AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This school isn’t a safe place. This school is the plague and it will likely be the death of me. I stand up quickly, my backpack bouncing against my shoulder with the momentum.
“Am I able to return to class now?”
He opens the door pointing me out with a sympathetic smile. A fake smile. He doesn’t care about the safety of his students, he doesn’t care about me. He cares about the reputation of his school.
I give him another look before I leave.
“Counseling?” I ask.
“Counseling. Every day after school.” He nods, his chins nodding right along with him.
Counseling it is. The very last thing I want, is to talk to someone about my screwed up life right now.
Nine
Reed
Metal clanks loudly as I drop the bar back in its place. Sweat beads against my forehead a combined effort between the weights I’m lifting and the temperature coach likes to keep this room. The air in here sticks to you too. It clings to every inch of your body, pressing in and making the heat feel more like a heavy coat.
I have frustrations I need to get out. The heavy smell of rubber and metal has become a calming scent to me. The bench creaks loudly as I sit up finally, pulling my shirt off and using it to remove the moisture dripping from my pale hair.
This school has done something I didn’t think it could do. I had no doubts that Knox could dig himself into that atrocious abyss of corruption his father beat into him when he was younger. However, I never once thought he could make an entire school do it.
He just had to plant the violent seed. Landon and I watered it. Then Mournmount Academy let it grow. We no longer had to whisper dirty ideas to others about mean tricks that can be played on her, they happen on their own now.
These kids, they’re doers. Their future employers will be so fucking proud.
I just can’t say the same about myself.
Thankfully, I’m too busy with football to see most of it. But the painful look behind her eyes, the one behind that fake smile she gives us, tells me it’s happening.
We aren’t so different, her and I. An annoying idea that I’m constantly reminded of for some reason.
She isn’t the only one with a parent that has an addiction. Her family just doesn’t have the kind of money to cover it up.
Bitterly, I reminisce over the many times my mom left me alone with my dad because she went on a ‘girls trip’ or a ‘mini vaca’. As I got older, I got wiser. Those are just code words for mom has to go to AA meetings and stay away until she’s sober enough again to be seen in public.
It’s a harsh cycle we go through every year. I hate it. And I hate that I know I’m too much like her.
Crossing one arm at a time over my body, I stretch out a bit. Music pounds out of the black radio mounted in the corner of the room. It blares from the radio really. I walk over and click the switch, letting silence descend the moment the melody cuts out.
My heavy breathing is the only thing I can hear. Blood still pounds in my head from pushing myself too hard. Dangerous, considering I’m by myself.
I turn off the lights and step into the hallway.
Everyone has left for the school day, all trying to take in the last of the warm weather before cold starts to sweep in and take all the memories of summer with it. The school is creepy when it’s just me. Always making weird creaking noises.
A different sort of sound leaves me frozen where I stand in the enormous gymnasium. Sniffles, crying.
My sneakers squeak against glossy floor. The janitor is likely gone for the day too. I pray it isn’t the janitor though. I’m not sure how well I could comfort the little Greek woman, I’m not even sure she speaks English.
Women don’t exactly look to me for comfort usually.
Other things, sure. But I’m not known for making them feel better. Not for more than an hour anyway.
I follow the sound of the drifting sobs against the anxiousness that builds within me now. It comes from the girl’s locker room. Who in the actual hell is still here? God, it’s going to be that ghost from Harry Potter that jumps out at me next.
...Not that I’ve watched that movie in weeks...or years, I mean...
