On the next day of class, I sat at the desk I’d brought to Prof. Edward’s classroom and waited tensely for class to begin. Everything was sort of back to normal. My dad was back at work, the same as my mom. They hadn’t been reprimanded, and they counted themselves lucky. Their relief at not getting in trouble infuriated me. Dad hadn’t done anything wrong, but since we had no money, we were the ones at fault.
“Hey there, honeybun. Why don’t you sit with me?”
My shoulders tensed. I turned my head to glare at Damien West as he came over to stand at my desk. I knitted my hands together and made myself politely decline. “No, thank you.”
“Sit with me,” he said and this time it wasn’t a request.
“No, thank you,” I repeated.
The other students were taking their seats. Prof. Edward hadn’t come in yet. The room filled with chatter, but I could see that all of them were watching Damien and me, though they quickly turned away if Damien glanced in their direction.
“Are we really going to have to repeat yesterday?” he asked, putting his hands on my desk and leaning into my face.
I slid back and stared at him in disbelief. What was his problem? “I met your girlfriend yesterday.”
Damien’s eyes slanted away. “Yeah, she told me.”
“Maybe you should take classes with her. I’m sure she’d be happy to sit with you.”
In answer, Damien picked up my desk and carried it over to the one in the corner. I watched him but stayed in my spot.
He pushed the desks flush together and beckoned me over. I got up, but I headed for the door. I crossed paths with Prof. Edward.
“Sarah, where are you going? I’m about to start class,” he said.
“I need to retrieve another desk from storage,” I said.
Prof. Edward blinked and looked into the room. He spotted Damien with the two desks.
“It appears we have enough seating today. No need for you to miss anything,” he said.
In a low voice, I said, “I would prefer not to sit with him.”
In an equally low voice, Prof. Edward replied, “We all must do things we would prefer not to do. Go take your seat, Sarah.”
“He touches me,” I whispered. I hadn’t told my parents about this. I hadn’t told anyone. Prof. Edward wouldn’t have been my first choice of confidant, but it just slipped out.
Prof. Edward’s eyes widened. He looked over at Damien who was intently watching us. “I’m sorry, Sarah, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“But—”
“Go sit down.”
With slumped shoulders, I dragged my chair to my desk. Damien smiled triumphantly. I took out my notebook and pen and pretended he wasn’t there.
And pretending was relatively easy because Damien didn’t once reach out to grab or touch me. He played on his phone and that was all. Class went by peacefully, but Prof. Edward did not call on me once, though I often raised my hand to answer his questions. Of course, Damien was never called upon either. He appeared to be pretending our little corner of the room didn’t exist.
When the bell rang, I gathered my things.
“Have you had breakfast?” Damien asked.
I blinked in surprise at the innocuous question. “Yes,” I answered, not sure what else to say but feeling wary.
“Did your mother fix it?” he asked, there was an edge of bite to the question that confused me.
“Yes,” I said and stood up, hoping to leave.
He languidly stood up as well. “What’d she make?” he asked.
I didn’t understand his interest in my meal but couldn’t see the harm in answering. “Chocolate-chip pancakes.”
His nose wrinkled. “With whipped cream on top?”
I couldn’t help laughing. His face and question didn’t seem to match at all. Maybe whipped cream perturbed him? “Not today. Only when we have them for dinner,” I jokingly said.
“You have pancakes for dinner?”
“Sometimes. You know breakfast for dinner?” I realized the richie rich probably never had breakfast for dinner. I felt a nanosecond of sadness for him.
We were in the hall now, heading to Prof. Engler’s class. “Are you really that poor?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard and arrested my footsteps. I turned to look at him sharply. “It’s just something fun we do occasionally.”
“Fun?” he asked. He didn’t appear to understand the concept at all.
I sighed and started walking again, discarding my momentary ire. “Yeah, we think it’s fun. It’s like opposite day.” I glanced at his face and saw no recognition. “Yeah, it’s something the poor do. Don’t worry about it.”
We went into Prof. Engler’s class, and without prompting, I sat down in the desk in the farthest corner. Damien sat down in the one beside it. Everyone else took their seats. The seats around us were the last to be taken. I didn’t blame anyone for not wanting to sit near us. I saw Jenna and our eyes met for a moment. She looked like someone I could get along with and be friends, but with Damien right beside me, there was no way I was going to engage her. She was late enough that she had to sit in one of the desks directly in front of us. She sat down cautiously and scooted her chair in all the way. I could tell having Damien directly behind her was unnerving. Well, at least she didn’t have him directly beside her. That was far more unnerving.
When Prof. Engler came in, she scanned the room. Her eyes passed over me without any pause or flare of recognition. Her lack of greeting left me cold. I’d requested her specifically among my list of teachers because I thought she’d be friendly with me, not ignore me. I thought I’d feel like I belonged in her class, but so far, hers felt the least welcoming on my schedule.
We were reading the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. It was difficult to understand the archaic language. Prof. Engler would read aloud the phrases for us and have us repeat them. I struggled to shape the proper sounds as I read the text. Damien didn’t participate. He didn’t even have a book. He carried nothing with him except his phone. Was high school just a formality to him? Why was he here? Why’d his parents even bother to send him?
I took copious notes and tried to ignore my desk neighbor, except I did get a look at his phone at one point and saw that he wasn’t playing a game now. He appeared to be having a long text conversation with someone.
I didn’t want to look, but one of my glances did glean this, *He would really like you to be here.* And Damien’s reply, *No.*
I quickly turned back to my notes, wishing I hadn’t seen anything because there was no way I was going to find out what Damien was texting about and it didn’t involve me. It was useless knowledge that was burned into my memory nonetheless.
Damien didn’t say anything when it was time to go to the next class. He merely stood and waited for me to gather my things. I’d firmly kept my eyes away from his phone after I saw the little snippet of conversation. He seemed irritated, though and I was afraid he was going to express it on me.
We were walking down the hall when Damien grabbed my shoulders and jerked me back. I was caught so off-guard I fell into him.
“Watch where you’re going, assholes!” he yelled.
A pair of guys had tumbled out of the boys’ bathroom roughhousing. They would have crashed into me. They froze at Damien’s shout and turned to him. They were sophomores and future pro-hockey players.
They puffed out their chests and advanced on us. I tried to move, but Damien still held my shoulders. I was stuck between him and the two larger boys. Was he going to use me as a human shield?
“Oh, no, did we scare your wittle girlfriend?”
“She still looks pretty scared.” And the bastards seemed pleased about this. The sophomores moved in to loom over me.
I tried to shrug out of Damien’s grasp, but his fingers dug into me, his nails biting into my shoulders.
Damien didn’t say anything.
“I’ll give her something to be scared about,” one of the sophomores said. He pulled back his arm. Students and teachers were standing all around in the hallway, but none of them were paying any attention to us. I think if their eyes did land on us, they quickly slid away.
No one was going to help me and I was trapped. I closed my eyes and steeled myself for the punch. There was no avoiding it. I’d never been punched before. I hoped the worst I got was a black eye, but I was really scared he was going to break my nose. I waited for the explosion of plain.
But the explosion didn’t come, instead, my nose was pinched and the sophomore said, “Honk, honk.”
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