Miki pulled into the parking lot of Morefield High, the small high school at which she supervised the English faculty, and sighed. The parking lot was empty. It was only just 7am, and most other teachers wouldn't be arriving for another 45 minutes, at least.
Except for Miki. She had a knack for ending up with the little odd jobs that no one else wanted to do, despite her own busy schedule, and this wintery Friday morning was no exception. Somehow she had been tasked with organising the staff conference that was to be held at that evening, and she had a long day of last minute details to confirm, amongst her regular classes to teach. Draining her takeaway coffee, Miki gathered her laptop bag, purse and boxes full of teaching resources for the day, and made her way into the tangle of buildings and outdoor shelters she had come to think of as her second home. She only made it halfway to her staffroom before the tower of boxes crashed to the pavement. Miki ran her hands through her short black hair and tried not to cry out in frustration. Between the usual demands of work, organising this damned conference, and completing the last of her dissertation, she hadn't slept for more than four hours a night in over a week, and she was beginning to feel herself crack.
"Here, Miki, let me help you with that."
Miki spun around, startled, and stumbled straight into Frank, the school IT guy. Miki always found Frank slightly creepy, but was glad for his help.
"Thanks, Frank. It's been an absolute beast of a morning."
Frank smiled at her and began piling her belongings into her outstretched arms.
"I'll take some of these for you. You're heading into the English faculty, right?" Miki nodded gratefully and they ascended the stairs to the outer corridor of her staffroom. It didn't escape her notice that Frank made sure to stay behind her. After struggling with the door that never quite locked well after being kicked in by a particularly volatile senior, she dumped the boxes and bags on her desk. When she turned around, Frank was smiling with his usual leer.
"Well, thanks Frank. I'd say I don't know what else could go wrong this morning, but I don't want to go tempting fate!" Miki hated how falsely cheerful she sounded. One day she would tell Frank to pull his head in, but she didn't have the mental energy for that today.
"Well, you would know all about temptation, Miki."
Ugh, thought Miki, how pathetic. She forced another smile and berated herself for not standing up to his smarmy ways.
"Well, thanks for the help, Frank. I'm sure you've got plenty of stuff to do, I don't want to keep you." As she spoke, she made her way to the door and led him out. After pulling the faulty door firmly closed, she let out a groan. Frank was such a douche, and she was such a chickenshit for not putting him in his place.
The rest of the morning dragged by, with one minor annoyance after another. Her students were out of their minds that day, her laptop wouldn't connect to the internet with any semblance of reliability (and there was no way she was calling Frank to help!), and the copier jammed, which made her late to third period. Even though this was by far her favourite class, by the time she had shepherded twenty five fourteen year-olds into her classroom, Miki was ready to throw it all in. She shook her head and began her lesson, working on autopilot to get through sixty minutes of Australian war poetry.
"Miss Davidson, this is so boring! We NEVER just do booklets!" Joshua Sampson, her star pupil, snapped Miki out of her fog about 15 minutes in to the lesson.
"Oh, Josh, year 9, you're right. Listen, you guys have been working like champs this semester. Let me see if the computer lab is free, we can push forward that online resource I was telling you about yesterday." Small cheers erupted from the classroom, and Miki indulged in her first genuine smile of the day. "Alrighty, it looks like we're in luck. There's one unbooked lab. I want you all to move – SILENTLY – to A15. Remember, a technology period is not a free period!"
As her students shuffled towards the computer lab, Miki locked up. When she reached the class, who were surprisingly quiet, she stamped her foot in irritation. "Uh, year 9, I just remembered I lent my lab key to Mr Johnson yesterday. I'm not meant to leave you guys alone, so stay perfectly settled. I'm just going to run and grab someone who can let us in. Silent, all of you!" Despite her frustration, Miki said all of this in a good natured tone. It was so rare to have a class a teacher could trust to behave in these circumstances, and she was blessed with this cohort.
Miki ran back down the stairs, her boots clacking the whole way. On top of everything else, she was really starting to regret her wardrobe choice. She was so intent on looking nice for the conference that evening, she'd kind of forgotten about the 7 hours of running around that preceded it.
Luckily for Miki, she didn't have far to travel on her throbbing heels. Philippe Dupont, the French teacher, was standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding a stack of exams and looking amused at her flurrying about.
"Hey hey, Miki! Where's the fire?" Despite his heritage and fluency in 3 languages (English, French and Arabic), Philippe was raised in Sydney, and had acquired an odd mix of accents, which Miki found adorable. In fact, Miki, found a lot of things adorable about the Frenchman.
"Phil! I'm so glad you're here. Stupid me gave my key to Nick yesterday, and forgot to get it back. My class is hanging out in front of A15. Can you let me in?"
"Sure, Miki! But my hands are full. Can you grab the keys? I'll drop these papers off and come and get them."
Miki looked at the top of his exam pile, which was empty, and blushed slightly. "They're in your pocket, aren't they, you cheeky brat?"
Philippe's eyes twinkled. "The lanyard's hanging out of my left pocket." The cheekiness spread across his face as he leaned in closer, lest any students overhear, "but if I knew you were coming, I'd have tucked it right in."
Miki slapped her colleague on the shoulder playfully. Unlike Frank, Philippe was capable of being flirty without being creepy. Probably because he was such a nice man. Miki leaned in, too.
"So, you want me to reach in and give it a tug?"
