17. “Royalty” - Egzod Maestro Chives #3
“I’m so sorry. The air conditioner’s broken.” Mrs. Humphrey gestures to the unit in the window. “They were meant to fix it last summer but . . . well, you can see they didn’t.” Her laugh is tinged with resignation.
“The school doesn’t have a central unit?” I ask. Preston and Davies must be sweltering in their jackets as they stand against the wall.
“Oh, no. The building’s too old for that, and it would cost too much to put one in.” She scoots around the table to break up a fight between two girls who both want the same pink crayon.
I move over to where the men are waiting. “Please make a note,” I say to Preston. “There has to be something we can do to help.”
He nods his agreement.
Mrs. Humphrey smiles at me from across the room as I move to rejoin her. “What would you say the biggest needs here at Drayton are?” I ask.
She bites her bottom lip and scans the room. The compassion in her eyes leaks out and touches every single child she looks at. “Right now I would say funding for our food programs.”
“Food programs?”
“For children who don’t get enough to eat at home. We provide breakfast here at school and stick a few things in their bags for dinner.”
I blink, searching for appropriate words. “That’s incredibly sad. How is it currently being provided if the funds aren’t there?”
She gives me an embarrassed smile. “The teachers have been pooling their money together to help the neediest ones. It’s not much, but we can’t send them home with empty tummies.”
A crack like the ones in the concrete steps out front splinters across my heart. One thing is certain: I may have come here with the intention of boosting my own reputation, but I will not leave without doing everything in my power to help these children.
“That’s noble of you,” I say. Of course I can’t promise her anything because we have to keep the giving anonymous. If we didn’t, we’d be completely inundated with requests. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn a blind eye to the needs here.
The kids in front of us are scribbling away, big, bold streaks of every color of the rainbow splashed across their pages.
“I guess they haven’t had the lesson on staying inside the lines yet,” I say with a light chuckle.
Mrs. Humphrey beams over the head of the little boy in front of her. “That lesson isn’t in the curriculum. We don’t believe in controlling their creativity.”
I look for the joke on her face, but it holds nothing but sincerity. “Then how do they learn to become artists?”
“Oh.” She laughs, a deep, husky one this time. “We don’t need to worry about that. Let me show you something.”
She leads me over to the windows along the back wall. “There.” She points outside. I stoop to look beneath the half-pulled blinds.
The school is a square-shaped brick compound.
In the center is a large playground, similar to the quadrangle at the palace.
On all four walls surrounding it is the biggest mural I’ve ever seen.
It spans the entire perimeter of the quad and reaches to the top of the first-floor classrooms. The pictures are detailed and clearly drawn by multiple artists.
There are wild animals, people of every size and race, mountains, lakes, and other images too small for me to make out.
“It’s amazing,” I say. “Who painted it?”
Mrs. Humphrey looks back at her students, still hunched over their drawings at the table. “Students from the upper years. Many of them sat at these very tables and colored to their heart’s content. Every year, several of them add more to it.”
I can’t stop staring out the window at the wild and beautiful art in front of me. “It’s so . . . good.”
“It always turns out more beautiful when we let them go.”
When I retire to our suite that evening, I want to tell Henry about Samantha and the Drayton school. We used to share things like that with each other all the time, but I can’t remember when I last talked to him about something I was passionate about.
He’s sitting in the living room when I come in. The television is turned to the news, and he doesn’t look up when I walk over to the sofa. “Hi,” I say softly.
“Hey.”
I look around for the evidence of whatever crime I’ve committed this time. When it becomes apparent that he isn’t planning to say anything else, I change course and head for the bedroom. Looks like tonight won’t be the night things change after all.
“It’s a good thing you never planned to be an actress,” he says right as I reach the door.
I turn back to face the living room, but he’s still focused on the television. “Excuse me?”
“Your acting sucks.”
“What acting?”
“I’m watching the news. You can probably figure it out.”
“And you think what? It was all a big act?” I shouldn’t let him swing my emotions like this.
“I think you and Preston cooked up a big plan to make sure you were caught on camera.”
When I don’t respond, he turns to look at me over the back of the sofa. “Am I right?”
“I’m not having this conversation with you.” I open the door to our bedroom, the one I fully intend to have to myself tonight, but his voice filters in before I can shut it.
“You may have fooled them, but I know what surprise looks like on your face.”