“Me? No.”
“No?” I gape at him. I figured for sure that the flyer had been put in my locker by Tyler. Who else would’ve done it?
“What was in your locker? Maybe I should take credit after all.” He grins at me.
“Nothing important. Just a note.”
“A note that said what?” he asks.
Is it just me, or is he trying to sound nonchalant?
“Nothing much. Just for me to have a good day. I haven’t had many good days here.”
“Because of me and my dumbass friends, because I’m a jackass.”
I flinch.
“You didn’t seem to think I was a jackass last night.”
I stiffen and glance around. “Do you want people to talk?”
“I don’t give a shit about what people think of me, and I hadn’t thought you would be the type of girl to worry about her reputation.” He lifts his eyebrows.
I flush and look away. “You don’t know me,” I mumble.
“Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is that you don’t need to be so uptight all the time, or is that because you don’t have something shoved up your ass, and you want that?”
“What makes you think I’m the kind of girl who thinks that hole isn’t exit only?”
He smiles, his eyes lightening. "I love teasing you. It's so easy to get you flustered."
“I’m not flustered.”
“Your face is all red, and your nipples—”
I cross my arms.
Tyler bursts out laughing.
“Mr. Tremaine, what is so funny? Do you care to illuminate the class on the joke?” Mr. August barks.
My face has to be even redder now, and I slink down in my seat.
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. The joke is you, sir.”
Mr. August sputters a few times. “Mr. Tremaine, go and—”
“What? See the principal? Do you want to lose your job?”
“You… Ah… You need to… I’m your teacher. You need to… You have to respect me.”
“With all due respect,” I say, sitting up, “respect isn’t just given. It has to be earned. Otherwise, it’s not really respect. Listening to authority blindly is ignorance and stupidity. You wouldn’t want to teach us to be ignorant and stupid, do you, Mr. August?”
Another student raises his hand. "Respect is to be earned. I used to get in trouble all the time. My father would spank me. My mother would take away my toys, and my grandmother would sit me down and talk to me. She got through to me when my parents didn’t. I respect her.”
“Still don’t respect your parents?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “No. They never earned it.”
“Now see here,” Mr. August says.
We finished up Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment last week, and I hold up my copy of Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice.
“We’re learning about Portia and her wisdom in this play,” I say. “It is only by thinking outside the box that she was able to save Antonio from Shylock. She was brilliant, not because of any man but because of herself. I think for today, we can watch half of the movie version of the play and the other half tomorrow and call it a good day.”
Mr. August has no control over the class as students bring out their phones. I doubt many of them actually watch the play, but still, it’s a much better class, even if I do spend most of the rest of the time trying to think and come up with the mysterious person who gave me that flyer.
I thought for sure Tyler, but why would he lie? The only others who know about my situation or at least suspect about it are the other Mutineers. Shane because of my fixing his bike? Corey? Definitely not Brett.
Maybe I can find out at lunch.