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When Joanne had turned her eyes back towards Magdalene in surprise, she’d allowed herself a short bark or laughter. “Yes, I know, rather shocking, all things considered. But no, there are no hard feelings. Or rather, not anymore. Hence, this is what we are going to do about this wretched situation of yours...”
* * *
Magdalene shookher head back to the present and gripped the oaken desk in front of her. She really was going soft. What on earth was she doing? First the talk she’d had with Joanne on the damn cliff, and now this conversation with Sam.
Her grip tightened hard enough that her knuckles turned white, but the pain did nothing to lift the haze clouding her mind. A topic from their earlier conversation appeared like a lifeline, and she grabbed it.
“Yes, yes, you’re all welcome, I’m sure. But can’t you see that you seem to be fighting absolutely every single decision I propose? And I’m not even sure you understand why you’re doing it. Tell me why the Houses are as ‘essential’ as you and everyone else seem to think?”
Magdalene sat down, rolled her chair closer to the window, and resumed tickling the cat’s ear. Since she was acting so completely out of character, she figured she might as well go all the way.
Sam spoke, her voice measured, but there was emotion under the calm exterior, like deep waters ready to erupt into waves at any given moment.
As the sound washed over her, one word stood out.Belong.Sam spoke it with a closed-off expression, and Magdalene knew she had found her opening.
“Did you belong?” Even as she asked, Magdalene saw her question score the hit. Sam wrapped her arms around herself, and while she did not take a step back, it was clear she was shaken. Her mouth opened, but Magdalene had already smelled blood in the water. She was right about the damn Houses, and Sam was being stubborn because of that vaunted loyalty of hers, to brick, mortar, and antiquated foolishness.
“Your eyes are gray, Professor Threadneedle. How did you fit into whatever House they shoehorned you into? Sky Blue, I assume? Did you feel you belonged? And how about the girls with hazel eyes? And god forbid, girls with heterochromia?”
At Magdalene so blatantly going for the kill by referencing her own eyes and her own exclusion, Sam dropped her chin and looked away. The old wound opened up, seeping ichor. And although Magdalene wanted to pull the punch, she couldn’t quite make it painless. Still, the old practice was, from its inception, intended to discriminate.
“Here you are, defending Doctor Fenway’s presence at the school to me, defending the scholarships, arguing that the school should accept and include and innovate, yet you are standing up for an archaic structure that excludes, divides, and pits students against each other.”
A choked sob was Magdalene’s only answer. She wanted to reach out and wipe away that tears that escaped Sam’s attempts to keep them at bay.
“Did you know that, in the pursuit of the soccer cup just last year, there were fifteen violent incidents between members of the different Houses? Or that, during the lacrosse competitions, the girls from Sky Blue and Amber got into over twenty altercations off the field? Bullying, verbal abuse, hazing. Is this the unity Three Dragons has been promoting? House over school loyalty?”
Of course Sam was aware of most of these incidents. As a Chair she had signed off on quite a number of the resulting punishments herself. Magdalene had seen that paperwork.
She realized her hands were trembling when the cat, clearly disturbed by the agitation, jumped off the windowsill. His hiss at Sam as he exited the office made her want to high-five him.
When Sam finally spoke again, it was the absolute wrong thing to say, under any and all circumstances. “The Old Dragonettes will not permit this to happen.”
Magdalene tsked. If this was Sam’s last line of defense, it was an exceedingly poor one.
“Alden and Tullinger, Ohno and Rolffe, are the people who have to permit this to happen, Professor. They actually have the power to allow things. Believe me when I say I couldn’t care less about the thousands of women who stood idly by when the school was sinking lower and lower on the national chart of private schools. Did you know that Dragons went from number one in the Northeast to dead last in every single denominator, academics, sports, everything in less than ten years?”
At Sam’s weak nod, Magdalene lowered her tone, knowing that she had won the war now, and there was no need to overwhelm the bested.
“The only bright spots on the school’s horizon were the awards the faculty kept receiving and the recognition they kept getting from the state and national education boards. And in the past three years, by faculty I mean you. You have single-handedly kept the school in the good news column, papering over the cracks of incompetence. And yet you sit here and argue that some women who descend on the island once a year—to get boozy and rowdy and break chairs and kitchenware down at Rowena’s Pub—are the reason I should not do whatever I deem necessary to drag the school out of the quagmire it has sunk into? Do you seriously think they are going to be the ones to stop me from doing what’s right?”
Sam’s eyes narrowed in a way Magdalene didn’t entirely appreciate. As she drummed her fingers on the ancient desk, she’d come to recognize that something was being left unsaid, something was being filed away. The woman really had no poker face to save her life, yet she didn’t know what factoid Sam had latched onto now.
“I accept that some of the reasons behind your proposal are reasonable—”
“Some? How generous of you, Professor.” Magdalene could not erase the sarcasm from her tone even if she tried. But Sam, of the narrowed eyes and determined expression, was already beating retreat.
“We agree that we disagree on this for the moment, Headmistress. Could we perhaps revisit?” When Sam hurried from the office with an air of such complete and utter determination that she might as well be on an official mission, Magdalene sighed and listened to her receding footsteps for a moment. The sight of the empty pillow made her unexpectedly long for the rotund orange furball to be lounging there so she could pet the silky ears once more.
She shook her head at her own bit of fancy, then squared her shoulders. Below, she caught sight of Sam fishing something out of her pocket. A familiar, rather sizable bright keychain gleamed in the morning sun. It belonged on a rusty set of keys to the basement of Sky Blue dormitory. Sam must have grabbed them from the custodians on her way out. Cat ears would have to wait and so would everything else. Those old doors lead to even older corridors underground, and there had always been only one room they’d concealed in the bowels of Sky Blue. And these days, that little hidden room kept Magdalene’s secret.
11
OF DANK BASEMENTS & KNIGHTS IN GINGER ARMOR
She did not run after Sam. That would have been the highest of indignities. The stubborn set of Sam’s jaw earlier in her office told her everything Magdalene needed to know about the slightest possibility of stopping the infuriating woman. So it didn’t really matter whether she ran. Plus, the odds of Sam finding what she was certainly looking for right away were slim.
So Magdalene took her time. She made a call to check on the progress of the audit she had ordered on some of the procurements she had her suspicions about. Nothing egregious, just more creative accounting from Fenway. But Magdalene wouldn’t mind having proof in her pocket, just in case.
