Page 44 of A Scandal in Homeroom
“Let me help you,” I said again.
“I don’t know why I came over here,” she said, backing away. “This was a waste of time.”
“Not a waste of my time,” I offered. “I’ve learned a lot.”
“I’ve told you nothing,” she said.
“It’s what you didn’t tell me. So thanks for that.”
She looked as if she was about to make a loud dramatic exit, including slamming the front door, but she stopped herself.
“You think you know so much,” she accused me.
“I do. Know so much.”
“Screw you, Locke.”
Then she followed through with the door slamming, her on the other side of it. She didn’t hear me when I said, “You already said that.”
* * *
Reen
A wind pickedup and I shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets. As angry as I was, it should have kept me warmer on the walk from Locke’s place to the Sumners. I kept my head down, stuck to the lighted sidewalks and let my instinct for directions take over even while I continued to argue with him in my head.
You don’t know me. You couldn’t possibly care about me. Just because you want to get inside my pants does not make you a hero. You can’t change anything that happened.
Over and over, I looped all of the things I should have said to him but didn’t. Over and over, I asked myself why I’d even bothered to go see him.
I was curious. That’s all. I wanted to see why he thought I had anything to do with the List. It certainly wasn’t because I wanted to see him again. Talk to him again. Having a conversation with Locke was like playing a game of chess. It made my head hurt.
I was more of a poker girl.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Thankfully there was no one around in the West End to bump into me.
Someone saw lights coming from Thornfield? How? Maybe when the basement door opened and closed? We were using the bathrooms on the first floor, but the only lights on were in the bathrooms. There were no windows in those rooms.
That wasn’t my real problem, though. Why tell Locke about the lights? Why not go to the police if that person thought something was up?
I needed to tell Moriarty. He wouldn’t like it, but we would have to shut down for a couple weeks. Lay low. If I knew anything about Locke, which I suppose I did, I knew he wasn’t going to back off.
If he thought there was something going on at Thornfield, he’d make it his mission to find out what.
To help me?
That seemed unlikely.
I think you’ve been hurt enough already.
If only he hadn’t sounded so damn sincere when he’d said it.
It would make it so much easier to keep lying to him.
10
Gym Class
Reen
