CHAPTER ELEVEN

I knocked on Ms. Gladwell’s office door, which was slightly ajar. She looked up at me, over the rim of her glasses and said, “Ms. Huntington. Please come in and have a seat.”

Doing as she asked, I pushed the door the rest of the way open and sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. Her office was decorated very traditionally: dark wooden cabinets, a desk with thick legs, and leather armchairs. Ms. Gladwell was in her forties, and had the same look as so many of the older mothers here at the school—where her face was unnaturally smooth and tight. But in Ms. Gladwell’s case I didn’t suspect plastic surgery so much as wrinkles wouldn’t dare to form on her face. She was a formidable woman. And very, very good at her job.

Which is why the next part surprised me.

She finished typing something on her computer and then swiveled her chair to face me. “Ms. Huntington, as you know, we expect the students here at Millstone to participate in extracurricular activities. Especially school-sponsored ones.”

I nodded. I did know that.

“And we have the same expectations of our teachers. As you may or may not know, our annual winter festival is coming up. It is typically held in our gymnasium and is one of our primary sources for fundraising throughout the year.”

Delia had mentioned the festival a couple of times, but I didn’t know much about it.

Ms. Gladwell continued. “A problem has arisen and we find that we need one additional person to join the decorating committee.”

“Oh.” That was a bad idea. A really bad idea. I’d never decorated anything in my life. My mother had very-well-paid people for that. Even my classroom walls had started the year pretty much bare. I felt bad about it and had tried to do a Harry Potter theme, but it was all excruciatingly terrible. I couldn’t spend the entire year staring at my hideous attempts at re-creating Hogwarts and the Whomping Willow. I’d been assigning my kids art projects so that we could hang them up and cover the walls that way.

Taking my “oh” for a yes, Ms. Gladwell called out, “Mrs. Adams, would you please join us?”

I’d been so intent on following Miss Martha to the office that I hadn’t noticed the pretty and tiny woman sitting out front of Ms. Gladwell’s office. She looked like every other mother of a Millstone Academy student, perfect hair, perfect teeth, name-brand yoga pants, and a hoodie. A look designed to be casual but screaming of expense—both monetarily and timewise.

“Hello, I’m Mrs. Adams.” She had been carrying about ten grocery bags but set them down on the floor.

I shook her perfectly manicured hand wondering what Ms. Gladwell had decided that I’d agreed to. “I’m Madison Huntington. Nice to meet you.”

“Well, I am just thrilled and delighted that you’re going to be joining our little committee! We told Ms. Gladwell that we needed an extra set of hands and she was so accommodating. We have so much to do and we are in dire need of your help.”

“What exactly did you have in mind?” If it was just stapling up Christmas lights or putting tablecloths down, I figured I could manage that.

Mrs. Adams pointed to her bags. “Just a couple of little things that we need you to make.”

“Make?”

“Yes. We pride ourselves on our homemade decorations. We want our kids to be surrounded by things made with love. Not to mention that they’re so much more impressive for the school’s Instagram account over generic things that we could just buy.”

Yes, why would anyone just buy the decorations that they could so easily afford and save themselves hours of work? I barely refrained from making my snarky comment out loud. I would instead try reason. “I am not a crafty person. At all. I’m the actual opposite of whatever crafty is. I really want to help out, but I don’t think this is the best way to use me.” It was hard to adequately convey just how bad I was at it.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Mrs. Adams said, but my relief was short lived. “These decorations are so easy even a child could do them.”

Huh. I wondered if I could make my kids do it. Or if that would somehow be breaking child labor laws.

“First, we need you to make a bunch of poms.”

What was a pom? I was afraid to ask.

“We need a hundred in these different shades of blue and white.” She pointed at the bags and I saw bags and bags of tissue paper in various shades of blue.

“A hundred total?”

“No.” She said it like I’d asked something silly. “A hundred in each shade. Our gym is huge! We also need you to create some snowfall out of fishing wire and cotton balls. We plan on hanging those up on the walls. I’m not sure how many we’ll need of those, but they should be six feet long and I guess just make them until you run out of supplies.”

I let out a noise that was a cross between a squawk and the sound of my blood pressure going up.

Mrs. Adams misunderstood my sound. “Don’t worry. We’ve already bought everything you’ll need. You have two weeks and we put completed examples in the bags for you. This will be fun!”

I told my kids the same thing when I made them do something they didn’t want to do.

I guessed now I was the kid being assigned the art project.

She handed me the bags and I might have said, “Thank you,” like some kind of demented person who didn’t rightfully protest something she was going to screw up horribly.

Ms. Gladwell expected me to participate. That was the end of the discussion.

I dropped the bags off in my classroom, heading to the teachers’ lounge to find Delia and Shay. The other teachers were starting to gather there, as we still had our staff meeting. My friends had staked out a prime location, nabbing one of the faux leather couches.

“Over here!” Delia waved. “We saved you a seat.”

I dropped down in the empty spot and Shay asked, “What did Gladwell want?”

“She wants me to help out with the winter festival.”

Shay smiled. “I love the winter festival!”

Nothing could have surprised me more. “You love the winter festival? Did three ghosts visit you last night?”

“I like the holidays,” she said defensively.

“It just doesn’t seem like you,” I said.

“What does seem like me?”

Setting traps for Santa? Changing out candy for coal in little kids’ stockings? Shoving Christmas trees up chimneys? But I didn’t say any of those things out loud because I enjoyed living.

Delia intervened. “You know why Ms. Gladwell chose you, right?”

“My fantastic bone structure?” It couldn’t have been because of talent. Of the three of us sitting there, Delia was easily best suited for the job I’d been assigned. Why hadn’t they asked her?

“It’s because they give the new teachers the crap work thanks to your probationary year. They know you won’t say no. It’s unfair, but that’s the reality,” she explained. “My first year I got assigned to clean out the cages of all the room pets before winter break.”

Shay jumped in with, “Gladwell had me doing setup and takedown for all the PTA meetings.”

“They’re having me make decorations. Something called a pom. And something else that involves cotton balls and fishing wire. I don’t even know what fishing wire is.”