He paused at the doorway of his office, remembering his predecessor. Eaten at his own desk. He'd come close to a similar fate today. He could still feel the thick vines wrapped around him, tugging him towards that gaping green maw.
Why him? He wasn't even a vegetarian.
He took in a deep, deep breath, and released it. The worst thing to do would be to make a big thing about this. It was a hazard of the job, that was all, like having his car TPed, or exorcising his office every third Tuesday just in case there were any evil spirits around.
"Nothing," he said decisively, "is going to eat me."
"Yes, Mr. Snyder," Janelle said, a bit uncertainly.
The flowers were still in the vase on her desk. He thought about ripping them out, tossing them to the ground, and jumping on them. He should. They were just puny flowers.
He offered them a weak, insincere smile and bolted into the safety of his office.
Getting away from the poetic touchy-feely crap the English department tried to warp the kids' deviant little minds with, it smelled like percolating coffee and the freshly-sharpened pencils that were lined neatly between his telephone and notepad. He approved.
He poured himself a steaming cup – Janelle had tossed out all the decaf, thank God – and sipped it almost meditatively, settling into his big chair. This was his favourite part of the day. It was tranquil. Ordered.
His school was free of shouting, messy, running, shoving, noisy, bratty, troublemaking children. Call him conservative, but he just thought it would be a better world if children were grown in tanks until they were twenty-one.
The peace didn't last. It never did. The bell jangled, and he could nearly feel them swarming into his hallways. Bragging to each other about what a cool time they'd had and how stoked they'd got at some crack party the night before – a school night! Stashing god only knew what contraband into the lockers that some stupid law said he wasn't allowed to arbitrarily search. Cutting class to get to second base under the bleachers.
Snyder caught himself actually making airquotes as he mouthed the words. He cleared his throat and went to wash out his empty mug.
By the time he got back Janelle had been and gone, leaving only a faint, sickly afterscent of lavender perfume and a tidy pile of files on his desk, the note on top informing him that the janitor hadn't turned up for work. He tsked. That was the third in as many months. There should be some kind of budget allowance for schools directly over Hellmouths. And he wasn't the only one to think so, he knew it. He'd had some bitterly commiserating phone discussions with Principal Buckmeiler in Ohio about the constant extra demands on their time. The insurance claims. The employment forms that had to be filled out in quadruplicate, that extra copy going straight to the Mayor.
His day's paperwork was all in the files. He flipped through the papers, the colour-coded paperclips telling him instantly which were to do with recently ex-students, which were about members of faculty, and which were special business. Those were always flagged in white, and meant Mayor Wilkins had something special that needed done. There were no white clips today, and he laid the others into neat piles. He'd deal with hiring a new janitor first.
But before that, he had to take a walk in his domain.
"Spit out that gum. In the trash, Martinez. You! Get that tuba out of the hallway, there are pedestrians coming through here. Mr. Mears, I'm sure you have a hall pass?"
He prowled past music rooms and science labs, master and king of all he surveyed, and by the time he was breathing in the fresh air of the quad (a relief after the stale and sweaty gym) he was both deeply satisfied and working up a good dose of outrage. Most of the students scurried like rodents when they saw him coming, as was his proper due as a high school principal. That was the satisfying part. But the state of the school left much to be desired. There seemed to be plants everywhere out here, obscuring parts of the path, even growing between the cracks in the stairs.
They hadn't been there when he left on Friday afternoon.
He glared around at the plantlife as if he could will it into wilting, and then he turned to go back inside.
Behind him, there was a rustle of leaves. Nonchalantly as he could, he peeked back over his shoulder. Nothing there but a patch of yellow flowers. A moment before, there had only been grass.
Snyder narrowed his eyes.
Botany, the resume said. Carlo, their amazing disappearing janitor, had a bachelor's degree in it.
"Plants," Snyder sneered, dropping the file back onto his secretary's desk. "Going to school to learn about plants."
Janelle gave him a nervous smile. She was a plump, fluffy woman who reminded him a lot of his cousin Doris, the social worker.
"He did know a lot about flowers," she said. There was a small, glass vase on her desk, filled with a posy of yellow and pink blooms. She toyed with one of the petals, a wistful note coming into her voice. "He knew all the meanings. These are for a working relationship that possibly grows, over time, to something deeper…"
"Hallmark crap," he said, completely failing to notice the meaningful way she'd been staring up at him, or how she sagged in disappointment. "He's done something. That tree-hugging plantnik's turning my high school into a greenhouse."
"Maybe you should ask that nice librarian what he thinks," Janelle suggested, picking up her pen and tidying the papers she'd been working on. Her tone was noticeably cooler than only moments before. Women, he thought. They were such inexplicable creatures. But the insinuation that he might need help from Rupert Giles wounded him.
"This is my school," he said, tapping his chest for emphasis. "I'll deal with any problems here." Cue his exit, except he got ten feet from the office and thought of something else. "We don't need the English," he told her, poking his head back through the door. "We said sayonara to the limeys in 1773, Janelle. You think about that."
