Page 17 of Rot

“I’m afraid I will no longer be providing this school with donations, and I will have to get my lawyers involved. Your school does have a team of lawyers on retainer, doesn’t it? I won’t stop until every single adult in this building has lost their job for their incompetence.”

Faced with lawsuits and less money, Mr. Charles looked like he wanted to be sick. He blinked quite a few times, and then he forced out a smile at my grandmother. “That won’t be necessary. I will see what I can do on my end. Your granddaughter won’t be written up for this, but… maybe you should take her home with you all the same, let her have some time to cool down. I will mark the absence as excused, of course.”

When you were rich, threatening with a team of lawyers was pretty much the worst threat you could make.

“Thank you, Mr. Charles,” my grandmother got up, offering me her gloved hand to take. I slipped off the chair and placed my hand in hers. “I’m glad we don’t have to escalate this to the school board. Good day.” She did not wait for his response; she simply turned on her short heels and walked out, pulling me along.

She said not a word to me until we got to her car in the parking lot. She grabbed her keys from her purse and started the ignition, tossing me a stern glance. “Sloane, what on earth were you thinking?”

“She was making fun of me—” Not just of me, but of my mother, and who my father was. It wasn’t anything new, but… I’d grown so tired of being teased over something I had no control over.

“I don’t care what she was saying. What you did, you can’t do again.” She leaned over the middle of the car, grabbing me by my face, the tips of her fingers digging into my cheeks as she forced me to look at her. “Listen to me, girl. They will always have bad things to say about you. You’ll have to deal with it your whole life. When I am dead and gone, you will have to learn how to fend for yourself. You cannot let the rot inside you take over again, do you understand?”

The rot. She blamed the rot, not me.

All I could do was nod a little, and then she let go of my face. As we drove away from the school, my cheeks hurt from the force of her grabbing it. I had to resist the urge to touch my face, to try to massage my cheeks to make them stop hurting. Sitting there, in discomfort, was practice.

I had to learn how to control the rot… otherwise it would start to control me.

Monday morning rolled around all too quickly. My mother didn’t even ask me how the party went or if I behaved myself. I think she didn’t care, not after everything. Still, she was able to shower and dress herself appropriately to go with me to school that morning. We had to meet with the principal to get my schedule and have my little introduction early, before classes started. We had to get there before Elias did, when the halls were still empty.

I spaced out on most of it. The principal was a middle-aged lady who seemed nice enough. She took us around for a tour after meeting us and giving me my class schedule, showed me where my locker was, and all that.

The school was… let’s just say a lot older than my last. A lot older and a lot smaller. There weren’t multiple floors, so no big, grand steps to the second or third floor. Just one sprawling building with cracked floor tiles and, I shit you not, animal heads mounted on the walls in the cafeteria.

Animal heads. Like, stuffed heads. Hunting trophies.Inside a school.I found it interesting how different high schools could be from one another. I guess it was true; they took on pieces of their communities. Blackrain and hunting.

The halls had started to grow full of students, the morning having officially started. My mother and I stood in the front hall of the school, near the main office, with the principal. She was busy smiling at us and saying, “I’m sure you’ll love it here. If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to come see me. I want your transfer to be as smooth as possible.”

I divided my stare between the principal and my mother. Eventually, I said, “Okay, thanks.” And then I turned around, my bag slung over my shoulder, and walked away, leaving my mother to deal with the principal. Aunt Maggie had given me some new notebooks; this school didn’t allow laptops during regular class periods, go figure.

Probably because this school was stuck in the past. Nothing was updated. I bet this school never got huge donations from its community, and there was no way it had a big budget from the state.

I went to my locker to put my bag away—bags weren’t allowed in classrooms, either, the principal had so kindly let us know. I didn’t have any textbooks; I’d supposedly get them in each class. I’d bet anything they were ancient and old textbooks with outdated information and covers that were so beaten-up they were practically falling off.

No one paid attention to me as they walked through the halls. I was one of the crowd. It was a refreshing change of pace from where I was from; I was so used to everybody talking about me, both behind my back and to my face, that being a nobody was kind of nice.

Of course, I wasn’treallya nobody. I was Sloane Karnagy. Whether anyone here would recognize the last name was up for debate. If they searched me online, they’d certainly find out who my father was. So many news articles linked my last name with the Bedlam Butcher.

I decided to go to first period early. I had no one to hang out with in the hallway. Luckily, the school was so damned small, it was next to impossible to get lost. No uniforms, either, so everyone came in whatever the hell they wanted. It was all so new and different.

The day passed slowly. I got my textbooks. I also got lazily introduced in the beginning of each class. Thankfully, I didn’t see Dana. By some stroke of luck, we must’ve had all different classes. I did see Elias in science, right before lunch. He pretended that I didn’t exist, not even glancing in my direction.

You know who else was in science with us? Jordan.

Of course, he sat a few rows away from me, but unlike Elias, he couldn’t stop staring at me. Maybe he’d thought I was some apparition at the party. Maybe he’d thought he would never see me again.

When class let out and the bell rang—an actual, God-forsaken bell—he hustled to reach me. “Hey,” he spoke with a smile, “new girl.” We walked out of the classroom together. “You got lunch next?”

I nodded.

“Sweet. Sit with me. Oh, and if you want to borrow my notebook to catch up on the last few chapters—we have a test next week.” He fumbled a bit to pull out his notebook from the stack of stuff he held onto, offering it to me.

We slowed down and stepped aside, so the rush of other students could get around us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elias walk by, a scowl on his face. I instantly brightened, giving Jordan a smile as I took the notebook from him and said, “Thank you. I’ll try to copy it all tonight.”

“Is it too soon to offer myself up as a study buddy?” he asked with a silly grin.

“A study buddy?” I started to walk towards my locker, so I could drop off all my stuff. I didn’t pack a lunch, nor did I bring money to buy anything. I skipped lunch most days, anyway.

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