Page 24 of Mr. Principal

“You’re nothing but a pissant, no-balls, bully.” Okay, so when I said I wouldn’t assault him, I meant physically assault him. Verbal assault wouldn’t get me arrested.

“That’s it. I’m calling security.”

Okay. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe verbal assault could potentially get me arrested. But I wasn’t going to back down. I spent my whole life backing down and doing what was expected of me. I hadn’t even asked for anything in my divorce because I’d fostered hopes that if I ‘played nice’, Tom would regret divorcing me and would come back to me. And look where that had gotten me...

“Call security. I don’t care. I’m fired anyway, so I hope you don’t mind if I do this,” I said kicking my chair which knocked his cup of coffee off his desk and straight onto his shoe.

“Are you crazy? That was fresh coffee.” He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

That felt good, so I started knocking other things off his desk. By the time security showed up, I was in full rampage mode and was kicking, shouting, and tearing his office apart.

“Get her out of here,” he yelled as security grabbed me by my arm.

I knocked their hands off and said, “Let go of me. He’s the one you should be dragging out of here.”

“Come on, Dana,” said one of the guards who I’d known since I started working at Primrose. “I don’t want to have to call the cops,” he whispered.

I sighed and let him escort me out. Lucy and Patrick looked on. Lucy looked despondent and Patrick looked highly amused.

“See you, Pat,” I called as I left.

He gave me a big smile and a thumbs up. Clearly, I’d made Patrick proud. I huffily got into my car and then all my bravado disappeared as the enormity of the situation weighed on me. Great. Just great. Now I was an unemployed single mom again. I felt that no matter how hard I tried, I just kept failing Meredith in every way that mattered. Not knowing what to do, I wiped at the tears falling down my cheeks and began to drive.