On Tuesday Gail's back at her usual lunch table. And because she only pretends to be oblivious to other people and their feelings, she notices the little hitch of disappointment in Holly when the other woman comes in and sees that things were back to normal.
And for some reason, the other woman's response matters.
So Gail finds herself doing something she usually tries to avoid out of a sense of self-preservation.
She reaches out.
"Lunchbox," Gail says, acknowledging the other woman with in a serious tone, "lunch at mine today?" She gestures with her mug, inviting the brunette to join her.
"Hey," Holly responds, giving her a wide smile, "I see the bullies gave you back your table."
Gail takes a sip of her coffee to hide her smile. "They're young, they scare easily."
Holly's lunch today looks nauseatingly healthy, all greens and vegetables. Gail almost feels sorry for her as she nibbles on the crust of another slice of leftover pizza.
"Will they live to tell the tale," Holly asks as she drizzles some sort of dressing over her salad, "or will you be needing a quick course in 'destroying evidence with kitchen cleaners 101?'"
Gail starts to laugh. This woman is ridiculous.
"I let them off with a warning," she answers, "this time." The last words are said menacingly, and Gail waggles her eyebrows.
Holly snorts with laughter and then spears another forkful of lettuce and shredded carrot.
They sit mostly in silence, but together, until Holly notices that Gail's only lunch is her cold slice of pizza.
"Do you want some," she asks, holding out her salad. "It's pretty big, I could grab another fork."
Gail looks at the science teacher as if she's suddenly grown another head.
"I couldn't," she says to Holly, "and by 'I couldn't' I mean I literally couldn't. I've spent years building up antibodies against vegetables. That many at once would probably kill me. Plus, I just saw you eat a tomato from there and I am, like, deathly allergic to the little red hellbeasts."
"Oh," Holly says, "sorry."
Gail grins at her. "You don't have to be sorry if you have some more of those cookies …" she says suggestively.
Rolling her eyes, Holly grabs a little snack bag of homemade cookies out of her lunchbox. She starts to hand them over but then reconsiders, opening the bag to count out half for herself first before handing the rest over to the blonde with a pointed look.
It takes Gail a few minutes to get her laughter under control.
The rest of the week passes in much the same way. Gail doesn't even think twice about waving Holly over to join her at lunch after the first day. Somehow Holly doesn't seem to intrude on her personal space as much as everyone else in the world does; she breaks right through Gail's self-imposed bubble without even trying.
Friday is Activity Day, and Gail and all the other faculty advisors, plus however many of their students have study-hall after lunch, are in the big gymnasium setting up booths featuring information about the various academic, social, intra-mural sport, and other miscellaneous student groups the kids can join. Gail advises Language Club, which means that every other Friday afternoon she oversees the 15 or so student members in some sort of activity that has something to do with languages. And she's in charge of the Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin honor societies and AP prep groups. Those she inherited just last year when the department head retired. The increased workload wasn't something she was looking forward to, but the salary bump would help fund her next trip to Europe, so it almost equaled out.
She's pinning up photos from last year's induction ceremonies, and waiting for her student assistant to arrive, when she catches sight of Holly across the big room. The brunette is carrying a box full of sciency-looking stuff and heading to an open booth right next to—Gail drops what she's doing and makes a beeline for Henry, the gym teacher coordinating the set-up.
"Harry, Harry" she whispers fiercely, poking his bicep to get his attention.
"Madame Peck, to what do I owe the pleasure of your prescenc—ow, that one actually hurt," he exclaims.
"Good. I need a favor."
Henry is a big guy, and he towers over Gail. The big, hat-haired oaf is one of the few people she actually likes at this school, and they've spent more than a few nights drowning their sorrows together over the past few months. He's probably the closest thing she has to a friend at the moment.
Though, she thinks to herself as he pats her on the head with his gargantuan paw, that could change quickly.
"And what do we say when we need something, Gail," he says patronizingly, "we use our words and we say 'Please.'"
Her glare doesn't faze him in the least.
"Do you know the new chemistry teacher?"
He nods and scans the room, "Yep, she's got O'Hare's old spot right next to … oh."
"Exactly, oh," she says back.
Henry looks back at Holly, a little confused.
