Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I narrowed my eyes. “How about you go get my sister, and we can discuss state law after I know that she’s okay?”
Jasper’s hand came down on my wrist and he squeezed.
Not until it was painful or anything, but hard enough to provide me with a warning.
A warning that I needed, because I was losing my shit.
And the school wouldn’t let me in here if I didn’t calm myself.
I barely contained the urge to start making a scene, but the receptionist gave in and picked up her phone. She dialed a number and then said, “Mrs. Lancaster, this is the front office. Can you send Anders Hodges up to the office?”
They exchanged a few more words before she hung up and said, “You can wait over there.”
I didn’t bother to look where ‘over there’ was. Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, a few feet from the door, and waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot as I did.
“Would you calm down?” he whispered. “You look fuckin’ nuts right now.”
I was “fuckin’” nuts.’
I didn’t respond and instead stayed where I was, continuing my leaning from foot to foot.
When she finally pushed through the doors, her eyes were red and swollen, and her lip was quivering.
“Anders, what’s wrong?”
She hit me like a battering ram, and the only thing that kept me upright was Jasper’s hands on my hips.
“Oooph,” I grunted as all the air left my lungs.
“Tell me it’s not true!” she begged.
“What’s not true?”
She pulled back, her watery eyes filled with tears. “You told me Santa was real!”
Oh…fuck.
It took fifteen minutes of calming her ass down to get the story.
Her teacher, in her infinite wisdom, decided to assign a “fun end of school project” for all the students to do.
Tell us of the time when you found out Santa wasn’t real.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
I’d told Searcy this would come back to bite us in the ass!
She’d begged me not to tell Anders, though. She said that she needed to continue being a kid, because we never got to do that.
And she was right.
But still, the world was a cruel place, and it was humiliating to find out that you were the only twelve-year-old in your class who didn’t know.
Shit, shit, goddamn.
My gaze moved to the door where a woman stood, looking annoyed but resolute.
“I presume you’re the teacher responsible for this?” I asked.
The teacher crossed her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t aware that she didn’t know.”
And that made it okay?
“Anders still believes—believed—in Santa, Mrs. Lancaster. She may be twelve, and she may be past the age where kids usually find out, but that doesn’t mean that you go ahead and steal away all their illusions! You don’t know her home life. You don’t know that it took literally everything we had to keep at least one single thing good about Christmas in our family. My mom was awful, Mrs. Lancaster. The only thing we had to give Anders sometimes were little things like this. So yes, she may be too old to be believing in Santa, but that doesn’t change the fact that she does, and you just ruined that for her.”
The teacher’s lips pinched together.
That only made me more mad that she didn’t immediately apologize.
I gritted my teeth and looked down at Anders. “Do you want to go home?”
She hesitated.
“Okay, well you can go back to class then,” I said. “You’ll be okay?”
“Y-yes.” She nodded resolutely.
“Okay. You’re riding the bus home?”
She nodded.
“Call me again if you need me,” I ordered.
“About that.” The office lady crossed her arms. “You know the punishment for having your phone out, Ms. Hodges.”
Was she talking to me or Anders? Because I had no fucking clue.
“Yes, ma’am,” Anders apologized, holding her phone out.
When Mrs. Lancaster went to snatch it away, I beat her to it and put it in my bra. “I’ll handle this.”
“That’s not how policy…”
“Your policy can suck my dick,” I snapped. “Anders, back to class.”
Anders didn’t hesitate, busting her ass to get out of the small jail cell with all possible haste.
“That’s inappropriate.” Mrs. Lancaster looked at me with disapproval in her teacher eyes.
“Maybe, but I stopped giving a single fuck what you people thought when I was here myself,” I said. “Have a good one.”
I left, leaving Jasper to do whatever it was he was going to do.
Since we were close enough to Searcy’s place now, I decided a nice, brisk walk was in my future.
Searcy’s place was about two miles away from the school. My new house was just a few miles past that.
I would walk home.
It wasn’t too cold, and I hadn’t hit my ten thousand steps…
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jasper called out behind me.
I turned around and walked backward as I said, “Home.”
“Get in the fuckin’ truck, Calli,” he growled.
I flipped him off. “No thanks.”
I made it out of the gate, thankful that the guard only waved at me, and started toward home.