I found the file in my office at lunchtime today. Someone must have sneaked it in there while I went out to the teachers' lounge to make a cup of coffee to go with my lunch. I bring sandwiches and eat in my office on my own, these days, because I don't want to face the wave of hatred that surges around me in either the cafeteria or the lounge.
It's like the old joke: 'Mommy, why do I have to go to school? I hate school, I don't have any friends there, the kids hate me, the teachers hate me, even the janitor hates me.' - 'I know, cookie, but you have to go to school – you're the principal.'
When I first heard that joke, I was still in elementary school – a tiny school where the principal was also the janitor – and I was a happy little girl who couldn't imagine hating the principal, or my teachers, or school. I didn't know how true the joke could be. Now, the fact that there is even one person willing to send me an anonymous message saying, 'I DONT THINK YOU ARE THE REAL ENEMY' is almost enough to make me cry.
The strips of black labelmaker tape, with their stamped white letters like raised scars, cover the front piece of paper. They almost look as if they are about to start scrolling up and disappear from view, like the opening crawl of a Star Wars movie. I can remember when computer displays looked like this: no choice of font or size, just white letters on a dark background. And I remember playing with a labelmaker, stamping the words 'PROPERTY OF LOUGENE RABBSKI' to stick to everything I owned. Except the secret diaries labelled 'JOURNAL OF PRINCESS LULU'.
When I'm agitated, I've always found that doing something with my hands calms me down. Even now – especially now, with the stress of the past year – I don't think I'd cope if it wasn't for the Rubik's cube on my desk. Does that make me a hypocrite for banning pupils from playing with origami figures in class? Maybe. But they aren't supposed to be playing with toys when they're in a lesson to learn. And at least my Rubik's cube doesn't have a personality and express opinions.
Even before reading them, I could guess what this bundle of papers would be. More petitioning from students about abandoning the test-prep videos. A message from an anonymous student – well, probably a student – calling themself 'Princess Labelmaker'. Maybe Amy Youmans? She's been pestering me about it every time I've seen her. But then, so have the original troublemaker team of Thomas Lomax, Kellen Campbell and Harvey Cunningham.
Is it even a student? The staff hate these videos just as much as the students do, and even if they have a better understanding of why I needed to take drastic action to bring the school's test scores up, most of them seem to hate me as much of the students do. I don't think Gorman hates me exactly, but he's pretty much given up talking to me, even to argue with me. Most of the other teachers just avoid me. They may not actually draw cartoons of me shooting lightning bolts from my fingers, but conversations fall silent whenever I come into the teachers' lounge. If I even want to overhear any gossip, I have to pretend to be immersed in paperwork or listening to a motivational CD on headphones.
So, the question is not 'Who wants me to drop the Funtime videos?' but 'Who would trust me enough to send me a file of personal writings from students, covered in impassioned pleas like "HELP US, PRINCIPAL RABBSKI . . . YOU ARE OUR ONLY HOPE . . ."?' And who, if they wanted to send anonymous messages to me, would use anything as retro as a labelmaker? Would the children of Generation Z even know what a labelmaker is, let alone use one, when they can easily customise a piece of text to be printed in Comic Sans font, in rainbow colours, and shaped into a spiral? Then again, the craze for origami that has been sweeping the school like headlice in the past year shows that children haven't lost interest in making things with their hands.
Perhaps it was Gorman? We used to get on well, until the start of this semester. We used to text each other outside work, and email each other links to webcomics. We were friends. I thought we were even becoming more than friends. And he is interested in art. Obviously, he knows I know that he took modules in art at college, because it's on his resumé, but (as far as I know) he doesn't know I know that he got sufficiently caught up in the origami fad to make his very own origami Jabba the Hutt puppet. So perhaps he made the little Princess Leia finger-puppet that fell out of the file when I opened it?
One thing is for certain. The rebel codenamed 'Princess Labelmaker' may believe that I am trustworthy, but the tiny paper figure of Leia Origami doesn't. Her black Sharpie eyes glare up at me from my desk, like an accusing ghost of my younger self.
You're me? she seems to demand. You are who Princess Lulu grew up to be?
'I haven't gone by that name for a long time,' I tell her (not out loud, of course).
No. That's impossible. Princess Lulu would never become a – thing like you!
If paper could spit, she would spit at me.