Page 111 of The Outsider

“Smooth,” I teased, and he chuckled again and gave me an affectionate squeeze.

“Before we know it, this trial period will be over,” he said after a moment. “I know it’s hard right now, with the way everyone’s been. They’re just scared. I know they’ll come around; they’re family.”

I nodded hesitantly. “I just…I’ve always been looking for my place, I suppose. Even back at the Cave, I felt like I was searching for it.”

“I know. But sometimes, you have to make a place for yourself. Find a space where something’s missing and fill it.”

I shot him an accusatory look. “You’ve been talking to Jenna.”

“Yep,” he replied without an ounce of regret, his eyes serious. “There’s a place for you here, Claire. But if you’re hoping for someone to give you permission, they won’t. You’ve gotta claim it, and not give a shit what a few bad apples say about it, because you fucking belong here. Prove it to them.”

He’s right.I recalled the conversation we’d had when I first started to live at the camp with him and Kimmy. He’d called me out on my arrogance about learning to survive…and he’d been right then, too. I could always count on him to tell me what I needed to hear, to jolt me out of my fear response.

“Alright,” I sighed. “I need some paper, a pen, and Jenna. And maybe a ride to the Lodge.”

John grinned. “You got it.”

The schoolroom was at least orderly…even if I wasn’t sure how it had housed all the school-aged children in the Valley. The room wasn’t small, but with 40 desks crammed into it, it felt a little claustrophobic. I sat behind the teacher’s desk at the front, flipping through the documents that Dr. Irons had left behind, making notes with a pen.

“It was cramped,” Jenna admitted as she helped sort through the paperwork. “We traded off days between the older and younger kids. I mentioned to Dr. Irons that the council should build a schoolhouse, but…I don’t think he took it seriously. I was only his assistant for a couple months.”

I nodded absently. There’d been a whole file cabinet full of his lesson plans, as well as files on each of the students. Useful, but as I expected, his curriculum was lacking. Much of it was too advanced for the age groups he was teaching, and his lesson plans involved no aspects of experiential learning. Worse, the younger children’s education was clearly being neglected in favour of the older kids.

The schoolroom had books—all stacked in piles on a forlorn-looking bookshelf at the back of the room—but clearly lacked the space tostore them. As a result, its selection remained relatively limited, and the books present were mostly classics and Old World science textbooks.

“How bad is it?” John asked, reading my expression.

I tapped my pen against the desk. “Define ‘bad.’”

He chuckled. “How much work is it?”

I took a deep breath before replying.

“I’ll need to create a new curriculum,” I said. “Some of the professor’s lesson plans can be repurposed, but…everything is in dire need of an update. It won’t be easy. We’ll need materials, and I agree with Jenna that a schoolhouse will be needed eventually. We can make do with switching between age groups for now, but going to school two days a week just isn’t enough. Which means we’ll also eventually need more teachers.”

Jenna blew out a breath. “That’s a lot.”

“It’s almost like leaving a crusty old bastard in charge of education for like thirty years was a bad idea,” John quipped. “Whatever you need, let me know. If we can’t make it here in the Valley, I’ll add it to the scav list.”

“Books are the main thing,” I said, massaging my temples. “As many books as possible, on every subject. Fiction and nonfiction.”

“We have books,” Jenna supplied. “There are boxes and boxes of them in storage in the Lodge cellar. Some were used for school in the past. But the others are unsorted. Oisín wanted to get them all catalogued, but…”

John’s expression briefly darkened, but I pressed on.

“Good, thank you,” I said, encouraged. “Well, any time anyone finds a new book from now on, they should deliver it to me. I’ll come up with a filing system for all of them. Finding storage will be another problem, but…”

“We can keep them in the cellar for now,” John supplied. “But it sounds like we’ll be adding a library to that schoolhouse.”

I buried my face in my hands. “This is a huge project. They’ll never go for this.”

“Claire, this is why you have to do this,” Jenna insisted. “You’re the only one who knows what we’re missing. You know so much that nobody else does, and it’s not their fault, but they don’t know what they don’t know. You can help us rebuild some of what’s been lost to time.”

“I don’t want to be the rowdy outsider that comes in and tells them they’ve been doing it wrong for decades,” I replied with a sigh.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jenna said. “You just have to show them what you can do.”

The certainty in her voice gave me strength. I’d only known Jenna a short time, but she believed in me. And even if I never had children, I could make a difference in the lives of dozens of kids just by doing the job I’d been trained to do.

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