Over the next two weeks, Harry's life settled into an uneasy routine. She was building rapport with most of the students in her two classes, and finding time throughout the day to get into everyone else's class at least once.

While she still felt she was skipping over doing many things that she didn't even know about, she did feel that the administration side of things was becoming more natural to her. She knew where the planning for the memorial was up to, she knew where the school was at in the cycle of updating documents and policies, and she was beginning to get to know the background of her students, and which students were the ones that Matt would consider "delinquents".

Her mandate on suspensions was yet to be tested since she had lasted a whole two weeks without major incident. For the first week she had been sent students frequently for disruptive behaviour. The moment her eyes had fallen on them, they'd dropped their gaze and recoiled, and when they had returned to class, they had reportedly been "different students". She had overheard several pockets of kids gossiping about the incident in the bar once she'd passed by and they believed she was out of earshot, and it appeared that was the cause of their careful footedness whenever she was nearby.

The teachers were ecstatic. They said for the first time they'd known, they only had to threaten the Principal's office and students had pulled their heads back in and been close to angels. They'd made frequent comments that their classes were as well behaved as students were twenty years ago. Considering very few of them would have been much older than early primary school twenty years ago, she'd found this remark quite comical. Even she hadn't hit high school at that time, and out of the school's six teachers, only Gayle Trabecchi was older than her. Even so, the attitude of the general school population was excellent, especially considering the wrap sheets she'd been reading on many students over her first couple of days in the job.

She had found it slightly ironic. The town's most popular slime ball had told her she wouldn't be able to handle the kids without him, yet her act of denying him, seemed to be what had them afraid. It was bizarre. How could her refusal to do what one person had wanted have had so much affect?

She had taken to avoiding the shops, however. While her actions in the bar had given her super villain-like status among the students, which had been useful, the effect of becoming persona non grata amongst the adults of the community was not as beneficial. When she walked into the post office, the attendant looked at her with distaste. When she went to the bank the two ladies at the teller paper, rock, scissored over who had to serve her. Of course, that was better than the hairdressers who utterly refused to provide her any service whatsoever. And at the end of Harry's second week, she experienced a particularly bad trip to the supermarket.

She had ran into the French kids along with their mother. While Annelisse had beamed at her as always, Troy, their little sister (Maddi the pyromaniac), and a stunning blonde woman, Harry assumed was their mother, shot her varying expressions designed to make her uncomfortable. The mother's pure hatred was written across her perfect face, and Maddi looked as if Harry had killed her favourite pet, while Troy's... his look was a sultry challenge.

Out of that group of individuals she'd read about in her first two days, it was only Troy that didn't seem to fear her. He was continuing his little game, attempting to undermine her with subtle innuendo. He was sneaky enough that he could deny any of it if she accused him outright, but she knew what he was doing. She'd made it clear what was appropriate and now she just needed to wait for the moment he stepped across the line or became bored and gave up. It would happen sooner or later, but that moment at the supermarket was not it.

Harry opened the freezer in front of her, using it as an excuse to wrap her jacket tighter around her body in an attempt to keep her skin from crawling. She reached in and pulled out a bag of dim sims she didn't really need to keep up her pretence. Shutting the freezer door, she turned back towards the family, dazzling them all with her most winning smile. She made a point of moving closer to Annelisse, complimenting her on her singing at the previous day's assembly, and advising the blonde woman of the talent Annelisse had as a song writer. The woman didn't speak, but just stood there staring down her nose at Harry, as if she were a bug that the woman was preparing to tread on.

Making an excuse that she needed to get home to her family, Harry rushed to the gardening isle to find the trowel that David said he needed.

As she scurried through the isles, glares followed her from random strangers she'd never spoken to before. She plucked the first trowel she saw off the hook, not even checking to make sure the one she had grabbed was the best quality, and raced to the check out, eager to be out of the store.

***

She arrived home a few minutes later. Since no-one had been able to advise her where the key to the back garden shed was, the gardening tools were still all sitting under the house. Harry hated it. It would be so easy for Charlie to sneak down while they were doing the laundry, which was also situated under the house, and touch something dangerous that she should definitely not be able to touch.

Harry removed the plastic packaging from the trowel, dumping it in the wheelie bin, and then proceeded to take it to the pile of gardening supplies. The tools were in shambles. The mower sat with the blower vacuum and whipper snipper leaning against them precariously. A hodgepodge of hand tools and hose fittings stuck out of a pot, sitting at the end of the mower. She shook her auburn head in frustration and poked herself in the hole above her collarbone. Harry didn't mind chaos, but she liked organised chaos. There was no system to this conglomeration of stuff. It had been chucked on the ground, waiting for the day that the back shed was opened and it could be housed properly.

Gathering her hair in one hand so it wouldn't get in her face when she bent down for the flower pot, Harry took a step forward. The pole of the rake wacked into her forehead before she could see what was happening and forestall it.

"Damn it!" she cried, angry with herself for not paying closer attention.

Rubbing the spot between her eyes where the rake had hit, Harry stalked around the other side of the mower, dropping the frozen peas, which were still in the plastic bag she was holding until she'd gotten upstairs. She pushed instruments aside until she found the bolt cutters. Dragging them out, she strode across the backyard, hiking through the scrub as she got further back.

As she'd almost reached the ugly red tin shed the smell hit her. David had said that something reeked and he wasn't wrong. She had taken his word for it that their keys didn't fit it and therefore hadn't had reason to venture this far into their backyard yet. She emptied her stomach on the spot. She hadn't smelt anything so vile since she was teaching in a classroom where a possum had crawled into a vent directly above and died. Harry didn't know how it'd gotten in the shed, but some animal had clearly found its way in and been unable to get back out.

She pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around the lower half of her face, hoping it would mask some of the smell. Once she'd tied it in place, she picked the bolt cutters back up and moved purposefully towards the padlock. It was more difficult than she'd thought. Trying to manoeuvre the long tool into the right position in as much haste as possible, of course, made the process that much longer, and the blades kept slipping as she'd gotten them into position.

Harry had to race back twice, removing the jacket from her face so she could vomit, before she eventually managed to get the blades to clamp into place. She had then strained to force the blade through the metal. Her almost healed injury screamed at her in apprehension as she pushed it to its limits, but the lock slowly gave way. She repeated the same process on the other side and finally severed the locking mechanism from the shackle. She pulled it out of the door and retightened her jacket in preparation for the oncoming stench.

She took a deep breathe and swung open the door.

Harry forgot to hold her breathe. She screamed as deep as her lunges would allow.

Her thoughts rushed through her head at a million miles per second. One formed enough that she could process it.

I guess Rachel Lindley wasn't the type of woman to leave with only her car and her cat after all.