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It was as if her classroom had been invaded—an invasion that was insufferably pink. Quill set her coffee on her desk and glared at the offensive decorations for a minute before going to rip the string of paper hearts off the top edge of the chalkboard.
“You’re back.”
Quill looked to the door to see Tanya. “Clearly.”
“And you’re here early.”
“So are you.”
Crumpling the pink and red paper, Quill smiled to herself as she formed it into a tight ball. Tanya walked into the room and pulled the door mostly shut behind her. The girl’s eyes scanned the room as she went to sit on the top of her usual desk. The scanning was supposed to be casual, but it was anything but.
“What are you looking for?” Quill snapped as she dropped the ball of paper into the bin and reached for another string of hearts.
“Not what—who.” Tanya paused to tap her watch. “Nursery doesn’t open for another ten minutes.”
Quill stopped what she was doing and cocked her head to the side. “How do you know the nursery’s hours?”
“Mattuesz told us.”
“I still don’t understand why your ‘us’ needs to be involved with my child.”
“For emergencies.” Tanya shrugged off her objections. These children were always shrugging off her objections about their involvement in her life. “So,” the girl continued. “Where is she?”
“Mattuesz will bring her on his way to school.”
“Really?”
“She likes him.”
“But it’s her first day.”
“No it’s not.” Quill finished pulling down the second string of hearts. “I took her yesterday.”
“But today’s your first day back from leave,” Tanya argued.
Her initial response to crumple this string of hearts into a ball, but that wasn’t enough of an answer for Tanya, so she continued, “Maybe I wanted an actual day of rest.”
“Or maybe you spent the day spying on the nursery.”
Quill threw the ball of paper at Tanya and said nothing. Tanya caught it and smirked.
“I knew it!” the girl declared as she started tossing the paper ball between her hands. “I knew you wouldn’t be satisfied by a simple tour of the facility.”
Quill rolled her eyes, which made Tanya smile wider. After watching her toss the paper ball a couple more times, Quill reached out to snatch it from her. Tanya, however, still looked more amused than annoyed.
“What?”
“You’re such a mum.”
Making a face of disgust, Quill dropped the paper ball in the bin. “Now,” she said firmly as she pulled one of the cards tacked to the front her desk and dangled it from her fingers. “I answered your questions, so you explain these?”
“They’re Valentines.”
Quill inspected the card. It had a poorly drawn human figure with long curly grey hair and ridiculously outdated clothing with the phrase An object in love will remain in love. She held it up for Tanya to see.
“It’s Isaac Newton,” Tanya explained. “You know, an object…”
She cut her off. “I know who Isaac Newton is. Why is he talking about love?”
“For Valentine’s Day.”
Quill groaned. “That’s not just something Matteusz made up to annoy me?”
“It’s real. Miss Conner gave us extra credit if we made physics-themed Valentines.”
“You’re sixth formers not six-year-olds.”
“She said we needed a break.”
“Your entire human lives are a break,” Quill muttered as she pulled down another two cards—one had magnets with a message about attraction and the other had planets with a comment about having space in my heart for you. “Seriously?” she asked holding them up. “These are rudimentary science at best—not physics.”
Tanya sighed and got up to take down one of the other cards. “What about this?”
“My love for you is like dark matter: you can’t see it but it’s always there,” Quill read in a mocking tone. “Really?”
“It’s about physics.”
“Oh, was that yours?”
“April’s.”
“Should have known.” Quill took the card to inspect it more closely. “The hearts and stars are rather sparkly.” She dropped it on her desk with disgust. “Do you have any idea how little you humans know about dark matter?”
“Charlie said the same thing.”
“Never compare me to Charles.”
“His tone was a lot nicer.”
“It usually is.”
Quill walked around to sit behind her desk. She pulled out her tablet while watching Tanya out of the corner of her eye. The girl didn’t move.
“If you’re going to be in my classroom outside of your scheduled lesson you should make yourself useful.”
Tanya pulled off another one of the cards and added it to the stack on Quill’s desk. “By destroying happiness and love?”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” she responded without looking from her tablet.
They worked in silence for a few minutes—well, Tanya worked and Quill googled the origins of Valentine’s Day. She should have done it earlier, but hadn’t cared enough. To be honest, she didn’t care now, but it wasn’t as if she was going to spend her morning cleaning up after the substitute teacher who had turned her classroom into something that belonged in a primary school.
“Wait,” Quill said after a couple of minutes. “This Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs, beheaded, and buried under the cover of darkness and you humans commemorate his martyrdom by making hearts and cards out of paper?”
“I mean, it’s…” Tanya trailed off as she took down the last of the cards. She looked like she was going to make some kind of argument in the defense of humans, but then just shrugged and dropped the stack of cards on the desk. “We also send each other chocolates.”
Quill studied the stack of cards. “Do any of those have chocolate?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the point?” They stared at each other in silence before Quill became curious. “Did you make one?”
Tanya nodded and Quill held out her hand. Tanya dug through the pile and pulled one out.
“Are you going to mock it?” she asked before handing it over.
“Probably.” She took the card and inspected it. Unlike the others, it was brown and had a cover that looked like a parcel or a box. She opened it to find a picture of a cat inside a heart. “I approve of the cat, obviously,” Quill began. She paused to study the irritatingly bright pink heart surrounding the cat. “But what does this have to do with physics?”
“It’s Schrödinger’s cat.”
The girl was clearly amused with herself and Quill couldn’t help but allow the tiniest of smiles at how cleverly subtle it was. “And the heart’s so neon because it’s the radioactive source?” she guessed.
“Or April just had a lot of bright pink markers, but let's go with your reason.”
Quill watched Tanya go pick up her backpack for a moment before looking back down at the cartoon kitten on the card. It was then that a thought occurred to her.
“Does the other teacher like cats?”
The girl was already halfway to the door, but stopped. “What?”
“Does Miss Substitute-Not-Me like cats?” she repeated.
“She’s a dog person.”
“And tomorrow is this Valentine’s Day?”
“Yeah.”
“And you knew I was coming back today.”
“So?”
“You knew I was coming back before Valentine’s Day,” she emphasized. Tanya rolled her eyes and started walking again, which seemed like confirmation, but Quill wanted to be sure. “Is this Valentine for me?”
“It both is and isn’t.”
“There’s no such thing as Schrödinger’s Valentine, Miss Adeola.”
Tanya just shrugged and continued walking out the door. Quill rolled her eyes and pushed the stack of cards off her desk and into the bin. She was tempted to toss Tanya’s card in with the rest of the offensive decorations, but then slid it into her bag instead.