Just In Time (The Santa Clauses)

Point of Contact

"Tyler, if I see you skateboarding out in the hall again, it will be mine, and you will trade your hobby for detention. Leave it outside."

"I swear the new principal has eyes in the back of her head." The boy next to him moved his shaggy blonde hair to the side of his head while Tyler responded to my warning by stuffing his skateboard into his locker with a slight huff. I ignored the comment as the bell sounded overhead. Any remaining students in the hall scattered and the hall soon grew empty. I walked down towards the bathroom to make sure no one was lingering before returning to my office.

"Morning, Kasey." I greeted the school secretary who was busily digging through the top drawer of the filing cabinet behind her desk. She had a couple of piles on her desk just waiting to be sorted through.

"Good morning. I take it you caught the boy with the skateboard who came by here a few minutes ago?" Her gaze trailed out the door to the now empty hall. I imagined he must have sailed by here a few minutes ago before I got to him.

"I did. What's all this?"

"A little organizing. Something I've been meaning to do for a while now." She stuck another file into the cabinet. Are you ready for today?"

"I am. Excuse me, I need to take this." I looked down at my phone, seeing Charlie's name flashing across the screen before heading into my office. "Hi, Charlie. Everything okay?"

"Hi, Momma. Yeah, we're all good here in Florida." He assured me with a slight laugh. I may have not met him until he was a teenager, but I also learned underneath all that anger he was channeling, he was an amazing kid. "Dad mentioned you were starting back as principal at a new school. How does it feel to be back?"

"Not something I thought I'd be able to experience again," I told him, knowing he understood exactly what I meant. "I have loved being a mom, but it feels good doing what I love again."

"Well, I know from experience, those students are in good hands. Speaking of, I have a couple of people who are very eager to talk to you."

"Grandma Carol?" Asher came on first. He was nine going on sixteen by the way he conversed with other people like an adult.

"Hi, Asher."

"When are you and Grandpa going to visit again? I miss both of you."

"We miss you too." I smiled at the way he called me grandma. Before I met Scott, I never thought I would get married or have kids of my own. Now I had three kids and I was a grandma to two. "Maybe we'll have to come visit around school break. I'd have to talk to your grandpa, your mom and dad, and Cal and Sandra."

"That's a lot of people." He sounded slightly disappointed. I didn't blame him, especially when one was as excited as he was--with all our conflicting schedules it had been a while since we had been down to see them. "Peter and I start school tomorrow."

"I know. Grandpa told me you were. Are you excited?"

"Not really," Asher muttered, not sounding thrilled at the idea. "I would rather stay home and have Mommy teach us." Of course, the reason they were going back to school was that Marie had been offered a job, which meant they were going to public school.

"Asher, it's my turn to talk to Grandma," Peter complained next to him, clearly annoyed that his brother was hogging what time he could be talking on the phone.

"Peter wants to talk to you."

"Okay, put him on. Hey, Asher? I love you."

"I love you too. Bye."

"Bye."

"Hi, Grandma," Peter stated excitedly, the opposite of his brother. "Dad and I started working on the Lego set you and Grandpa gave me for my birthday. It's so cool."

"I'm so glad you like it."

"Daddy said you started a new job. You're going to be a principal just like when he was a kid."

"That's right, I am. I'm actually at my office right now."

"Cool. Bye, Grandma."

"Bye, Peter."

"Hey, we don't want to keep you." Charlie came back on the phone as Peter handed it back to him. The boys could now be heard arguing in the background about who was going to beat the other first in a race around the house. "We just wanted to wish you good luck."

"I appreciate you thinking of me. Bye, Charlie."

"Bye." As we both hung up, I set my phone down by my keyboard, punched in my password, and was just going over financial records when I heard my name behind the closed door. About a minute later, there was a knock and Kasey stuck her head in my office.

"Carol, I have George out here. Says he needs to talk to you about Mira Sanchez."

"Send him in." I stopped typing as I heard the mention of Mira's name. George was the school therapist, a man in his late forties with streaks of gray hair running through his sleek brown hair.

"George, please come in." Closing the door behind him, there was an urgency written across his expression that told me something had happened during their meeting this morning. "Tell me what's going on."

"I briefly met with Mira this morning. She bolted halfway through our conversation, which isn't surprising after what I read in her file."

"What makes you say that?"

"She didn't have to say anything. In fact, she said nothing to me. It was what I saw that worried me more" He sat down uneasily on the arm of the chair. "Her sleeve pulled up, revealing marks on her arm. That's when she bolted."

"The blue pen." Turning my gaze towards the chair Mira had been sitting in, I replayed the scene in my head. How her eyes flashed panic when her dad came to tell her goodbye, then pulled her sleeve down around her wrist. "She was drawing on her wrist when her dad brought them in to meet me."

"Think Dad knows about it?"

"I got the impression their dad was overwhelmed enough trying to raise two teenagers alone. He mentioned trying to get their principals, teachers, and counselors to help his children but it wasn't enough for them. He also mentioned how he had been fired because he always had to leave to get them from school."

"The best possible reason I could think of was maybe they didn't understand the situation or how to effectively help Mira and Seth."

"Where is Mira now?" I asked quietly, my mind trying to put together all the pieces, what we could be missing. One was destroying property, the other one was withdrawn. Could Seth know more about what was going on with his sister? This wasn't the first time this thought had crossed my mind since reading through their files myself.

"Back in class. I made sure to check with Mrs. Faraday after she left my office."