Philippe laughed warmly. "Well, not here in the stairwell! If you'd prefer, Mik. I'll pop these on the stairs and get them for you."
"And deny myself the pleasure? I'll just grab the keys". With that, Miki pulled on the lanyard that draped down the side of Philippe's chino-clad hip, which he had propped out to help her. It was all innocent enough, except that Miki could feel that her face was on fire.
"Merci, Philippe! Always there for a damsel in distress!" Miki stammered.
"Any time you want to put your hand in my pocket is fine by me," he teased, "and I can't wait to hear your next flimsy excuse!"
Miki blushed again, and raced back upstairs. While the whole interaction seemed to take hours, she estimated that she'd been gone for about 45 seconds.
"Miss, you're all red!" Josh laughed. " It's only one set of stairs! You're gonna need to join us in PE!"
Miki mock glared at the giggling students, and jokingly shook her fist at them. As she let her class into the lab and they happily settled into the online program, Miki could feel the tension of the morning start to abate. When Philippe appeared at the lab, she beamed at him. He returned the smile and nudged her.
"I'll need my keys back. Shame you can't put them back where you found them," he spoke in a low tone. Miki rolled her dark eyes at him. He stood up straight and made an apologetic face. "On my way up here, I ran into Sophie from the front office. The hotel needs to know final numbers."
Miki cried out just loud enough for the students in the front row to look up in surprise. "I meant to do that yesterday."
Philippe touched her arm reassuringly. "I'll look after this lot while you call them back if you want. Take the period off, I'll keep them on task."
"Aren't you a doll! This is my last teaching period, so a head start on all the last minute things would be amazing! Thank you so, so much, Phil!" Turning on her still aching heels, she addressed her class.
"Year 9, something's come up and Mr D is kind enough to take over for the rest of the lesson." She grinned at the teenagers. "Try not to burn the lab down, and be nice to Monsieur!"
Miki patted Phil's firm bicep by way of thanks, and made her way back to the staffroom.
The afternoon flew by in a blur of emails, phone calls and detentions to help out her staff, and to get through the more infuriating minutiae of the day, Miki let her mind wander to the encounter with the hunky teacher in the stairwell. Despite being 45 and constantly sporting a slight 5 o'clock shadow, Philippe's messy brown hair and permanent grin gave him a boyish charm. At 5'8, he was shorter than Miki by an inch or two, but he was broad across the shoulders. He had flirted on and off with Miki for about 2 years, and they had a warm relationship. Knowing that she was alone in the office, and likely to stay that way until the end of the day, Miki allowed herself to imagine what might have happened if they'd been alone and off school grounds, and if his keys had have been at the bottom of the pocket...
''Miki! The conference has been a major success! Well done!"
Susan Jameson, the school principal, sat down next to Miki after dinner. Miki had to admit that the evening portion of the overnight conference had gone off without a hitch. The whole teaching staff had spent from 4-7pm in professional development seminars and a session of school planning, and then enjoyed a delicious meal courtesy of Miki's discerning tastes. She visibly relaxed at the positive feedback and sipped on the glass of pinot grigio that her boss handed her. The relaxed, collegial nature of her workplace never ceased to amaze her.
"Thanks Sue! I'm glad it's nearly done, but people really do seem to be enjoying themselves, and we got so much accomplished."
The older blond lady smiled. At 30, Miki was one of the youngest executive staff members, and certainly one of the most dedicated. Sue had done a lot to mentor Miki, and took pleasure in her successes.
"Well, I'm going to turn in, and let you whipper-snappers let your hair down. I'll see you in the morning for the mandatory training inservice."
Sue stood up and let herself out, which resulted in an exodus from the older members of staff, leaving about a dozen people in the large dining room. Miki gravitated to her friend Claudia, and plonked down in the empty chair beside the stunning, lithe redhead.
"What an absolute shit of a day. I am so glad I got through it."
Claudia raised her glass to her friend. "With aplomb, I might add."
As the women clinked glasses, the rest of the group gathered around to compliment Miki's organisation of what had, in the past, been a very dull affair.
"Excuse me, Miss Davidson," a mousy girl of no more than 19 appeared. "We need to close the dining room soon." The young girl looked terrified, as though the small group of professionals would put up a fight to the reasonable request.
"The bar's still open, though!" Cried out Jose, the Woodwork teacher, who had taken full advantage of the tab Sue had so generously opened. "To the pool room!"
The young girl nodded and disappeared, and a few more teachers made their apologies, leaving an attractive group consisting of the funky Miki, the feisty Claudia, the hunky Philippe, the fun-loving Jose, and Dave and Max, two almost identical young teachers who were well aware of how good looking they were. Sue had wisely closed the tab, but Max had somehow convinced the pretty blond at the bar to keep the beers flowing while they shot pool and laughed the night away. By 11pm, Miki had forgotten her awful morning and throbbing feet, and while not drunk, was certainly in a festive mood. Miki was a happy, flirty drinker, and she chatted away to whoever she was next to at the time, making jokes and generally enjoying herself. When it was her time to get up and play against Philippe, he laughed at her awful technique.
"Madamoiselle, you murder the game!" He smiled and grabbed her cue. He positioned himself behind her and guided her hands to how she should have been holding the cue. She giggled a little and attempted to follow his direction. Even sober, pool was not really her thing.
"She's fine, Philippe, you filthy old man!" Dave laughed in good nature. "You just want to get in close!"
