Page 13 of The Cruelty of Thorns

One of the girls in the front of the class raised her hand. “Yes, Ms. Wall?”

“Is this open book?”

“I suppose I can allow that. At this point no amount of cheating is going to make up for not reading the material.”

I chewed on the end of my pen for a few minutes while I considered my approach to the topic. Beside me, Ron shook his head and muttered under his breath, “I’m destined to fail this class.”

When the words finally started coming, I quickly filled a page with no problem. I was just polishing off my conclusion when Mr. Edmonds called for everyone’s attention. “Because I’m sure none of you have finished this, I’m giving you a reprieve, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t want to decipher your handwriting. Finish your essay and type it up and hand it in on Friday. I expect at least a page, more if that’s what you need. Remember, back up your statements.”

“I guess he really does have a heart,” Ron said to me as we filed out of the classroom.

“How far did you get?” I asked.

“Two sentences. Guess I should finish the book, huh?”

“That would probably help.”

“You wouldn’t want to summarize it for me, would you?”

I laughed. “Read the book. Who knows, you might enjoy it.”

“I doubt that.”

We were navigating the stream in the hallway. “Why did you take this class if you don’t like to read?”

“Who says I don’t like to read?” He grinned at me. “Truth is, I needed a literature credit and this was better than Shakespeare. Besides, I had heard that Edmonds was a fair teacher.”

“The syllabus includes eight books,” I pointed out. “At some point, you’re going to have to read them.”

“True. But the next one is Frankenstein. That’s science fiction, right?”

We had arrived at the end of the hall. “I’m upstairs from here,” he announced. “Thanks for not laughing at my drawings.”

“Are you kidding? They were great.”

“You really think so?”

“You’ve got talent yourself, Ron.”

“That means a lot, coming from you. I gotta go. See you later.”

He dashed up the stairs, leaving me staring after him. See you later? What did he mean by that?

♦ ♦ ♦

“Did you talk to Ron today?’ Kristin asked.

We were seated at a table in the cafeteria with some of Kristin’s friends. I had a psychology class in thirty minutes and since this was the only break in my schedule today, I had ducked into the cafeteria for a quick bite when Kristin waved me over. I recognized one of the girls, Celine, from the bar last week but the other two were unknown to me until Kristin introduced them. I noticed Lisa was absent and wondered if she had recovered from yesterday.

“We sit next to each other, so yeah,” I replied to Kristin’s question

“Who are you talking about?” Celine asked.

“Ron Beechman,” Kristin said. “He likes her art.”

“Are you an artist?” one of the other girls, Carly, asked.

“Not really. I–”

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