Page 21 of Vicious Games

And as if the endless teasing wasn’t enough, now I also have to deal with being tutored by my new arch-nemesis.

I really wish Sister Agnes had kept her bright ideas to herself.

Sure, I’m flunking calculus, but it’s not like I’ll need it in the nunnery.

Unfortunately, if I want to keep a roof over my head at the orphanage, I have no choice but to suck it up and endure him.

Sister Agnes all but guaranteed that if I got at least a C minus, I’d pass her class. That’s all I need.

Sounds easy enough, right?

It’s not. Not when the numbers and equations look like an ancient, cryptic language to me.

And not when I have to trust a dickhead like Lucky to help me make sense of it all.

Ugh.

Why did I have to go and punch that jerk?

Oh, that’s right. Because he was being a douchebag and using me as a prop to stroke his already enlarged ego in front of the whole class.

He got off light with just a punch.

These are my thoughts as I navigate through the taunting crowd, grateful when they finally scatter at the sound of the bell. I step into my last class of the day and make my way to my seat in the back, immediately tuning out the chatter around me. My gaze drifts to the water-speckled window, where heavy storm clouds roll in, casting the sky in deep gray as rain drenches the courtyard outside.

I like the rain.

It’s chaotic. Unpredictable.

It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. It just is.

As I find peace in the storm brewing outside, I absentmindedly run my fingers over the gold bracelet on my wrist, my thumb tracing the small Saint Peter pendant. It’s the only thing of value I own. The only gift my parents ever gave me.

They left it around my neck when they abandoned me at the church.

A part of me wonders why.

Was it guilt? Regret? A last-minute token to ease their conscience before they walked away forever?

I should have sold it years ago. God knows money is always tight. But I never could bring myself to do it.

Because keeping it means there’s a chance, however small, that maybe my parents weren’t as heartless as I think they were.

Maybe they had a reason.

Maybe they wanted to come back, but for some inexplicable reason, they just couldn’t.

But those are just fairy tales orphans tell themselves.

The truth?

No one has come looking for me in eighteen years.

And I doubt they ever will.

The bell rings, yanking me out of my thoughts, and I’m hardly surprised that I’ve spent most of the class lost in my head—again. It happens more often than it should, and it’s one of the many reasons I’ve always gone unnoticed by the rest of the student body at this wretched school.

I’m not the kind of student who raises her hand to answer questions or volunteers for anything that might put her in the spotlight. I’m the one who keeps her head down, lips sealed, silently counting the minutes for the bell to ring.

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