"Wait," he says, "I don't get it. What does it matter that she's next to Joel. I made sure you weren't near him or Gemma, but that's all."
"She's my friend," Gail responds. "I mean, I think she is, maybe. She's been giving me cookies, and hey," she looks up at him and pokes him again, "we're friends, how come you've never brought me cookies?"
"Cookies are a two-way street, Gail," he says back to her, "now what's the deal, why can't she be next to Joel?"
Gail looks away before answering.
"She doesn't know about the whole thing last year and I'd rather keep it that way for right now. I don't need another person judging me, or worse, pitying me."
Henry's a good guy, so he only keeps her waiting for a few seconds before scratching his nose and agreeing to move Holly to one of Gail's booths; she'll just have to combine Language Club and the rest onto one table this year.
"But," Henry says, "on one condition."
"Harry," Gail teases him, "we've been through this. I'm not your type. I'm flattered, but—"
"You've got to come out to drinks with us all again. I get why you stopped for a while, but you can't avoid us all forever. And besides," he says, anticipating her protest, "Joel doesn't ever come anymore, so you can't use that as an excuse."
"Joel stopped going to the bar with you and the rest of the coaches?" This is the first that Gail's heard of that; but, then, she's mostly been trying to pretend that Joel doesn't exist. And, to be honest, doing an incredible job of it for working in the same school.
"It may have been suggested that as he is no longer a coach he wasn't entirely welcome anymore," Henry says nonchalantly.
"You big oaf," she says to him, "you didn't have to do that."
He looks down at her, "Of course I did, you deserved better than what happened. Besides," he says with a smile, "you've got better legs."
"Damn straight, I do," she laughs, and then returns to her tables to rearrange things.
A few minutes later Henry is leading Holly over, and carrying her box of stuff. He puts it down and then looks at Gail.
"About our arrangement," he asks.
"Soon," she responds. "Maybe not this weekend, but soon."
Holly gives her a strange little look as Henry walks away, but then just says hello and starts to put together her display.
Gail looks at the banner the older woman is stringing around the table.
"Chemistry club," she asks with a grin.
"Yep, when I got hired I tried to get them to change the name to Future Anarchists of America but they shot the idea down pretty quickly." Holly gives her that wide smile again, and Gail can feel herself grinning in return.
"Nice," she says, "I just hope your nerd-booth can hold its own against my paradigm-reciting wunderkinds here at Language Club."
Holly laughs. "Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something to draw them in," she says.
Gail's student assistant arrives then—a skinny sophomore named Donnie—and two girls shortly follow and start to help Holly.
Soon the gym is full of students roaming everywhere, and Gail really can't hear anything over their general buzz. She's sitting on the bleachers, pretending to supervise her rather boring booth. In reality she's staring across the gym at the table she'd had Holly vacate. So, when someone taps her on the shoulder and hands her a bag of popcorn from the drama table, she's taken by surprise.
"Thought you could use this," Holly says as she settles onto the bleachers next to Gail.
"You keep bringing me food and you'll never get rid of me," Gail says in reply before taking a handful.
Holly gives a quiet laugh. "That's what my mom said about this stray cat I used to sneak bowls of milk to back when I was a kid. It was this terrible old thing, all scratched and scarred. I don't think it had ever been in a house, much less lived in one. I spent a summer trying to domesticate it. I would leave food out for it in the morning and then hide on the porch and just wait for it to come out of the bushes. I thought eventually it would learn to trust me and I'd finally have the cat my parents wouldn't let me get. I even had a collar ready and everything."
Gail looks confused for a moment, and then gives the brunette one of her best glares. "Why are you telling me all this," she asks.
"No reason," Holly says, "just letting you know that you aren't the first I've tried to befriend through food."
"Yeah," Gail's tone is dry but amused, "and how'd that work out for you with the cat?"
"Not so great, actually. He was old and too smart to let some eight-year-old girl get the better of him. He'd been the bane of the neighborhood forever, and he knew not to trust anyone. I'm sure he had plenty of experience dodging the local boys and such. Anyway, he'd stalk that bowl of food I put out for him—my mom said milk wasn't good for him so I bought a couple of cans of cat food at the gas station down the street—and somehow scarf it all down before I could get close enough to even try and pet him. Eventually I got tired of trying and gave up."
