Harry didn't get much sleep that night.

David had passed out on the couch while watching some action movie, leaving Harry alone with her thoughts. When Harry had returned Charlie to her cot and snuck out to find her laptop, he was snoring softly, and a re-run episode of Law and Order was playing on the lounge room tv.

Harry had figured that she would get some work done since there was no way she was turning off her brain. A combination of the images seared into her mind, and the rejuvenation she was still feeling after her extended unconsciousness the night before meant that midnight came and passed and she was still wide awake.

Harry stared at the computer screen for hours; a blank document sitting open. Jake's death replayed in her mind from a million different angles, with a million of alternate endings. She wandered from question to question. What if she hadn't sent him off by himself, giving him the opportunity to break into her office? What if she hadn't blocked the door? What if she'd grabbed water to cool him down? What if she'd kept hold of his face as the temperature rose? Could she have given him some of the strange energy inside her? Or was it that energy that had started burning him to begin with? And why was he looking through her bag? It appeared he had been looking for the necklace, but how did he know it was special, and why didn't he realise it was on her neck? The list went on and none of it made sense.

Too many things about this town just didn't add up.

As soon as there was enough light, Harry went down stairs and found the bolt cutters sitting in David's work station. Since the incident in the garden shed, David had created a permanent place for the yard tools near where he was designing his workshop. Neither wanted to ever step foot in that shed again.

The bolt cutters hung from a nail on the wall. This was the first time Harry had touched them since dropping them near the shed. She wished she'd asked David to buy a new pair. The feel of the rubber handle returned her to that moment when she'd opened the shed door. It turned her gut. You'd think I would be getting used to the gruesome by now, she thought to herself, as she tightened her grip on the handles, and lifted it off the wall.

Harry clutched the handles of the cutters as close to their nose as she could. She arched her neck and hooked the chain of her necklace between the blades. She closed the grips, applying as much pressure as she dared, praying she wouldn't slip. The blades ground against the metal of the chain. She knew it couldn't be far off snapping. She exerted more force, trying to angle the handles towards her body and the nose away, so that she didn't run the risk of lodging the blades in the bottom of her jaw. Though she was steadily increasing her pressure, nothing was happening. The blades had locked. They didn't even slide over the chain.

Harry contemplated where she was going wrong, Maybe the chain's so fine it's just wedged itself between the blades.

She forced the cutters back apart. They ground once more against the chain. Inspecting the blades, the scratches she had expected to see weren't present. Instead, grooves were etched into the metal where they had made contact with chain.

Harry went back up stairs to look in the mirror. The chain showed no hint of trauma. Every link was still perfectly shaped. She feared that nothing short of a chainsaw was going to remove that necklace, and it was altogether possible that even that wouldn't work. She had a feeling that wearing that necklace was a 'til death do us part' sort of gig. And she wasn't eager to put that theory to the test.

She was terrified of the power that seemed to be attached to the thing around her neck, and thought about staying home from school. It would be too suspicious though. Anyway, staying at home would leave her idle, and she didn't want any more thinking time than she'd already had.

Arriving at school, she went about her day as normal. She crossed paths with Liz in the lunch room and the two pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

With her students, however, she had no such luck. She had heard an analogy before that adolescents were like horses, they could sense the slightest fear. Harry didn't know if they could sense her insecurity about what might happen when she was near them, or if they knew where Jake had been at the end of school, but even Annelisse was avoiding her like the plague. Other than Troy, who viewed her with casual indifference, Cynthia was the only Grade 10 none the wiser, and Claude (an easy going Indigenous student) and Daphne were the only ones out of the four Grade 9s who treated her normally. The rest glared at her all lesson, their eyes spoke volumes. They were fearful.

Harry kept her hands in her pockets, not risking putting herself in any situations where she might touch anyone. She hadn't hurt Charlie when she'd picked her up the previous night, but once she'd had time to unpack the events of the previous day, she'd realised that was a reckless move that could have endangered the one she loved most. While it appeared Charlie was safe from her (unless of course it was to do with an emotional reaction), she wouldn't make that mistake again with anyone else, not until she was sure she wasn't a danger.

Harry tried to engage the students in class discussion. Before the group began writing their own essays, she wanted the class to break down a modelled response, but they were all mute. After Cynthia had answered the first three questions that Harry had posed, she tried asking others directly. Casey shrugged her shoulders, and Adam said, "Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it, Miss." Meanwhile Annelisse, winner of Harry's 'If I were the type of teacher who had favourite students it would be you' Award, dropped her head to the desk and refused to look back up.

Eventually Harry instructed the students how to start, and asked them to get out the laptops. They all complied straight away. It seemed like they were eager to work as hard as they had to if it meant that Harry wouldn't engage with them.

She wished she knew what had them acting that way. If only she could find out what they knew. Without thinking, she looked at Jake's empty desk. If only she could piece together what had happened herself.

After class, she got the dreaded phone call. Sergeant Stone went through the usual questions in her disinterested drawl, "What can you tell me about Jake Jefferies?" "When was the last time you saw him?" "Have you heard anything today about him running away from home?"

Harry responded with the answers she had rehearsed a thousand times during her hours of wakefulness over the night. Just as Liz had said, Stone's efforts to dig into the circumstances behind Jake's disappearance were minimal. A troubled youth, suspended twice in the last two weeks, and rebelling against his dad; Stone was quick to rule him a run away. Harry found herself hanging up the phone minutes after the call had began.

The bell rang signalling the end of the school week. Harry sat on the floor of her office. Her hands were on the time capsule, as if Jake's remains could share the answers she needed so desperately through osmosis. Nothing came to her. She reached for her desk draw, and opening it, pulled out the jewellery box that housed the thing that was ruining her life. Why couldn't it have come with an instruction manual?

She knew she needed to go home.

Being Principal took up so much time. She needed to put every spare moment she could back into her family. She needed to spend quality time putting effort back into her marriage. This weekend she had planned to take them away, but now she was scared of her own shadow.

Harry had to turn things around for the sake of her family. To do that she needed to determine if she could touch adult men without burning them up inside. While she didn't want to hurt anyone, she didn't see she had any other choice. She could be scared of her own hands for the rest of her life, or she could find a guinea pig; a male, that meant absolutely nothing to her, whom she could use to ensure she wasn't a danger. Though there was a chance he would die, and though she hated herself for her belief, it was worth it to guarantee the safety of others.

She was a life-long learner. She needed to understand. She needed a test subject.

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Okay, so that took a bit of thinking about in order to get it right.
I have tried to plug any plot holes - such as why she would be able to touch Charlie, but then be afraid of her own hands later, and how she can overcome that fear, while she's navigating whatever is hapoening to her. What do you think? Are there any plot holes I missed?