Page 68 of Haunt Me

She looks like an avenging angel, standing there in door’s opening, the afternoon light casing her shadow long and thin on the floor. I blink some more, but Eden (or Eden’s hologram), isn’t wasting any time. My professor gets up, quick words coming to his lips to yell at her for barging in, but instead, she does the yelling.

She lets him have it.

I just sit there, dumbfounded, watching this slip of a girl with her tight braid and her mismatched clothes lecture my school’s strictest professor.

“Who gives you the right to bully your students?” she asks him. Her voice is calm and reasonable, like usual, but there is a fire behind it. “What kind of example do you think you are giving them? Bullying a boy who has just lost his dad? Mentioning him during class as a sort of sick power play? Who gives you the right? Are you perhaps confused, and think that you are a villain on a trashy TV show instead of an academic instructor?”

Her words are razor-sharp, hitting below the belt. My professor turns all shades of puce, then flinches. She just doesn’t let him get a word in edgewise, but her words are not heated. Her fury is quiet and dignified. It’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen.

“Trying to make up for any lack in your personal or professional life by bringing one of your students down is the trick of a weak man,” Eden says. I don’t know how she can stand there and say these things.

Except she seems to have thought of them beforehand. Maybe for reasons of her own. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that she has been in the exact same position as me before. Many times.

But that’s not possible, right? She was homeschooled, and her dad adores her.

Then again, it’s not possible that she should be standing here right now, so what do I know? Nothing makes sense.

“I suggest you apologize and watch your behavior from now on,” Eden goes on, “because this student might not have a father to come here and yell at you for your lousy behavior, but he does have a family. A mom, a grandfather, a brother. He has friends who will drag your name through the mud if anything happens to him because of your actions or words. And neither you nor your school will recover from the bullying allegations, I can promise you that. If you are so weak that you can’t handle your students being smarter than you in class, I can guarantee you won’t be strong enough to handle that.”

Ouch. I wince on his behalf, even as my lips curl in a smile.

“Who-who are you, miss, may I ask?” he asks finally, his voice colorless. He is scared out of his mind.

“I am his older sister,” Eden lies without so much as blinking, and then reaches out her hand with authority. Bemused, I get up and follow her.

“Come on, Isaiah,” she says, “we’re leaving. You need to talk to your therapist about what happened here today. Then, maybe our legal team.”

This last part is so ridiculous, that I can barely hold the laughter in until we’re out the door. My professor turns deadly white.

Eden and I run away together, me holding her hand as if she’s my ‘older sister’ even though she is literally less than half my size. The principal has arrived at the scene, and I see him getting smaller at the end of the hallway as we run. He looks slightly pale as well; he must have heard some or all of it from the other side of the door.

We just keep running. Neither dares follow us.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” I gasp as we run to our spot in the woods. “No, not crazy. Fearless. You are fearless.”

“I don’t care what you call it,” Eden replies. “You… You are hurting enough on your own, withoutthese people”—the way she says ‘these people’ sends chills down my spine—“adding to it. So yeah, that was a little crazy and a little reckless, but I don’t care.”

She is shaking like a leaf.

I drape my scarf around her throat—neither one of us is wearing a coat.

I brush a strand of hair away from her lips. Her fast-coming breath scorches my fingers. Before I know it, they are sliding down all the way to her wrist, feeling its delicate veins as my palm circles it. Her hand is made of porcelain, of pearls, and I turn her around to face me. She lifts her pink lips to mine, open, waiting, and I can’t help myself any longer. I guide her with an arm around her waist, pressing her back against a tree as my mouth comes down on hers hungrily, as if I’m drowning and she is oxygen.

My fingers tangle in her hair, and she grows weak against me, her knees giving way. We both giggle into each other’s lips as I catch her against me and then slide to my knees, holding her, and it’s like our first kiss all over again. I am sinking and I don’t want to be rescued.

“My dad supports this school majorly,” she says, “did you know that?” I shake my head. I had no idea. “I’ll see if I can get that idiot professor fired.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Isaiah,” she replies, her tone serious and slow, as if she is speaking to a child. “He made you feel like you are not good enough, and that’s not acceptable in any way, but especially for you.”

“For me?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Please tell me you don’t know you’re a genius,” she sighs.

I just stand there, dumbfounded for the second time in a single day, my lips swollen from kissing her, my heart in pieces from all the crazy, overwhelming, impossible things she makes me feel.

“I’m what?”

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