Chapter 3 #3
“Yes. He has a lot of sway. I think …” Amelia shook her head. “I shouldn’t even talk about this. I have no evidence. I have no proof. I just have this feeling that they’re trying to get rid of me. That the governors want Wicks in charge. And I can’t even say they’re wrong.”
“I can,” Bryn said. “That dinosaur?” She shuddered theatrically.
“Professor Herringbone was older and was here longer.”
“Yeah, but she wasn’t a dinosaur. Professor Herringbone kept growing and changing. Wicks is teaching the same lesson plans he has been teaching for literal decades, I would bet you unicorn tears.”
“Oh, he is. I asked,” Amelia said. “It was one of the first conversations we had after I got hired, and I literally asked.”
Bryn covered her mouth. “You did not.”
“I did. And he told me with total assurance that his lesson plans were good, and there was no reason to change them.”
Bryn considered this for a moment before grudgingly acknowledging that Wicks, while not her favorite person, had been a good teacher in his own way.
“I guess at least you always know where you stand with him,” she said slowly.
“Not that I think he would be a good headmistress—he would definitely not be.”
“No, I know. But, here we are. It doesn’t matter what I think as much as what the governors think. And Madame Schneider is the current sitting head.”
“Oh.” Bryn considered this. Schneider had been the sort of teacher she was afraid to make eye contact with, because it was seen as a threat to her authority. “Is that who you think is spying on you?”
Amelia waved a hand. “Maybe. I think both Schneider and Wicks are waiting for me to screw up. And I’m so afraid that this Herringbone thing— Sorry, not ‘this Herringbone thing’, but you know what I mean.
I loved Professor Herringbone, who did try to get me to call her Antigone, though I absolutely could not. ”
“I cannot imagine calling her Antigone,” Bryn agreed.
“Neither could I. But I think that with her gone, they have no reason to keep me here. So the governors are just waiting for the right moment to get rid of me.”
“But we don’t know this for sure,” Bryn mused, and some part of her mind thought, How am I suddenly a “we” with Amelia Hexford?
“No, we don’t. It’s only a thought, a feeling that I have. And I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose this.”
“Can’t you do anything?” Bryn asked.
“Because I’m Amelia frigging Hexford?”
Bryn acknowledged the possible unfairness of this with a shrug.
“Not really,” Amelia said. “I wanted to be a teacher. And I do get to do that sometimes. I take over for people if they need time off. But the rest of it is so exciting, Bryn. I don’t even know how to describe it.
My family have always been in business in various forms. And they’re all good at it.
Super powerful, super skilled. Super magical.
But I don’t want to make money and be successful by those standards.
It’s not interesting to me. It doesn’t feel like the right kind of challenge.
But this school?” Her eyes lit up. “It could be so good. The things they’re doing in other parts of the world, even other parts of the country, and we’re just stagnating. ”
Bryn picked up her tea again and sipped it, even though it was now lukewarm.
She thought about casting a heating charm.
She needed to fine-tune her cup-heating charm, which sometimes didn’t work at all and sometimes failed spectacularly, depending on the material the cup was made from.
She’d gotten close a few times, but her spells needed more refinement.
And it was one of many things she was working on in her real life.
Because if she ever got the chance to publish another book, she wanted to be ready.
She needed to be ready. That was her dream: more books, more respect, standing in her field.
She wanted to earn her place in witching history, even though she hadn’t come from one of the old traditional families.
She certainly didn’t plan to return to her old school, haunted by all of her old demons, including Amelia Hexford.
Except, it was only five months. And Amelia looked so lost in a way Bryn didn’t think she even knew Amelia could look.
She’d known about the powerful, rich magical family, and the witchy background going back however many generations.
But she hadn’t really thought about the pressure that would put on someone.
She’d mostly thought, Wow, it must be nice to come from a family who understands what you are.
Maybe there were invisible downsides to that, too.
Coming from a family that could project on to you what success looked like, based on their own experience, was clearly not as ideal.
Amelia sat forward. “I know what I’m asking is a lot. I get that. I really do. And obviously, I don’t want to guilt-trip you into staying. I just … I’m so alone here, Bryn. I wasn’t prepared for that. And I don’t think I’m handling it well.”
Bryn also sat forward, as if drawn there by the magnetic pull of Amelia’s vulnerability. “I don’t know how to teach, though. And I’m nowhere near as good as Professor Herringbone.”
“No one is as good as Professor Herringbone. Teaching is a skill like any other. You can learn to teach if you want.”
Bryn thought again about her apartment and the neighborhood brewery where she liked to write, and her open calendar where she had no appointments, no date nights, no meetings scheduled with friends.
She would hit the apps if she wanted to have sex with someone.
But she didn’t ever tell herself that doing that was a route to anything else, anything deeper.
Sitting there with Amelia was the most intimate she’d felt with anyone in an awfully long time.
“I …”
Amelia’s lips parted just slightly. Stop staring at Amelia’s lips.
Bryn took a shaky breath and said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”