Page 6 of Sweet Nightmare

I wait for him to say something to the fae, but it turns out he doesn’t have to. One look from him has their words, and laughter, crumbling like dust around us.

For several seconds, silence—long, taut, jagged-edged silence—hangs in the air as the whole class holds its breath and waits to see what happens next. Because the Jean-Jerks’ unstoppable assholery is about to meet Jude’s immovable everything.

CHAPTER FOUR

A FAE WORSE

THAN DEATH

Lightning flashes outside the room’s lone Queen Anne–style window, slicing through the sudden, unnatural darkness of the early afternoon sky.

As if to underscore the seriousness of the upcoming storm—not to mention the current atmosphere in this classroom—thunder booms seconds later. It’s loud enough to rattle that same window and shake the ground around us. Half the class gasps as the lights flicker, but instead of breaking the tension in the room, Mother Nature’s temper tantrum only ratchets it up higher.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and lightning will strike a Jean-Jerk. Right now, fae flambé really doesn’t sound so bad.

Ms. Aguilar glances uneasily out the window. “With all this lightning, I certainly hope someone remembered to check the fire extinguishers.”

Thunder booms again, and more students shift uneasily. Normally the threat of a September storm wouldn’t so much as get a second look. They’re a way of life here on this Gulf Coast island—especially during hurricane season.

But this one didn’t grow and build the way they usually do. It pretty much came out of nowhere, and its intensity seems to mimic the explosive energy in the room even before Jean-Paul and his band of not-so-merry losers shift forward in their desks like they’ve been waiting for this moment their whole lives.

My stomach tightens, and I slide my legs out from beneath my desktop, preparing for the worst.

“Don’t even think about getting in the middle of that,” the new girl behind me—Izzy, I think her name is—hisses. “I’ve been waiting for them to get their asses kicked from the first day. Yours, not so much.”

“Thanks?” I whisper back even as I tell myself to listen to her.

But before Izzy can say anything else, Jean-Luc half coughs, half laughs as he runs a hand through his long blond hair. “You got a problem, Abernathy-Lee?”

Jude doesn’t answer, just raises one dark, slashing brow as he continues to stare Jean-Luc and the others down. Jean-Luc doesn’t look away, but there’s a sudden glimmer of doubt in his eyes.

The glimmer grows into a whole lot of concern as Jude continues to watch them, the unease in the room becoming so palpable it hangs in the air along with the humidity. But Jean-Jacques must be too self-absorbed to notice as he sneers, “Yeah, that’s what we thought. You’re fucking wi—”

He breaks off as—out of nowhere—Jean-Luc’s hand flashes out, slamming into the back of Jean-Jacques’s head and shoving his face straight into his desk before he can spew any more vitriol.

“What did you do that for?” Jean-Jacques whines as he wipes one dark hand across the small trickle of blood now coming from his nose.

“Shut the fuck up,” Jean-Luc snarls back, but his eyes continue to stay locked on Jude, who still hasn’t moved more than that one, lone eyebrow. But his stillness doesn’t seem to matter to Jean-Luc, at least not judging by the belligerent look on his face. “We were just fucking around, man. We don’t have a problem here.”

Jude’s second brow goes up, as if to query, Don’t we?

When no one else answers—or so much as breathes, to be fair—his gaze shifts from Jean-Luc to Jean-Claude, who is squirming uneasily in his seat. The moment their eyes meet, Jean-Claude suddenly develops a deep and abiding fascination with his phone—one the other three Jean-Jerks mimic with their own phones in short order.

Suddenly, none of them will look Jude in the eye.

And just like that, the danger passes, tension leaking out of the air like helium from an old balloon. At least for now.

Ms. Aguilar must sense it, too, because she lets out a relieved puff of air before pointing to the flowery quote she wrote across the board in bright-pink Expo marker. “‘The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing.’” Her voice rises and falls with the words, like she’s singing a song. She then gestures to the line written below it in teal blue. “‘To let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.’”

Looks like we’re just skipping straight over the elephant-sized fae problem in the room and going with a quote from a dead white guy. Then again, at the moment I don’t actually hate that decision.

After she’s given what I assume must be a dramatic pause, Ms. Aguilar continues. “That, my friends, is a quote from my favorite Romantic poet. Can any of you hazard a guess who it is?”

No one immediately volunteers the answer. In fact, we all just kind of sit there, staring at her in a combination of disbelief and surprise.

Her face falls as she looks around the room. “No one even has a guess?”

Still no response.

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