Page 53 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

I’m being outright bullied and she thinks I’m trying to get attention?

“When is your next lesson with Brother Zachary?”

A cold dread seeps into my bones. “Why?”

“I ask the questions,” Sharon says. Her pen scratches on the paper as she signs whatever she was writing with a violent flourish.

“Right now.”

“Good. You will take this letter—” she looks up and folds up the piece of paper she was writing on “—and you will hand it to Brother Zachary the moment you set foot in his class.”

She holds out the paper. It’s not even in an envelope. But as if she can read my mind, she adds, “It’s for his eyes only.”

This can’t be good.

My fingers are numb when I take the paper from her. I turn and head for the door.

“And Trinity?”

I pause, biting the inside of my lip.

“If you disrupt my class again, there will be severe consequences.”

My heart’s still pounding in my throat when I make my way down the hall.

Instead of confronting Cassius about his prank, I slink down the hall and pray no one notices me. I clomp down the stairs and stand in front of Zachary’s classroom door.

A student hurries toward me from the other side of the hall, and for a moment I’m convinced he’s a messenger about to make my day even worse.

Instead, he pauses about a yard away from the door and watches me intently. “You going in, or what?”

Shit, I didn’t even recognize him. It’s Simon—a kid from my psych class. I step back and let him go ahead of me while I try to gather my courage.

But it’s a lost cause—I’m rattled.

There’s no denying I have a target on my back. But who put it there?

Andwhy?

Zachary looks up from his desk and then down at the paper I’m holding out. It trembles ever so slightly. He takes it from me, the class falling silent behind me when he opens it. Two ofthe students from my English class are also in psych, but I’m positive the rest of the class already knows about what happened in English.

Did any of them see the drawing?

I’d almost peeked at the letter when I was standing outside, but then I thought back to that stained glass window I’d seen on my first tour through Saint Amos.

That big eye in the sky.

Always watching.

Omnipotent.

Anyway, I don’t want to know what it says.

Ignorance is bliss, right?

Zachary folds open the letter and scans it. He closes it up and slips it into his desk drawer. Then his eyes fall to the textbook I’m crushing against my chest.

I’d forgotten all about it, but as soon as his eyes settle on the hardback cover, the drawing inside flashes through my mind like a still from a porno film.

---