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“Don’t you think you’re being a little extra?” I prod when all he does is pour another drink as if the first one was simply a warmup, something to take the edge off. “Getting so crazy over a little sneaking out and lipstick and nail polish. I mean, when Principal Carlisle was here —”
Finally he turns to face me, glass in hand.
His eyes are still as dark as before, his jaw still tight as well. Making me think that the drink hardly helped. “That’s precisely why she’s not here and I am.”
“What?”
“She wasn’t doing her job right and I’m here to fix that.”
It takes me a second to understand his meaning.
I know that our old principal left because she was retiring. And he came in as a replacement because he’s on the board and he’s a good friend of hers. At least, that’s what we have all been told in the announcements and school newsletters. But now I’m thinking differently.
Now I’m thinking…
“Oh my God, was she fired?” My eyes go wide. “Did you fire her?”
“We took a vote.”
I gasp. “Oh my God, I thought she was your friend. You voted against your friend? What kind of an asshole are you?”
“The kind you don’t want to piss off right now.”
“So what, you’re here to correct her mistakes? Whatever they might be. You’re here to make more rules or something?”
“And fix the old ones.”
Oh holy God.
I stare at him for a few seconds then. At his formidable demeanor, his intimidating and yet somehow gorgeous features. His glittering brown eyes, his harshly angled jaw.
His dark jacket. That dark tie.
He is the devil, isn’t he?
He’s the king of devils. The lord. The tyrant.
All dark and dangerous.
He’s here to make this hell more hellish.
And I’m here to beg for my freedom from him.
“You have five minutes,” he says, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“What?”
“To talk. That’s what you’re here to do, correct?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
My answer makes him move.
It makes him walk — no, prowl actually — to the overstuffed armchair adjacent to the couch. Where he puts the amber liquid down on the side table and proceeds to divest himself of his tweed jacket.
I’m not sure why but the view of his big shoulders rolling and his gray dress shirt coming into view is somehow even more intimidating.
Like he’s getting ready to fight. He’s getting ready for the main show, whatever that might be.
Then throwing the jacket aside, he takes a seat in that overstuffed armchair. He sits back, his thighs wide and sprawled, his elbows on the armrests as he wraps his large fingers around the tumbler, his silver ring clinking against the glass.
It’s a small, barely-there sound and yet it makes me jump.
Then he takes a small sip while keeping his eyes on me and says, “Better make it count.”
After his command, I think I lose twenty seconds of the allotted time.
At least.
Because all I can do after he’s gotten comfortable in his chair and issued the order for me to speak is simply stare at him.
While I search deep inside my core for my strength, my confidence.
My courage.
Now that the time has actually come, I find that I’m extremely nervous. And the bomb that he’s dropped on me, about being here not to help out his friend but to correct her alleged mistakes, is not helping at all.
God, what an asshole.
But it’s okay. It’s okay.
I can do this.
In my most confident voice, I go, “I have a proposition for you.”
Is it me or does that word — proposition — sound not right?
His eyes flash and he takes another sip of his scotch. “Proposition.”
Which is when I realize that no, it was not right.
The word, I mean.
It has… innuendo. Of a certain kind.
The kind that makes a shiver go through me when he repeats it in his low voice.
So I clear my throat and begin again, “Well, more like an idea. A bright idea.”
Another sip. “And what is this bright idea?”
Gaining another drop of confidence that he’s at least receptive to hearing it, I forge ahead. “So usually when a student is falling behind, teachers are willing to, you know, work with them and give them projects for extra credit and things.”
Which is what I’d been doing before finals in the hopes that it would be enough for me to graduate, and it was until my guidance counselor called me into her office and told me that I wasn’t graduating after all.
“So I was hoping that maybe I could do something like that now,” I continue, keeping my hands straight at my sides and not curling my fingers into nervous fists. “You know, to move this process along, uh, faster.”
This time he doesn’t take a sip.
He simply twists his glass tumbler gently back and forth on the armrest as he watches me. “Faster.”
“Yes.” I nod, my heart pounding. “I talked to my guidance counselor. She said that as long as I complete all my assignments and projects plus stuff for extra credit to make up for my grades, I can be let out of here early. As early as in four weeks instead of the whole two months. She said that it’s a lot of work to be packed into such a small interval but if I’m willing, she has no problem with it. But of course, the principal has to okay it.”
