Rebecca sighed. “And now back to the trenches. I must don my armor and face the mini heathens with a happy smile on my face and a trill of delight in my voice.”
Natalie waddled toward the hallway. “Maybe this time Santa will come down your chimney. Maybe you’ll finally get a shot at dipping into the famous Trevayne S-H-O-R-T-S.”
Kaitlyn stopped in the doorway. “I can spell, you know. That’s shorts. My mommy and daddy don’t think I can spell. She called him a D-I-C—”
Rebecca clamped a hand over Kaitlyn’s mouth. “Precocious child. Come. Let’s fill your mind with more intellectual drivel. It would be the highlight of my educational existence.”
* * *
Three hours later, with quitting time fast approaching, Rebecca finished grading the last round of math sheets. The crisp clip-clip of Cruzella’s heels echoed through the marble hallways, and Rebecca pulled out her knockoff DB clutch, an “I’m going home now” hint in case the headmistress decided to launch into a lecture.
Nina Marcel Cruz, known as Headmistress Cruz to all poor serfs in her fiefdom, was a stylish reed of a woman, with an innate fashion sense that made women jealous and men glad they weren’t paying for it. Sometime after thirty, Cruz had stopped showing signs of aging, so Rebecca wasn’t exactly sure how old she was, but the woman had foundedModernManhattanPreparatory Schoolin the boom days of the eighties, and since that first year, women had rushed from the maternity ward to put their children on the waiting list.
“Mistress Neumann.”
Rebecca rose, pocketbook in hand, exit door firmly in her sights. “Yes. I’m just leaving.”
“We need to talk.” Cruz leaned forward, giving Rebecca a long, lingering whiff of Chanel. “I found these,” she said, throwing the Dear Santa letters on Rebecca’s desk. “Do you have an explanation?”
It was late, Rebecca was tired and all she wanted was to go home. But noooooo, Cruzella wanted to duke it out.
Fine. Rebecca jerked open her desk drawer, pulled out her spare Prada bag, which she used for emergencies, and searched frantically inside. Empty. “You searched my desk?”
“The desk, the drawers and the closets, all fall under the oversight of this educational institution. Which I run,” she added, hammering a finger on the calendar desk pad. “ModernManhattanprides itself on not pandering to the fantastical myths that are told to children to foster their own sense of self-involvement and pull them further away from reality. If a parent wants their children exposed to the commercial extravaganza that is Christmas, there are any number of educational facilities that will cater to that belief system. We are not one of them, and I will not tolerate this flaunting of our mission. I want you to take these letters and return them to the children, explaining that this was nothing more than a simple exercise in letter-writing.”
Cruz pursed her lips together (collagen-injected) and watched Rebecca, waiting.
She should have seen this coming, she should have been more careful. She could have hidden the letters at home, or better yet, in Natalie’s desk. But she’d gotten overconfident and careless and now it was too late.
Those letters contained the trivial and materialistic desires of twenty-two children’s hearts. They were written in scrawling, sometimes teacher-assisted handwriting, nothing worth losing sleep over. And she could explain it to them. She could look into Pepper Buckley’s somber eyes and tell her that this was only practice for the real world. No biggie.
She could gaze upon Ethan Wilder’s open, honest face and tell him that Christmas is simply another day when the post office wasn’t open. Easy, squeezy. Yeah, Rebecca could stand up in front of her entire class and proclaim that there is no such thing as Santa Claus.
Ho-ho-ho.
Her lips grew Sahara dry, and she picked up the stack of letters, her mind made up.
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Rebecca pulled herself together, her shoulders thrown back in best posture position. “No. I promised the kids I would mail these letters, and I will. I will not tell them this was a simple exercise in correspondence. It’s Christmas.” Rebecca could see the lecture brewing in Cruzella’s eyes, but she was standing up on principle. She’d get the lecture over, apologize and then move forward.
However, Cruz was working herself into a late-afternoon rage. She stamped a heel on the floor. “We do not cater to the whims of fairy tales. Our teachers are grounded in fact and scientific method.”
“It’s only a letter,” answered Rebecca, moving her tone to something light and conflict-free.
“So was the Magna Carta.”