Holly Banks Full of Angst (Village of Primm, #1)(38)

As the Pie Committee set off down the hallway toward the teachers’ lounge, Holly’s heart rate started to rise. She felt dizzy. A million thoughts entered her mind like fast-rolling film credits:

Betty Crocker!

What have I done?

Pies?

I can’t make pies.

She placed two fingers against her carotid artery to check her pulse. Couldn’t find it. No pulse. Am I dead? Was it all a bad dream? Holly sat down. Tried to slow her breathing.

“God?” she said out loud.

No answer.

I must be alive; still on earth. So this wasn’t a bad dream. I really did say I’d bake thirteen pies for a cherry festival. Mutha fricker.





12


Still not over



After twenty minutes of Holly’s waiting on the stiff wooden bench, Principal Hayes escorted Holly to the Community Helper Annex, a long gray trailer behind the athletic fields with a security camera mounted above the door.

Hayes told Holly to have a seat and wait for Officer Knapp, the school’s attending police officer, who would take care of the paperwork. Then Holly could leave. “I apologize for the wait, Mrs. Banks, but it’s the first day of school.” Hayes pushed his black-rimmed glasses from the bridge of his nose to his frown line and straightened his necktie, which was embroidered with honeybees. “After Officer Knapp signs the paperwork, let Rosie McClure in the front office know you’re leaving campus.”

Hayes left. Holly sat.

Three hours of Holly’s life passed—three hours!—and Officer Knapp still hadn’t shown up. She was wasting her life away in a mobile trailer. The long rectangular kind with deck steps and a white metal doorframe. Inside? More gray. Gray walls, gray flooring, gray metal desk. She was starving, absolutely famished, because she hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the previous night.

For the umpteenth time, Holly contemplated leaving the school grounds to go home, take a shower, change into normal clothes, and then come back to deal with the situation. But here’s the thing: there were twelve black-and-white closed-circuit security monitors mounted to the wall not far from a television set that had all the best morning talk shows on. Not only that, but there was a coffee maker in the corner, so Holly made herself a few cups of coffee while waiting for Officer Knapp. She was quite comfortable in her own little world: she spun in the swivel chair behind the desk, watching TV while keeping a watchful eye on the security monitors for glimpses of Ella. Was she angry she’d been waiting so long? Sure. But there wasn’t a mom in the world that would pass up a chance to spy on her child on her first day of kindergarten. Holly would fly a surveillance drone over Ella’s head if she thought she could get away with it. Mom drones. Now there’s a technology.

On the video screen, for a fleeting moment, Holly spotted Ella walking down a hallway. “Awww,” Holly whispered, touching the screen because she couldn’t touch Ella. “Hey there, Ella Bella. Look at you!” She traced Ella’s image. “I miss you, baby girl.”

Holly’s index finger banged into the outer rim of the monitor as Ella walked out of view. She flipped dials and pressed buttons, until at last, she managed to swivel one of the cameras to tune to the inside of the library, and whoa! Out of nowhere, the Cat in the Hat’s face appeared on her screen, filling it completely.

“Aaah!” Holly jumped, knocking her coffee off the desk and onto the floor. An oversize stuffed animal, propped on the counter of the library, the Cat in the Hat had to be six feet tall—maybe taller. Not as tall as Plume, but a cultural icon nonetheless.

Holly couldn’t see Ella because the camera had limited range and was capturing the top of the librarian’s head as she checked books out for a line of kids. Holly could hear most of what was going on in the library. A woman offscreen but near the camera was reading a book, presumably to Ella’s class. Holly turned up the volume on this particular monitor—the monitor that brought familiar words from two books Ella and Holly loved to read together. Holly closed her eyes and listened to a reading of Leopard Print’s Little Kids, Little Zoo, a story about a teacher who gathered her children on the first day of kindergarten, only to realize the children were little animals escaped from the zoo. Followed by Jenna Denny’s Rabbit Home.

Whoever was reading was doing a bang-up job of capturing the lyrical magic of Jenna Denny’s words. Holly knew the exact page, could see capital letters and the illustrations in her mind when the homesick little rabbit reached his breaking point while on an adventure and started to cry. Rascally rabbit out to roam . . . Rabbit, Rabbit, HURRY HOME!—when bam! Mary-Margaret appeared on the monitor, her face filling the screen.

“Aaah!” Holly jumped.

“Yoo-hooooo!” Mary-Margaret waved at Holly through the security camera. Eyes, cheeks, dimples. She was at the door of the annex smiling into the security camera mounted above the door.

Holly swiped her tears, her nose, then—click!—killed the security monitors, afraid Mary-Margaret would accuse her of spying on her own daughter. Ha! Ridiculous. Like that would ever happen . . .

“Knock-knock. Anybody home? It’s me, Mary-Margaret St. James!”

Mary-Margaret opened the metal screen door wearing a new outfit: a petal-pink skirt with a crisp white blouse, pink shoes, and a pink hair ribbon. Did she go home? How did she manage a wardrobe change on the first day of school? Earlier, in the bus lane, she was dressed in honeybee school-mascot colors: gold, black, and white. Come to think of it, the entire apple brigade was dressed in gold, black, and white. So was the headband lady. Who was circulating that memo?