s. Gable.
The neon skull mask she was wearing had slipped sideways, revealing those unmistakable, piercing gray eyes that had once vaporized my confidence during a pop quiz on quadratic equations.
Gone were the sensible beige slacks and the starch-stiffened cardigans. In their place was a patched, distressed leather vest covered in safety pins, ripped fishnets, and a pair of steel-toed combat boots that had clearly seen more action than a textbook. Her hair, usually pulled into an aggressively tight bun, was a frayed mane of electric blue.
I blinked, the strobe lights disorienting me, still gripping her forearm. “Mrs. Gable?!” I yelled over the thrashing guitars of Rotten Appendix, the band currently tearing up the stage.
She yanked her arm out of my grip, adjusting her neon mask. She leaned in, her voice slicing through the 120-decibel noise with the exact same terrifying clarity she used for roll call.
“It’s Gallows after midnight, Thompson,” she barked. “And your posture is still atrocious.”
Before I could process the fact that my high school math teacher was a creature of the underground, the fight I had been heading toward erupted. Two massive, heavily tattooed guys collided, swinging wildly, threatening to topple the speaker stack.
I braced myself to jump in, but Mrs. Gable—Gallows—beat me to it.
She marched right into the epicenter of the brawl. She didn’t throw a punch. She didn’t shove them. She simply planted her steel-toed boots, crossed her arms over her studded vest, and unleashed The Glare.
It was the exact same look she gave Jimmy Peterson in 2016 when he tried to pass a note during finals. A look of such absolute, withering disappointment and authoritative dread that it could freeze magma.
The two behemoths stopped mid-swing. They looked down at this five-foot-four woman radiating pure menace.
“Are we operating under the assumption that angular momentum doesn’t apply to innocent bystanders?” she shouted, her voice cutting through the feedback. “You are off-axis and out of line! Separate, or I will personally demonstrate the physics of a compound fracture!”
The two guys actually recoiled. One of them muttered an apology. The other looked like he was about to ask for a hall pass. They immediately scattered into the crowd.
She turned back to me, dusting off her leather vest with two precise, rhythmic pats.
“How… why…?” I stammered, gesturing vaguely at the mosh pit, her outfit, the entire universe.
Mrs. Gable rolled her eyes. “Calculus is the study of continuous change, Thompson. Order is just a baseline. If you spend forty hours a week enforcing strict variables, you occasionally need to factor in some absolute chaos to keep the equation balanced.”
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a perfectly folded twenty-dollar bill, and slapped it against my chest.
“Get yourself a better flashlight, yours is flickering. And for the love of God, stand up straight.”
Without waiting for an answer, she pulled her mask down, let out a visceral, throat-shredding scream that perfectly matched the singer’s, and launched herself backward into the writhing sea of bodies, crowd-surfing away into the darkness.
I stood there for the rest of my shift, terrified, amazed, and suddenly wishing I had paid more attention in math class.
