Arianna Rose: The Gathering (Part 3) (7 page)

She remained in her car and lit a cigarette, the need to calm her nerves sudden.  She did not k
now why she was nervous.  She’d had enough first days of school to last her a lifetime.  None of them had been nerve-racking.  Why this one would be any different from those was beyond her.  Nevertheless, she smoked and felt only slightly better before she climbed out and began walking to the front doors of the school. 

Her first stop was at the principal’s office.  Located on the right side immediately after the threshold of the main entrance, the principal’s office had been the most conveniently located to date.  She strolled in and was greeted by
a man hunched over a copy machine. 

“Stupid freaking thing!” he said to the mac
hine.  “I’ve cleared your damn paper jam!”

Arianna cleared her thro
at to alert him to her presence.

He looked up and she was taken aback briefly.  With light brown stylishly mussed hair and big brown eyes, the man appeared to be in his
early thirties and hardly resembled the schoolmarm secretary type that had gravitated to every other administrative office in every other school she’d been to.

“Can I help you?” he asked and smiled. 

“Uh, yeah, I have an appointment with Principal Keller,” she said.

“Ah, yes,” the man said and walked behind an empty desk in the far corner of the office.  He flipped through the pages of a date book and said, “You must be Arianna Rose.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Arianna replied. 

“You’re early though,” he said and glanced at the clock mounted on the wall to her left. 

“Oh, yeah, I just assumed I would have to meet with the principal then the guidance counselor then take the tour of the school and all that.  If he’s not here, I can come back.”

“No, no, he’s here,” the man said.

“Okay, great,” she said then mumbled, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Ooh, that doesn’t sound like happiness to be here,” the man said and quirked a brow at her.  “Not a big fan of principals I take it?”

“No, not really, if we’re being honest,” she admitted. 

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I should say,” she said warily.

“Ah
, go for it.  What’s wrong with a little honesty?”

“Huh, you want the list?”

“Nah, just an answer.”

“
Okay then, here goes.  In my experience, which is a lot, by the way, all principals are the same.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“How so?”

“Let’s see, where do I begin?  Bad breath, bad suits, bad listeners, and don’t let me forget that they’re all pompous, power-tripping windbags.”

“Is that all?”

“That pretty much covers it,” Arianna said and shrugged.

The man laughed.

“What?  You know I’m right.  You just don’t want to agree with me because he might hear you.”

“
Who?”

“You know, Principal Keller.
”

The man shook his head and said,
“Come on, Arianna, let me take you back to the office.”

She followed him down a short hallway and into a large office.  “Have a seat,” he told her then
sat behind a large cherry wood desk.  He leaned back in the leather chair and put his feet on the corner of the desk. 

Arianna began to panic and wondered whether she’d started off yet another first day of school on the wrong foot, perhaps the worst one to date.  Everything clicked and her heart dropped to her feet.

“
You’re
Principal Keller?” she asked.

“Bingo!” he replied and laughed.

She felt her jaw unhinge and knew she must look like an idiot.  She did not know what to do or say.  Surely words existed in the English language to apologize with, convincing words.  Unfortunately, all of them were escaping her. 

“Oh my God!  I’m so sorry, you know, about the stuff I said earlier.  I jus
t, well, it’s just that,” she fumbled.

“No need to apologize.  Most of my colleagues
do
wear bad suits, have bad breath, and, what was the rest?  Oh yes, they’re bad listeners, as well as pompous, power-tripping windbags.  Did I forget anything?”

“Nope, I think you got everything,” she replied and shrank into her seat.

Despite being the most powerful witch on the planet, or so she’d been told, and possessing the ability to incinerate any man she pleased including the one before her, she still felt a nervous drop of sweat trickle between her shoulder blades in her principal’s office. 

“Very well then, let me properly introduce myself.  I am Josh Keller, principal of this fine school,” he said and smiled.  He sat up and removed his feet from the corner of his desk.  He picked up a manila file and scanned it quickly.  “You are Arianna Rose.”

“Yep, Arianna Rose with a big old foot in her mouth at the moment.  That’s me,” she said and felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“Please don’t sweat what happened.  How could you have known?  I mean, I’m not even wearing a suit
, least of all the telltale
ugly
suit of a principal.”

“Huh, true,” Arianna commented.  “If I may ask, why aren’t you wearing a suit?”

“Truthfully, I hate them.  Really, truly hate them.”

He didn’t like
suits?  Impossible!  She thought all principals adored their awful suits, that they were their uniforms of sorts.  She wondered whether she’d entered an alternate, Twilight Zone-y dimension.  Never before had an adult in a position of authority been so honest with her.  Principal Keller was unlike any other she’d ever met.  Another principal would have made her squirm mercilessly before offering up a severe punishment for her comments earlier.  Keller didn’t even seem offended, much less like he would seek future retribution.  If she weren’t in some alternate dimension, then perhaps this new school had potential, after all. 

“So
I see here you’re transferring from Herald Falls after less than two months there.  What was your experience like there?  Were there problems you’d like to discuss?”

Arianna wasn’t sure how to handle his question.  She’d prepared to tell
a lie, but somehow lying to Keller felt wrong. 

“My mom died,” she heard herself say.  “And the thought of living where I’d lived with her seemed, I don’t know, unbearable.”

“Wow,” he said and frowned sincerely.  “That’s awful.  When did this happen?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Shit,” he breathed and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I mean,
shoot
,” he caught himself.

First, he
’d let her snarky principal comments roll off his back, then he’d made the suit comment, and now he cursed.  She liked him more and more by the minute.

“No worries.  I say
shit
practically every other word,” she said and wasn’t lying. 

“Two weeks ago?  You lost your mom just two weeks ago?”

