//------------------------------// // What's a Teacher to Do? // Story: The Diamond Tiara Files // by Wildebeest //------------------------------// "Make what go away?" "Silver Spoon. She *sniff* won't leave me alone." The nurse's mind raced furiously as she tried to prepare a response. It was, of course, her job to keep all the colts and fillies healthy, but Diamond Tiara had just utterly baffled her with this request. She wished she could say that she hadn't the faintest idea what Diamond was talking about, but after looking into her tear- moistened eyes and hearing her beg for help so earnestly, the nurse decided that she didn't have the heart to say any such thing. Fortunately, while she was still trying to formulate a reply, Cheerilee popped in to bail her out. "How is she?" the teacher asked, timidly stepping through the door. Much to her relief, she saw that Diamond Tiara's wound had been neatly bandaged up. "Well, the scrape doesn't look like anything serious..." said the nurse, her voice nervously trailing off at the end. Cheerilee eyed her with some suspicion. "...But?" she asked, a hint of tension rising in her tone. "...but there's something else that's distressing her. Apparently there's this filly called 'Silver Spoon' that keeps picking on her. Would you know anything about this?" Cheerilee let out a tiny, barely audible whimper of a gasp. "S-she said what?" she asked, her pupils rapidly dilating. "She told me that she wants me to make Silver Spoon go away and leave her alone. Is Silver Spoon a new student or something?" "N-no," stammered Cheerilee, whose body was starting to shiver. "She-she's a- she's a...oh, my. Oh, my." "I *sob* tried to get rid of her, Miss Cheerilee," said Diamond Tiara, "but she won't leave." As she gazed up into her teacher's eyes, the floodgates began to reopen. "Please make her stop, Miss Cheerilee!" she pleaded, newly formed tears dropping onto her lap. Cheerilee took a long, deep breath and proceeded to give the pitiful filly another hug. "I'll try," she whispered. "I promise I'll try." Diamond Tiara broke from her teacher's embrace and roughly shoved her away. "I don't want you to try!" she wailed. "I want you to do it! Make her go away!" Cheerilee sighed. "I'm sorry, Diamond, but all I can say is-" "Please, Miss Cheerilee!" Diamond cried, clasping her hooves together. "You have to do it! You're the teacher!" A hard, dense, throbbing lump had lodged itself in Cheerilee's throat, and a mild wave of nausea was passing over her. Diamond Tiara's words had cut through her like a hot knife through butter. She was right; she was the teacher. Was the education and well-being of an entire class of youngsters too big of a responsibility for her to handle? She had never thought so before, but as she frantically racked her mind for a solution, it certainly seemed like that was the case. She wished she could tell Diamond Tiara that everything would be okay. She wished she could run away from the schoolhouse and never return. She wished she could drag Silver Spoon into the real world and give her the spanking of a lifetime. She wished she could do anything but stand there and stare at this poor, pathetic, despairing little girl that she was powerless to help. "So what are you going to do?" asked the thoroughly stymied nurse. Immediately after she asked that, Cheerliee's bottom lip began to quiver. As the gravity of the situation was sinking in, a thin layer of mist began to form on her eyes, turning everything around her into an amorphous blur. Never in her life did she imagine that this could happen to her. She was a teacher, a matronly mare who had trained her whole life to prepare young ponies for the future. Years of practice, years of experience, a decade worth of acquired knowledge and wisdom, all so she could be ready to give her bright young students whatever help they needed. And now she was failing. Miserably. Cheerilee just hung her head defeatedly as tears began to trickle down her cheeks. With a substantial amount of effort, she barely managed to choke out the three words that she thought she would never have to say... "I...don't...know." Cheerilee's steady breathing pattern was starting to become jerky and erratic as tears continued to run down her cheeks in greater and greater numbers. Every time she looked at Diamond Tiara's sobbing, trembling form, she saw a reflection of herself. What was she? A licensed teacher? A full grown mare entrusted with the lives of the next generation? No. Just a frightened, helpless little filly in a mare's body, desperately waiting for a grownup to step in and make everything better. What's more, she was keeping a class full of students waiting for her. Her feelings of shame became so overwhelming that all she wanted to do was run home, collapse into bed and spend the remainder of the evening crying into a pillow. But of course, that wasn't an option at this point in time. She briefly excused herself from the nurse's office to return to her classroom, if only to tell them that they were all dismissed early. As she walked them out of the schoolhouse in single file, she prayed that none of them noticed her red, swollen eyes or her tear- stained cheeks. Diamond Tiara was, of course, in no condition to be sent home alone, so Cheerilee decided that she would call her father and ask him to come pick her up. Surely her own father would know how to help her, right? ...right?