Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
“You don’t really know me well enough to be sure I wasn’t.” He took another breath. “Anyway, won’t be the first time I’ve been accused of shit, or the last. Trust me.” Between his expression and the bitterness in his tone, it was a loaded comment. I couldn’t help wondering how his father being a known pastor in town played into it.
“As I told you before, and as Officer Howe said, you really should never throw yourself in the middle of something like that.”
“You gotta show fucks like that that they can’t get away with hurting people.”
I stood my ground. “It was dangerous.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? A thank-you is all I need for what I did back there.”
“That guy had a knife.”
“A dumb kid with a knife doesn’t scare me, Mr. Warner. Did you see the way he was holding that thing? I figured it was about to shake right out of his hand. Didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Well, you knew what you were doing when you were painting that gravel with his blood.”
I was being a little dramatic, but not by much. I did wonder where the hell a kid like him had learned to fight like that.
“I’ll have to file a report with the school too,” I added. “You might have to write up something for Administration.”
“Whatever.”
He was over the night, and I sure as hell understood why.
“You said you Ubered?” It was something he’d mentioned while the cops were chatting with us. “Do you need a ride? It’s the least I can do.”
He looked me over, almost like he was trying to decide if he could trust getting a ride from me, which seemed odd at this point, after everything that had transpired.
“Sure, Mr. Warner. Let’s do that.”
7
Kyle
As I buckled up in James’s car, he asked, “Where do you live?”
“Turn on your car.”
He hesitated, his expression twisting up, but he obeyed, giving me the opportunity to enter the address in the GPS on his dash.
He closed his eyes and laughed. It was nice seeing him smile after everything we’d been through that night.
“Oh, wow. Twenty minutes,” he said as the address popped up. “I didn’t realize you lived so far outside downtown.”
“You don’t know much about me.”
Maybe I was being a dick for iterating the fact. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but it was clear by the way he jerked back at my comment that he took it worse than I’d intended. Fuck, I was bad at being human.
“I know you have an impressive left hook,” he came back with, which broke the tension as we shared another laugh. He had this uncanny way of cutting right through the awkwardness, especially after that cop had been such an asshole.
He put the car in drive before heading out of the lot, into the street.
“‘At length from us may find, who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe,’” he noted.
“Is this a pop quiz on Milton, or are you trying to make a point? Because I’m pretty confident force served us fine back there.”
“Just an observation,” he went on, “but I am curious where you learned to hit like that.”
“Just a few things I’ve picked up in life.”
Things I wasn’t interested in sharing. Not with him. Not with anyone.
“As you could probably tell, I’m not much of a fighter, and really, I don’t think it’s necessarily an important skill to have.”
“If you’re gonna Mr. Rogers me for twenty minutes, I swear I will jump out of this car and fucking walk. We’re not at school. As I had to remind that cop, I’m eighteen fucking years old, so you don’t have to do this dumb teacher-student moment like you’re about to haul me off to the principal’s office to explain conflict resolutions to me.”
I didn’t have a problem with James, but I wasn’t going to tolerate any of his teacher bullshit either. Not when I was already worked up enough from the night.
“Fair enough.”
It seemed I’d effectively killed the conversation, leaving me to my own thoughts as they pulled me out of survival mode and into thinking about why the hell I’d been back there to begin with. I couldn’t believe I’d even considered going to that extra-credit thing. I didn’t do extra credit.
Although, I knew what had really drawn me there: Mr. Warner—James. Teach.
He continued to fascinate me.
Like when I heard him talking to Simon.
I’d known the kid since elementary school. His parents had defected from Dad’s church and moved on to one of Wyachet’s many cults for the über-wealthy after his brother died in a car accident. Hearing him talking about feeling messed up in the head, about his depression and anxiety…fuck, it hurt my heart.
Teach could have disregarded Simon like his other teachers and even the other kids in school, like even I had until I heard how much he was struggling. But James had talked and listened. He was different, not just than most of the teachers I knew, but most people. I wondered if he even knew what he’d done for that guy, but it seemed almost instinctual for him. Like that was just the kind of person he was, same as when he talked to me.