Hana apologised to the biology teacher the next day for the loss of his pet rat. He acknowledged responsibility for the sandwiches and the expensive box of paper, which an angry Sheila marched to the skip in a temper.
The incident marked the start of a feud between the biology department and Larry Collins, sparking a series of spiteful retaliations. Paul Mannings maintained the rat could not escape his own cage without help.
“Collins wouldn’t go through all that damn drama!” Sheila scoffed. “He’d just kill the thing. These science teachers are far too fond of their conspiracy theories!”
The Year 13 biology class attempted to keep the saga going, demanding a full funeral complete with chaplain, for the deceased Fluffy. Angus refused on the grounds of not encouraging stupidity. The boys arrived in class sporting tissues and vapour rub, which they spread near their eyes to induce real tears. Paul Mannings assumed Fluffy went into the dustbin, courtesy of Larry Collins. In fact, Fluffy returned to the laboratory next-door, retrieved by Sunita and laid to rest in the freezer. The other class dissected Fluffy numerous times without realising. His moment of fame ended as quickly as it began.
Hana bumped into Logan a few days later in the corridor outside the common room. She peered into one of the brochure racks, trying to work out how to retrieve the banana skin from inside a shelf without covering herself in its decaying components. Exasperated with boys who couldn’t master the use of the dustbin, she stepped back in frustration and lost her footing, lurching backwards into the stairwell. Hana felt the sharp edge of the top step beneath the sole of her shoe, but her stiletto hampered her ability to gain purchase. Her arms flailed and she missed the solid wooden bannister by millimetres.
Strong hands halted her disastrous tumble and pushed her upright. Glancing down with her heart fluttering in fear, Hana rested her hands over the fingers clasping her waist. “Thank you,” she gasped, nausea roiling her stomach. A solid chest cradled her from behind and she took a tentative step forward, away from the top of the steps.
“That’s okay.” Logan’s voice made her jump in embarrassment and Hana turned, finding herself closer than she should be to another member of staff. He quirked his lips upwards, his expression gentle. He didn’t remove his hands from her waist, allowing his fingers to track around her body as she turned before resuming their possessive hold. “That rack is too near the top of the stairs,” he said, his gaze remaining on her face.
“I know.” Hana shot a nervous glance at her office door. “I’ve mentioned it before.”
“You could’ve fallen.” Logan’s brow narrowed and his lip twitched. He reached up with one hand and pushed a stray red curl behind her ear. The action felt intimate and tender.
“They’re the stairs of death,” Hana said with a shiver. “A couple of people have died on them.”
“Really?” Logan’s brow knitted and he glanced backwards at the hard wooden edges and angular balustrade.
“Thank you for catching me.” Hana’s eyelashes fluttered and she listened to the sound of her blood pulsing past her eardrums.
“You’re welcome, Ms McIntyre.”
“Why do you call me that?” Hana cocked her head like a little bird and Logan pursed his lips.
“Isn’t it your name?”
Pain pushed through the delicious feeling of Logan’s hand on her waist and she sighed. “Not anymore. Not for a very long time.” Her tone sounded sad and she tried to correct herself and gloss over the misery her married name engendered. “Johal is a Sikh name. I married Vik at eighteen.”
Logan bowed his head and pulled her closer with his hands on her waist, leaning so his lips brushed the shell of her left ear. “I know,” he whispered. His fingers rose to her cheek, the knuckles skimming the soft, porcelain skin. Hana shuddered at the gentle warmth of his breath on her neck and closed her eyes.
“Sir? Oh.” The juvenile voice issued from behind Hana, causing a guilty flush to haze across her neck and cheeks. “Mr Dobbs is looking for you. He wants you to supervise the common room for study period.”
Hana glanced up at Logan’s strong jaw as he answered, peering from beneath her lashes. “When?”
“Now, sir. He’s sent your Year 13 English class to the common room and told them to sit near the front. He said you could manage it.”
Logan winced. “Okay. I’m coming now.”
Hana heard the boy turn and amble away, his sandals slapping against the wooden boards. Logan smiled down at her with a gentleness in his eyes which touched her and melted some of the hardness in her soul. “No rest for the wicked,” he said with a sigh. He brushed the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone and dropped it to his side with an expression of reluctance. His full lips opened as though to say something else, but the sound of raucous laughter broke out from the direction of the common room.
Logan shot Hana an apologetic glance and strode away, the fingers of his left hand caressing her waist as he let go. The double doors clanged shut behind him. “Sit down!” Hana heard him say with quiet authority. He didn’t shout or threaten like the other male teachers, but as she watched through the glass, the boys scurried back to their desks in instant obedience. The hidden steel in his voice brooked no opposition and Hana watched power exude from the man like a physical thing. He seated himself at the front of the class and laid a pad of green detention slips on the desk with minute precision, shifting them until happy with their position. Silence descended on the room as one hundred boys turned back to their work.
Realising she stared like a moron, Hana forced herself back to work. She dug out the banana skin with a fork from the kitchen and squirted cleaning spray into the shelf. When the bell rang at the end of the period, she found herself in the post room with one of the art teachers whining at her in a high pitched voice. “They need to go on this course. There isn’t another one for six months,” the woman complained.
Hana smiled with practiced calm. “The forms went out to you at the end of last year and you didn’t respond. The course is now full. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Well, that’s just plain unreasonableness,” the woman bristled and Hana walked away to avoid further argument. In the women’s toilets she shook her head at herself in the mirror and washed her hands, imagining her delicate fingers throttling the stumpy neck of the arrogant art teacher.
“Bad thoughts!” she said to her reflection. “Stop it.” She smirked at the idea of twenty-eight boys sitting in a tutorial full of girls from Waikato Anglican Girls’.
“What’s funny?” asked Lorrie from the tuck shop as she washed her hands alongside Hana.
“I’m just imagining a Photoshop lesson at Wintec, with our boys sitting next to girls from up the road.”
Lorrie snorted. “Would Dobbs allow that? He’s so archaic. He’d insist on going with them and using his ruler to measure the distance between them!”
“That’s what I thought.” Hana smirked, drying her hands on a towel. “It’s too late anyway. We missed the cut off date and they grabbed every available place. I couldn’t tell Clare her counterpart at the girls’ school beat her to it.”
“Remember the play last year? Hamlet wasn’t it? All those girls with sassy hair and attitude. And the lead actor came on stage with long, glossy straight hair.”
“I know. Four years he rocked that curly Afro. Dobbs couldn’t punish him because his parents claimed it was part of his cultural heritage; couldn’t cut it or change the style.”
“Yep.” Lorrie nodded. “Then the Waikato Girls’ straightened it for him. Looked like he’d put his finger in an electrical socket.”
Hana put her hand over her mouth and sniggered at the memory of the most touching scene being ruined by snorts and giggles from the boy’s classmates.
“Hilarious,” Lorrie laughed. “See you later if you come to morning tea.”
By the time Hana made it back to the common room, all that remained of Logan Du Rose was the heady scent of
his expensive aftershave and the aura of clear mountain air which seemed to shroud him. Hana suppressed the flicker of disappointment and chastised herself, reminding her battered ego that it didn’t need another kick.