The basement was strictly off-limits to students, so he wasn't at all surprised that the textbook he found, spine cracked and pages face down on the ground, had Buffy Summers' name on the inside. He tucked it into his pocket and shone the flashlight a little higher. The regular lights didn't seem to work down here. Maybe if Carlo spent a little more time worrying about those kinds of bulbs…
The beam fell on something orange. He walked over, realizing when his feet started to crunch what he was standing on. Terracotta plant pots, all smashed.
He looked around, expecting to see some kind of artificial lighting set-up (running from the school's electricity supply, of course, was there anyone not out to leech him dry?) but there was no machinery. Not even any dead plants. Just the pots, and dark brown soil.
Something creaked, off in the corner, and he swung the light around. There was nothing there, but he'd really seen enough. He'd just go back up to the school, maybe stop by the library to return Summers' book…
He'd carried out the first part of his plan when a tide of children surged down the hallway at him.
It was like something from a deep, dark nightmare.
"Stop right this second!" he roared over the tumult of voices, and when that didn't get him any less trampled he shoved his way through the crowd and singled one of them out. "You! Tucker Wells."
The boy stopped, glancing uncertainly around. "That's my brother, sir, I'm Andrew, I'm a junior?"
"Whatever." He made it through the throng, tugging the Wells boy by the arm. They ended up relatively unscathed on the other side, but had to flatten against the wall of the chemistry lab till the stampede was past. "What's happening? Gangs? Drugs?"
Wells' eyes widened. "Um. Well… we were playing dodgeball, and my team was getting their asses kicked…"
Without actually threatening the child – damn bleeding heart liberals had made that illegal – he tried to give the impression that he could do some ass-kicking himself if a point wasn't reached soon.
"And then the gym went Jumanji," he finished quickly.
Hmm. Obviously some new hip street lingo.
"Something happened with plants," he guessed.
The boy nodded enthusiastically. "A tree exploded right through the floor, like, right where Coach was standing. It was cool." He frowned. "And then some of the seniors ran in. And the librarian, and some other guy in a suit who I think might be another librarian. And a blonde girl told us we should run."
"Buffy Summers," he said grimly.
"I don't know her name. She had shiny hair."
"Get to your next class," he ordered. "Everything's under control."
Wells scampered gratefully away.
Snyder turned towards the closed doors of the gym, squaring his shoulders. The floor was vibrating beneath his feet. There was a tree in his gymnasium. He didn't want a tree in his school's gym. The health and safety regulations were almost definitely against it.
He was going to take this thing down.
Janelle brought him a cup of milky coffee and he drained it in a gulp. It was decaf, but he didn't complain. He was shaking enough already.
"Are you sure you're all right?" the English guy – the one who wasn't Giles – asked.
His head beginning to clear a little, Snyder looked him up and down. He looked like Giles; a younger, darker-haired version of Giles, yes, but he had the glasses and the stiff upper Britishness. He sounded like Giles. But he wasn't Giles.
"I don't remember hiring you," he said.
"Mr. Wyndam-Pryce is a… colleague of mine. From England," the real Giles said.
Snyder was pulled together enough to spot the telltale pause, and the warning look Giles shot the other man. So, that was it? Not that he hadn't suspected. The English thing, that was the giveaway. For shame, he thought, the sudden annoyance making him feel better than a hundred cups of coffee could. Not that he was prejudiced. He was as open-minded as the next red-blooded American male, but for Giles to sneak his… his special friend into his workplace while the children were there…
"I don't want you in my school again," he told Wyndam-Pryce, and was deeply confused when Giles smirked, covering it quickly.
"Mr. Snyder, I really must…"
"I'm sure this can be dealt with later," Giles said.
"Wesley's on suspension and I found my Math book," Buffy said, sweeping it off the floor. "Nifty."
The book must have dropped while that thing was tossing him in the air like a majorette's baton. Snyder glared at her from above his cup. Somehow, some way, this was all her fault.
"Get this mess cleaned up," he snapped, rising from the bench, the emergency blanket that someone – Janelle? – had draped around him falling to the floor. His secretary picked it up and folded it over her arm as she trotted after him.
"Mr. Snyder, are you really all right? Maybe Mr. Giles's friend was right about taking you to the hospital."
"I'm fine," he said impatiently. He hated people making a fuss. "Everyone in detention today can spend the hour getting those dead weeds out of the gym."
"Yes, Mr. Snyder."
"And put Summers, Harris and Rosenberg on the detention list."
"Yes, Mr. Snyder."
He paused at the doorway of his office, remembering his predecessor. Eaten at his own desk. He'd come close to a similar fate today. He could still feel the thick vines wrapped around him, tugging him towards that gaping green maw.
Why him? He wasn't even a vegetarian.
He took in a deep, deep breath, and released it. The worst thing to do would be to make a big thing about this. It was a hazard of the job, that was all, like having his car TPed, or exorcising his office every third Tuesday just in case there were any evil spirits around.
"Nothing," he said decisively, "is going to eat me."
"Yes, Mr. Snyder," Janelle said, a bit uncertainly.
The flowers were still in the vase on her desk. He thought about ripping them out, tossing them to the ground, and jumping on them. He should. They were just puny flowers.
He offered them a weak, insincere smile and bolted into the safety of his office.