Gail laughs, and crumples the empty bag in her hands.
"Looks like you figured out how to draw in a crowd," she says, nodding toward down to where two of Holly's be-goggled AP Chem students were doing some sort of magic trick that involved soaking dollar bills in something and then lighting them on fire, and letting the flame burn down and out before giving a slightly soggy but intact bill back to the audience member. A younger student stood to the side with a fire extinguisher, just in case. A fourth one was changing a glass of water into a red liquid and then back into water just by blowing into the glass with a straw.
Looking at her table, where Donnie sits talking with a friend in what better not be English if he knows what's good for him, Gail feels a little bad. At least last year she'd had music playing.
"Magic and science," Holly says, standing and offering Gail a hand up, "are not always easily differentiated."
Much later, as they're walking back towards their rooms with the remains of their booths in their arms, Holly turns to her.
"I get the feeling that you don't like many of the people here," she says.
"Oh, really," Gail raises a brow, "and why would you say that?"
"I just spent two hours in the gym listening to you point out the people you hate," Holly responds.
Gail stops in the hallway. It's been a long day.
"It's not that I don't like them," she says to the brunette. "Okay, that's not true, you're right, I don't like a lot of them. We work at this big expensive private school and so a lot of the kids we get in our classrooms have trust funds and credit cards and had better portfolios in kindergarten than I'll ever have. There's a lot of unjustified arrogance and way too much entitlement. A lot of the kids are jerks—they can't help it, they've been raised that way, but they're still jerks. And a lot of the teachers are the same way."
This time Holly raises an eyebrow.
"I like some of them though," Gail says in her defense, "the scholarship kids are usually pretty good people. Kids like Donnie, too, who have some idea of the fact that the world doesn't revolve entirely around themselves. And as far as the faculty goes I like Henry and some of his people. Like the basketball staff. I'm very fond of the basketball staff. We go out sometimes on the weekend."
Gail realizes she's babbled, but it seems important to her to get Holly to realize she doesn't hate everybody. Just some people.
"Well," Holly says with a cheerful smile, "I guess it's a good thing I'm on the basketball staff then."
That takes Gail by surprise. "Yeah, who are you coaching?"
"Girls JV, I guess the other guy stepped down or something. His wife's pregnant, that what they told me at the interview."
Gail's face falls and she doesn't say anything for a moment.
"Yeah, Joel Carter. His wife Gemma is due sometime near the end of the season. She teaches some of the business classes."
Holly must sense that something is off, because she shifts the box in her arms and takes a step closer.
"Hey," she says, "everything okay?"
Gail frowns and then looks up.
"Holly, I'm like a cat," she says.
"What," Holly asks, unsure of what the blonde means.
"I'm like the cat in your story. I'm mean and I'm not good with people. And whenever someone comes around who's nice to me for a little bit, I basically stalk whatever they're holding out but never let them get too close. And eventually they stop trying. They get tired of it and give up. You should know that, I might as well warn you now so you can stop putting out food and waiting for me to make a move for it."
"Okay," Holly says, drawing out the word slowly as she gathers her thoughts.
When she starts to speak, her voice is kind and gentle. "Gail, that was just a story from my childhood. I was just making a joke about feeding strays. It wasn't a metaphor about you or anything. You're not that old ugly cat."
"You don't think so," Gail asks, quirking her mouth.
"Not at all," Holly says. "Now, if there's an animal from my childhood that you do resemble, I'd have to say it's the tortoise I won at the fair back in third grade."
Gail looks unimpressed.
"A turtle," she says.
"A tortoise."
"I'm like a turtle, really?"
Holly laughs. "Absolutely," she says, "small, goes at his own pace, carries his home on his back, squishy on the inside. You're very tortoise."
"And you're very weird," Gail says back with a laugh.
Holly starts down the hallway toward her classroom before turning back to call out.
"Hey, by the way, you should definitely come out to drink with us coaches sometime soon. This weekend?"
Gail shakes her head, "Can't. Maybe next."
"I'm going to hold you to that, Gail Peck," Holly says before disappearing around the corner.