“Yes.”

“How are you and your dad coping?”

“No dad; it’s just me?”

“You’re all alone?  No family to look after you?”

“Nope.  I’m eighteen, so I’m on my own.  Not that my mom had anyone lined up for me.  She was an only child and my dad, well, who knows who he is.” 

“That’s terrible,” he said.

Arianna hadn’t discussed any of her feelings since losing her mother, Luke and Lily.  Hearing another human being offer a simple sentence like Principal Keller just had, his sympathy, actually mattered to her.  He came across like a cool uncle or father.  Of course, she did not have a barometer by which to gauge such family members, but she’d heard of them, had seen their types depicted on television.  To her, kind or understanding male family members were like the Yeti: elusive, fabled beings she’d never encountered. 

“It has been.”

“What are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?  Why not finish out your senior year in an online program?”

He sounded like Desmond, but for different reasons, naturally.  Keller didn’t know she was a witch, a deadly one at that, who was essentially followed by death. 

“My mom always wanted me to graduate from high school.  She wanted to see me in my cap and gown, walking in the procession, soaking up all the pomp and circumstance, you know?”

He nodded solemnly.  “I do.”

“So I guess I just want to honor her by doing it the old-fashioned way she would have enjoyed,” she said and heard her voice crack with emotion. 

She stared at her lap and feverishly blinked back the tears that threatened, determined to make it through her first day without crying.  But when she looked up and saw that Keller’s eyes had welled up,
too, several slipped down her cheeks.  “I’m sorry,” she said and wiped them.  “Shit, I didn’t mean to get all talk-show-guest-emotional on you.”

“Are you kidding me?” he asked.  “Are you actually apologizing for being upset
that your mother died?”

She thought about what he was saying.  He was right.  She was apologizin
g for no reason.  “I guess I am.”

“Well don’t. 
My wife, Marla, she passed two years ago; cancer.  Two years, and I’m not over it, not by a long shot.  And here you are two weeks out of the gate and trying to honor your mom’s memory by finishing school.  I don’t know what to say.  Either you are a masochist or a superhuman.”

He seemed so close to guessing what she was.  Both of his guesses were wrong, of course, but close, damn close.  She was a witch and therefore a supernatural being, not a superhuman. 

“I’m neither,” she said.  “I’m just a girl trying to push forward with her life, I guess.”

Keller pursed his lips and stared at her for several moments.

“So when do I meet with the guidance counselor and take the school tour?” she asked nervously.

“Oh, really, you were expecting those?
” he asked and stroked his chin.  “Well, I guess I could arrange for it, if you’d like.  But I’ve always found those things so unnecessary, and a bit stupid if you want to know the truth.”

“You think guidance counselors are stupid?”

“No.  Not really.  The tours, now
they
are stupid.  Guidance counselors just make bigger deals of things than needs to be made and get students worked up for no reason.  If teachers did their jobs, guidance counselors wouldn’t be needed.”

Again, Arianna felt her mouth drop.  His status in her eyes went from
the outhouse before she’d met him, to the penthouse when he’d let her off the hook then made his suit comment, and now, after his guidance counselor remark, he skyrocketed to the stratosphere.

“I absolutely agree with you,” she
said unable to mask her shock and adulation.  “Wow, I’ve never heard a teacher or principal be so honest.  Wow.”

“So no tour?”
he smiled.

“No tour.”

“Good.”

“So what’s next?”

“I’ll print out your course schedule and you can head on off to class,” he said and smiled.

“Great.”

Keller’s fingers danced across the keyboard of his computer and seconds later a sheet of paper slid from his printer.  He grabbed it and handed it to her.  “Here you go.”

“That’s it?” she asked.

“That’s it.  Oh and here is your locker number and its combination,” he said after scribbling several numbers on his blotter then tearing the piece off.

Arianna took the paper from him and said,
“Wow, thanks for making this so, I don’t know, painless,” she gushed.  “And sorry again for before, for my whole principal rant.”

“No
need to worry about it.  Though your words will echo through my head next week.”

“Why?  What’s next week?”

“A weekend mixer with every pompous, bad breathed, ugly suit wearing principal in the district,” he laughed.

Arianna smiled then whispered, “You left out the part about being bad listeners and being windbags.”

“Oh, I guess I hadn’t been listening when you said that,” he said and winked.

Arianna laughed
.

Her new principal laughed aloud
too, a rich, sincere laugh.  Arianna turned and walked out of his office and felt a bit better about her choice to finish school traditionally.  She walked down the long locker-lined hallway and was reminded of Herald Falls.  The scent of the building – an odd mix of stale air and cafeteria food – was the same, the walls were painted the same shade of institutional mint green, and even the floor tiles were the same drab gray and green.  If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought she was in Herald Falls High School, not Hallowed Hills High School.  Principal Keller had been a refreshing change from Principal Wood, but Arianna guessed he’d be the only true difference. 

Arianna
scanned the numbers on the lockers and found hers easily.  Fortunately, it was located just outside of Keller’s office on the first floor.  She would be able to slip out to the front parking lot right after school and not be slowed by tons of traffic.  As she turned the dial and tested the combination, the hallway began to fill.  Students filed in through the front door in a steady stream.  One student among them, a girl, jumped out at her immediately.  Tiny and waifish with a sleek, blue-black bob haircut and matching blue-black lipstick, the girl had a gargantuan presence despite her pixie-like size.  For reasons she could not explain, Arianna felt drawn to her.  Perhaps the girl was a witch, the reason she had been pulled to Hallowed Hills in the first place.  She hadn’t felt a pull so strong since the town she now lived in had practically jumped off the map and collared her.  The feeling she had, the strength of it, had to be significant.  The girl had to be significant.