Harleigh
I survivedthe rest of the week.
It wasn’t easy, but I made it.
Celeste refused to let me wallow. And I both loved and hated her for it. If I went up on the roof, she followed me. If I shut myself in my room—the locks had been removed on my bedroom and bathroom door before I returned from Albany Hills—she knocked until I answered. She was an obstinate presence in my life.
The anchor I hadn’t even realized I’d needed.
School was harder. We only had one class together, and I had another with Miles, which left a lot of time without either of them by my side.
My least favorite class was math because Marc Denby and his douchebag friends liked to write me notes and get their all too willing minions to deliver them to my desk. After the first one, I didn’t bother to read them, stuffing them in my bag before Mr. Jefferies spotted them and had me read them aloud for the whole class to hear.
It was Friday afternoon, and I only had another thirty minutes before school got out for the weekend when it happened.
Mrs. Paulsen, the AP English teacher, asked me to read my poem to the class.
“I’d rather not,” I said, hoping she would move on to the next poor unsuspecting kid.
Didn’t she know my history?
Apparently not if the disapproving scowl she gave was anything to go on.
“Miss Rowe, I don’t—”
“Maguire,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s Maguire.”
She gave me a dismissive sigh. “We can either hear your poem now or we can hear it after school in detention. But this is a participatory class, Harleigh. Therefore, I expect participation. It’s your choice.”
Obviously it wasn’t.
The entire class looked at me, the weight of their expectant stares like a concrete slab crushing me. “Maybe I can hand it in instead. I would—”
“Just read the fucking poem,” someone grumbled from behind me.
“Really, Harleigh, I’m not sure how they do things over at Darling Hill High, but here we expect our students to participate.”
“I’ll read it, Mrs. Paulsen,” someone called. “If she can’t do it, I’ll—”
“No,” I rushed out, the idea of some… some stranger taking my words and making them their own was almost worse than the idea of standing in front of the class and reading them myself.
It was just a poem. A string of words and sentences about the prompt she’d given us. I could read it and move on with my life.
I could—
“Harleigh Wren, today please,” she snapped, growing impatient. A couple of kids snickered, whispering a little too loudly what they thought about my stalling tactics.
“O-okay,” I said.
“Up front, let’s go.” She beckoned me forward.
My skin tingled like a thousand ants were under the surface, dancing in my veins.
“What the fuck is her problem?” someone else mumbled.
On shaky legs, I got up and slowly moved to the front of the room. It grew small, the walls pressing in around me until my vision grew hazy.
“Anytime now, Miss Maguire.”