THE TEACHER

Chapter six

The alarm rang at six, as usual. Melissa was awakened by the terrible sound it made, blasting from the nightstand to her ears, and the meowing that Pyto was making in the hallway, in need of some attention.

"Come here, boy," she smiled, tapping on the sheet at her feet.

The cat jumped in front of her and claimed his prize, purring as she softly played with his fur.

It wasn't long before she got up from the bed and immediately went to the kitchen to prepare herself something for breakfast, usually a good cappuccino with a small cookie on the side. While waiting for the coffee to cool down a little, she went to the bathroom to freshen up. Looking at her face in the mirror, she saw tiredness, not only caused by the early hour but also from the exhaustion that her life had provoked so far. Before her recent days spent with Abigail, the times she had thought about ending it all weren't a few.

After a bit of washing up, she ate her breakfast and went back to the bedroom to redo the bed and wear the clothes for the day. With her very specific style, she always knew that to wear. She planned it the night before, making sure to always have everything prepared and ready, following every day the strict routine she had assimilated when she had moved in that apartment. Even the tiniest of setbacks made her panic, though she hid it very well at the eyes of everyone: she had always been a very good liar.

Before putting on her makeup, she stared at her reflection for a moment, criticizing herself in her mind for even the smallest, most invisible things caused by the inevitable aging of her body.

While she headed for the front door, she stopped to pet Pyto a few more times, cuddling with him for a few more minutes than usual. She didn't have to wait for Abigail in front of her house, so she took it a bit more slowly.

"You be a good boy, alright?" she smiled, still caressing him. "I'll be home sooner than you think."

She checked if she had everything before walking out of the door: her house keys, her car keys, her thousands of papers and tests, all perfectly graded and double checked, her sunglasses and her phone. She then reached her car on the street right in front of her house, unlocked it and made herself comfortable before driving off.

It was ten past seven, and the streets were still pretty silent and empty. She cruised through them without really worrying, and was actually pretty calm, despite the mixed feelings she had had since the moment she had woken up. She drove past Abigail's house, barely looking at it, and instead drove straight to the school, accelerating a little as she approached it.

She had her own unassigned parking spot near the entrance, so she stopped the car there and took her things out of it, mentally getting ready for the day. She was used to leaving her problems in the car, and enter the school as another person, but she had trouble doing it that day: she was worried about Abigail, and desperately wanted to see her.

Some students were already inside the hall, waiting for the bell to ring. They greeted her, some talked to her, but her mind was elsewhere.

Once she finally stepped in her classroom, she had very little time to prepare herself, since the students started flooding in in great numbers, all still sleepy and not very interested to hear what she had to say.

"Today we'll be starting with complex numbers," she announced, getting up from the desk to go over to the blackboard.

After the first period, she had another lesson with a class of sophomores and then a free period. She went over analytic geometry with her second class, then decided to take a little walk and get some fresh air before fourth period.

She walked out of the school on the cobblestone steps, and stared at the sky in silence: it looked like it was going to rain. The grey clouds scattered in the sky were moving very quickly, and she lost track of time looking at them. She didn't love the rain, but she didn't mind a few raindrops every now and then. They reminded her of Italy, especially Milan, where she used to spend her summers with her family, many years before. Soon, everyone moved away or had more important things to think about, and the family never gathered again after her seventeenth birthday, meaning that she had gone back to her town only a couple of times in the last few years.

Before going back to her classroom to prepare the new assignments, she decided to get a cup of coffee from the school's dining hall, then slowly strolled back to her room.

The moment she opened the door, she saw someone sitting at her desk, waiting for her, and even just the back of her head didn't leave many guesses about who it was.

"Hey Abby," she smiled. "Want some coffee?"

"No, thanks."

Getting closer to her, she realized that she was wearing a pair of very dark sunglasses that covered her face, and wasn't smiling the usual way.

"What happened? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" she nervously chuckled. "I just wanted to show off my new sunglasses, what's wrong with that?"

"It's not sunny outside. Actually, it's about to rain. What's really going on?"

"Nothing! I just came here to talk about us."

"Well, I don't wanna talk about us if you're not gonna tell me what's going on first."

"Then I guess we're done here," she said, getting up to leave.

"Oh, come on, wait," Melissa rolled her eyes, grabbing the other's arm to stop her.

When she saw Abigail flinch under her light touch, though, she knew that something was really wrong.

"What happened to your arm?"

Without waiting to receive an answer, the lifted up her sleeve to reveal some bruises all over it. They must have been new because she was sure that she hadn't had them before. She had memorized every inch of her body, from the barely visible freckles on her shoulders to the beauty marks behind her right ear.

"If he hurt you, you need to tell someone," she whispered in her ear. "It was already too much before, but if he did this you can't defend him anymore."

"I fell."

The bell rang and signaled the start of the next period. As the students took their seats in Melissa's classroom, she let go of her friend's arm and let her go back to her job, unable to shake off the terrible gut feeling that something horrible had happened from her mind.