Page 2 of Forever We Fall

I recline in my seat and try to listen as the professor steps up to the front of the small theater-style room. The longer he drones about exponent properties, the further my mind wanders.

Within minutes, I’m back on our terrace overlooking Regent's Park, but only seeing Kendra down on her knees and my little prick between her sweet lips. It’s a bittersweet memory. For a moment, the pleasure overwhelms the pain—the reason I’m in this godforsaken place to begin with.

I can still hear her saying she’s never done anything like this before. Stupidly, I was inclined to believe her. Even though Kendra’s friends had said the same thing when they knelt for me over the past year.

That belief lasted less than a minute. About the length of time it took her to unfasten my pants and pull out my swollen length. The second it was in her mouth, she blew me like it was her life’s passion and her daily practice. She moaned and slurped and gagged. At that point, I was glad she was two years older than me. I didn’t care if she did it every day in the boys’ bathroom to earn cash for the shops.

Take my money.

I was too far gone to care. My balls were drawn up tight and ready to blow. I didn’t much care when my mum opened the door and screamed behind me. Except Kendra stopped blowing me. She even had the decency to look contrite.

Me?

Nope.

I’m an asshole.

I wrapped my hands around my wet length, jerked twice, and shot my load. When my eyes finally opened and my brain began to function, I noticed where it landed. Her cheek, open bottom lip, and the tops of her not-so-demurely covered breasts were coated.

My mom had the good sense to vanish. Kendra looked like she wanted to.

That should have been the thing that got me here. It wasn’t.

“Mr. Kido?”

The professor mispronounces my surname as kiddo. One look at my face without the present scowl should tell him how off the mark he is. I don’t correct him. I don’t tell him that it is pronounced like key and dough like I do for all the other morons who can’t say my name. I don’t tell him that I’m descended from samurai. I don’t tell him I’ve practiced martial arts and swordplay since I could walk. I don’t tell him that I could slice his neck open with my pencil before he blinks.

No, it would draw more attention to me and the situation, me being the new outcast. It would add more fuel to the already humiliating fire.

This is my punishment, after all.

“You don’t know the answer because you weren’t paying attention. There’s no daydreaming in this class. Do you understand? Daydream and fail.” He snaps the cap on his dry-erase marker. His gaze flits from me and my narrowed glare as though he knows he’s pushing it. Pushing me.

My chest goes tight and hot. I’d like nothing more than to rip this quarter desktop from the floor it’s bolted to and chuck it at his head. My daydream continues with the hunk of metal careening down the levels of seats, taking out Phillip on its way, and then leveling the professor in front of everyone.

“Who can solve the equation?” The prof’s gaze moves around the room, but no one volunteers.

He writes all the questions on the board daily before we come in. He explains the concept, works through a few, calls on a few kids, and then we work in silence for the rest of the mind-numbing class to complete the problems and submit our work.

“Two hundred seventy-four,” I answer. His gaze shifts back to me with a hint of an eye roll. “Twenty-six. Five hundred sixty-one. Three hundred five. Nine hundred sixty-nine.”

His eyes go wide, finally figuring out that I’m answering all the equations on the board, out loud, for the entire class. Several students are several steps ahead of him. They jot down the numbers as I rattle them off. Phillip, the dog-ass-faced kid, sits several rows below me. He laughs at the number sixty-nine like the idiot he is.

“Thirty-nine. Five hundred forty-three. Seventy-eight.”

“Mr. Kido,” the professor snaps, mispronouncing my name once more.

“It’s Kido!” I bark. “I don’t need to pay attention. You do.”

The man’s mouth gapes. Lots ofoohsanduh-ohsreverberate around the room. The sallow color in his cheeks goes ruddy. His upper lip quivers and slowly gathers into a snarl. “How dare you?—”

“What? Point out that your second example is incorrect?”

His head snaps toward the board. I’m fairly certain he reworks the problem in his head and then jerks back toward me.

We’re in a standoff even though I’m sitting.

It’s the point when he can send me to the office and make an enemy of me, or he can acknowledge he’s wrong, and I’ll blow his grubby ass out of the water where math is concerned, as well as life in general.

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