Page 54 of Evil King

She nodded. “We all had to be briefed as part of your coming to the school,” Miss Abrams said. “Don’t worry. We’ve all been strictly advisednotto share your case information with anyone outside of the teacher’s network.”

“Cool. Actually, I need, um… I have Mr. Mead’s history class, and I’m not doing great. I was wondering if—”

She tilted her head. “Oh? I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about you from Wendell.”

Shit. “Really? It, uh, it feels like I’m not getting it, and I was hoping for private lessons, maybe?” That was fine, right? I could come back later and say my mom got me a tutor or that it just got better.

“Private lessons?” Her warm smile faded, and her eyes got creepily wide. “Let me guess, Nathan told you?”

I shook my head. “What?”

“That little brat. He told you, didn’t he?”

“Told me what?” I said. “Seriously, I just heard you’re a great teacher.”

“Oh!” she screamed suddenly. “A great teacher! That’s what you want? You want me to get on my knees, huh?” I did risk a quick look over at Sicily at that, and it looked like he’d successfully attached the camera and was starting to climb down, but he looked just as shocked by the outburst as I was. “Hey!” Miss Abrams screamed, bringing my attention back to her. “My eyes are here!” She pointed to her breasts. “That’s what you want, right?”

“What!”

Sicily walked over. “Uh, couldn’t help but overhear. Is everything okay?”

“You brought a friend? You think you’re going todouble teamme!” She ran over to the window and started to open it. “This is my life now, right? Opening my legs for any of you who wants a piece.”

“Whoa,” I said, walking over to Miss Abrams. “Just calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down!” she started to sing. “Calm down! I’ll calm down.”

I saw what she was going for and reached out toward her. “No!”

I was too late. Miss Abrams jumped up and launched herself out the window, falling the entire four stories and slamming against the pavement below.

“Holy shit,” Sicily hissed and then looked up. “Fuck, I gotta get that camera.”

I looked behind me, and there was a small collection of students standing in the doorway watching us. “Move fast,” I whispered back and then stormed toward the students. “What thefuckare you looking at!” I screamed. “You wanna fucking go!” Students screamed and ran away from me, and I permanently said goodbye to any hope of merging into regular life here at school. “Get the fuck outta here!”

“Shit!” one student yelled as he ran. “Maybe he did push her!”

I stared after him in horror, realizing that the way she jumped as I reached out for her probably did look like I pushed her. Sicily rushed out of the room past me, convincing me that he got his camera, and I was just turning to run myself when I came face to face with the school’s on-duty cop.

“You’re gonna need to come with me.”

22

Cherri

The day hadn’t really turned out well for me in the wake of seeing Deon with his new…girlfriend? Sicily said they’d been inseparable and that he’d taken her out. How quickly did things go between them? Did he sleep with her? Every time I thought about it, I got sick to my stomach all over again. With Nathan, his cheating only made me angry. It had nothing to do with my being unhappy that he was sleeping with someone else and everything to do with the fact that he was disrespecting me and behaving as if I didn’t matter. With Deon, the thought of him being with another woman made me want to curl up and pull my hair out. Someone else getting to kiss him, someone else getting to touch him, it brought out a possessive streak I didn’t even know I had. It was worse because I had no one to blame but myself.

“Are you okay? That was terrifying!”

“I’m okay! Can you believe that? Do you really think he pushed her?”

I turned the corner to head to my locker and saw a small clump of students gathered in the crook behind the stairwell. They were wildly murmuring to themselves, and the more I looked around, the more I realized there appeared to be some sort of commotion going on.

“It was that kid, right? The one who had been in prison?”

I stopped short and whipped my head around. The group of students nearest me seemed to be talking about Deon, so I approached them, and the second I was close enough, one of them brought the whole group to attention. They all straightened up and smiled at me.

“Hey, your highness,” one of them greeted, a girl with a bob haircut. “Are you okay? You didn’t get caught up in the mess, did you?”

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