Page 45 of Learning Little Lizzie

Stopping behind a group of girls dressed in the official school uniforms of the Rawhide Littles’ program, Kylie tilted her head to the side in thought. “Yes and no? It’s more like just letting go of all the adult responsibilities and worries and stuff and just being myself. I don’t know how to explain it, really.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“I think you might enjoy it, if you gave it a try.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Her conversation with Kylie played over and over in her mind as she made her way to her Business Law class. It wasn’t until she pulled her binder out that she remembered with a sinking stomach that she’d meant to finish her homework during breakfast.

“Shit,” she mumbled, wincing slightly even though Samuel was nowhere around to hear.

“Everything okay?” Reese, a pretty blonde who was in the process of finishing up a degree in something Eliza never could remember the name of that was supposed to help her in her mission to save all the animals in a thousand mile radius, sent her a concerned look.

“I completely forgot the homework and my—Professor Eaton’s going to kill me.”

“Oh no. Here.” Pulling a paper from her own binder, Reese handed it across the small aisle. “But be quick. You know Professor Remington will have us both in the disciplinarian’s office if we get caught.”

“You are a lifesaver.”

Eliza set her binder up on the desk so it blocked her from view and went to work copying down Reese’s answers. There were a few she was pretty sure were wrong, and she made a note to mention them to Reese later just in case, but for now she was just worried about getting something down on the paper.

Too late, she noticed the shadow that fell over her, around the same time Reese let out a groan.

“Forget something, Miss Bennett?”

There was no point hiding it now. “Yes, Sir.”

“Hand me your assignment, and the one you are copying, please.”

With an apologetic look for Reese, she handed both papers over. Silence, almost deafening in its completeness, fell over the room as he examined the papers.

“I’m disappointed in you, Eliza. I thought your Daddy had made more of an impression than this on you. Forgetting your homework is one thing. Cheating on an assignment is another thing entirely. You and Miss Reynolds will be reporting to Mr. Chambers’ office directly after class.”

“Cheating?” Reese’s voice rose to a squeak. “We weren’t cheating, Sir. It’s no different than if we’d done the assignment together, really.”

“I’ll leave that to Mr. Chambers and your Daddies to decide. In the meantime, you’ll both be receiving a zero on this assignment.”

A lump lodged itself solidly in Eliza’s throat and the world around her blurred as she slid down in her seat. Not only had she forgotten her assignment, she’d gotten her friend in trouble, too. And once her Daddy learned she’d gotten sent to the Disciplinarian’s Office, she had no doubt she was going to be in for a world of hurt.

What an awful fucking day.

He was halfway through a ham sandwich and the stack of pop quizzes he needed to grade when someone knocked on his classroom door. “Come in.”

“Um, Sir?” Hannah, who wasn’t due in his class for another hour, poked her head into his room. “Mr. Chambers asked to see you in his office.”

“In the Disciplinarian’s Office?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, Sir. But I did see Eliza sitting outside his office.”

Ah, that explained it. “I’ll be right there. Thank you, Hannah.”

He wrapped up the rest of his lunch and shoved his laptop in his bag before hurrying up to the Disciplinarian’s Office on the second floor. Eliza was, as advertised, seated on the bench outside Professor Chambers’ office, looking rather miserable. She glanced up as he approached, her eyes going wide a moment before her head fell back against the wall and she groaned.

“I can’t believe they called you already.”

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