CHAPTER3
English Literature and Composition in room 421. Again, I knock on the door and then open it.
The teacher is a tall, thin man who looks like a scarecrow. He eyes me over his owl-rimmed glasses. “Miss Erika?”
“I’m sorry I’m late.” I duck my head and then side-eye the class, breathing a sigh of relief when I don’t see Brett there. A respite from the asshole. Good. Maybe I can finally get this day back on track after all.
“Take a seat,” the teacher says.
I don't know his name. Didn't bother to check it on my schedule. I just nod, lower my head, and slip into the back right corner seat even though there are other available ones.
“Is it just me, or does Mr. August look more like a scarecrow today than normal?”
I’m shocked to hear someone voice my thoughts aloud, and I glance over to see a guy with curly, longish dark hair. He’s not looking at me, not talking to me or anyone in particular. A few of the kids around us snicker.
Mr. August doesn’t care, going on and on in his monotonous voice about Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
I scowl and sink lower in my seat. Crime and punishment. Those who commit crimes should be punished, and that punishment should fit the crime. For example, if you kill someone, you should be killed. Pure and simple. Black and white. A murderer should be murdered.
Oh, yes, I wholly subscribe to an eye for an eye. No turning the other cheek here, which is why I’m trying to stand up to myself against Brett. He won’t win. He’ll move on and torment someone else instead.
Then again, he must have been bullying someone before I came to town. I'm giving that person a reprieve, and do I really want someone else to have to deal with his crap? It's only a few more months until the end of the year, four months or so, depending on when school officially ends. I can handle myself. Brett won’t break me. My father didn’t, so no one can.
Unless I break myself.
No. I’m strong. I’m fierce. I’m not afraid. I have no reason to be.
The only person I’ve truly cared about is dead. Now, no one else can be hurt in order to get to me.
I might have run away, but I’m a survivor.
“You know what’s a crime?” the guy asks.
The girl sitting in front of him turns around to face him. Something in the way she twists her body makes me think she’s a cheerleader. “What is, Tyler?”
“This class is such punishment.”
The others all laugh, but I roll my eyes, unimpressed. His jokes are lame.
I’m not staring, but I do notice out of the corner of my eye that he brushes his hair out of his eyes as he glances my way.
“Think you’re funnier, new girl?” he asks.
I shouldn't engage. I haven't read the book. I don't know the themes or anything about it, really, but I need some stress relief after earlier.
“The real punishment would be to model myself after one of Shakespeare’s heroines,” I say. “Ophelia… wait, she drowned. Juliet? Stabs herself to death. Cordelia was murdered, Desdemona, too, and by her husband no less…”
The guy’s grin grows. “How about Cleopatra?”
I wrinkle my nose. “No. She—”
“—kills herself with a snake,” we say at the same time.
I grin, but he’s shaking his head.
“Not exactly funny,” he says.
“At least I don’t have an Oedipus complex. Motherfucking Oedipus.”