It was a true shame that it was Mr. Cunningham on duty tonight. Usually, if it were a female teacher, they were easier to sway. One quick grin and a well-thought-out excuse that was born before even being caught, and you were off the hook. It sounded sexist, but it was what it was.
It wouldn’t be that easy with Mr. Cunningham. Not that Mr. Cunningham was intimidating in any way whatsoever. I mean, the man wore wrinkled khaki pants to class nearly every day, and I was certain his arms were made of pudding instead of hardened muscle, but he wasn’t stupid by any means. He was a man, after all, so he suspected that Bain was sneaking into a girls’ room to screw around, and if it were any other male student, his suspicions would have been correct.
Except, this was Bain we were talking about, and he was a part of a life that Mr. Cunningham only read about inside the pages of those fictional books he stored away in his desk at the start of each class.
“Oh? Is this the girls’ hall? I had no idea. I apologize, Mr. Cunningham. I’ll head back to my rightful hall.” Bain’s voice was deceiving at best. Confusion hinted at the edges of his words, and if I liked him, I would have laughed. But I didn’t. So, it wasn’t funny.
“You’ll do right to do that, Bain. You’ll do right to spend detention in my classroom for the rest of the week, too.”
A haughty laugh left Bain, and their voices grew closer.
“You boys think I’m stupid.”
“Not necessarily stupid, just a little dull-witted.”
My eyes leveled with their darkened silhouettes, and they narrowed further as Bain stopped right outside the opening of the linen closet door. Mr. Cunningham stopped, too, his hands on his thick waist.
“Excuse me?”
Bain shook his head, his shadow moving slowly behind him. “It’s just that it takes you a little while to catch on, and sometimes, time isn’t on your side. You assume things that aren’t true, and when you realize your error, it’ll be too late.”
The whites of Bain’s eyes clashed with mine, and I suddenly felt as if I were in the middle of a war, grenades firing off in the distance, a sword being thrusted in my hand. What the fuck are you playing at?
Mr. Cunningham turned, and I stared at the side of his long, crooked nose instead of Bain’s beady white eyes full of deception and fallacious, misguided truths. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but add on another week of detention for calling me dull-witted.”
He walked away agitated, and Bain tipped his chin at me, showing off the thickness of his jaw before placing his hands in his pockets and following after him. Unease began to settle, and the anger that had been quiet since shutting out my father came back roaring like a fucking lion in the wild. Bain had been a distant thought in the last month, and it was welcomed, but now, things were shifting again.
I whipped the door open with a clenched jaw, and an agitated feeling of discomfort hit me as I looked down the hall to where they disappeared and then down to Journey's door in the distance.
Was he here for her?
My lungs screamed, and my feet carried me farther and farther away from my daily reminders that warned me to stay away from Journey. The pressuring decision of right versus wrong was at my back, and her door was at my front. I could hear her inside her room, rummaging around with the papers she had stolen from the headmaster’s office. My head rested along the door, and my hands planted themselves firmly against the solid wood that separated us, along with too many other things, and I breathed out a full breath. Seconds later, I backed myself up against the tiny crook that I’d found myself in the previous night when I listened to her and Gemma’s conversation and pulled out my worn paperback from my back pocket and slumped down with my legs in front of me.
Except, I couldn’t read a single word on the pages.
Instead, all that echoed in my head were Bain’s words and Journey’s attempt to wound me, which wasn’t an attempt after all.