Exaltation (Insight #11)(11)

By no means was raising them side by side with Jamison an easy task. More than once, Jamison, with the coven at his side, had to defend their girls from both mortal and immortal foes.

The girls were oblivious to those dark memories; at the girls’ request, the coven had made sure of that. But still, it had been a hard road and was set to become even more challenging. They were plotting again, and each time they did tragedy wasn’t far off, a moment that would break the bliss they all carried right alongside their independence.

Investigated? What did he mean by that? Raven thought to herself.

“You recall the exams you were given last week?”

Emery watched as each of the girls blushed slightly. She knew they were starting to piece together why they were in trouble. Emery was still lost on the notion of why they did something like this, but was sure their reasons would be justifiable—just not justifiable in the eyes of the modern, mortal world.

Raven was the one that nodded to answer for them.

“Well, it appears that your test scores do not match the class courses you are currently taking, or your transcripts.” The principal leaned forward. “You have to understand, before I accused you of fraud, I needed proof.”

“Fraud?” Raven said a bit too loudly, with wide eyes, clearly feeling the use of that word was beyond extreme.

“Grades are very important, girls,” LaDay said in a stern tone that had Emery tossing one of her innocent glares in his direction. She didn’t care for anyone to speak harshly to or about her girls and had faced that more times than any mother should be asked to.

Each of her girls had a 4.0 GPA that only rarely dipped, and when it did so it was because they were taking courses that were two grades beyond their age.

Emery came to their defense like always. “The girls are no angels. I will grant you that, but they have never once crossed someone without reason. I want to know the reason.”

LaDay glanced at the rather large files beside him, which clearly had every event that stated the girls were not angels documented.

“There’s no explaining this away, Miss Sabien. It has been proven.”

“Proven by one test. How do you know they were not having an off day? How can one testing cycle be all the proof you need? I dare any of your faculty to step in this room and tell them apart. You have no black and white proof they have committed any crime. If you did they would already be expelled.”

“A faculty member brought it to my attention, Miss Sabien,” LaDay said with deep sigh.

“Then bring them in,” Emery stated with a firmness that only came out when she was defending the girls.

“We’re straying from the point.”

“No. We’re on point. You haven’t even clearly told them what you feel they did.”

With a grunt LaDay rose from his seat and left the room to get his witness.

Emery looked across the table at each of the girls. River went to speak but Emery nodded toward the recorder on the table, which caused River to slide down in her seat with a scowl on her face.

A few long moments later the principal returned. As he took his seat the teacher, that triggered the master plan the girls were in trouble for, walked in. Duncan Newberry, known as Professor Newberry to the faculty and ‘Berries’ to the kids. They all made fun of him because it was clear he hated his job. The red berry flush of his cheeks and near bald head stated as much as he yelled his point across every lecture.

The girls didn’t notice how Emery went tense at first. They were all too busy trying to think of a way to explain their reasoning without outright insulting Mr. Berries, or Newberry, rather.

The man gave Raven the creeps. She had no idea why, but every gut feeling she had told her to keep a wide berth from the man, and she had. The issue was she was in his fifth period class.

The first few days of school the girls’ class schedules were changed three times. The staff kept getting their files mixed up. No matter how many times they rotated Raven’s she ended up in his fifth period class.

Raven pointed out Mr. Berries in the cafeteria on the third day of school. Ash and River glanced at each other, then Ash took Raven’s book from her bag and told Raven she would go to his class and sent Raven to her modern English class.

To balance out that rotation the girls had to rotate classes out with River. Basically they were only really going to one period that was actually theirs. Study Hall, sixth period.

They thought they were logical about it. They studied the material for the classes they didn’t attend only they were taking tests under the wrong name. As the plan blossomed out Raven told herself there was no harm, that it was actually genius. They were getting to take classes they would not have had room to take otherwise—they were all addicted to knowledge, abnormally so.

Each of them could have graduated that year if they wanted to. At the very least the next year they would take more college classes than anything else, earning even more credits than this year. Always a step ahead. ‘Overachieving trouble makers,’ is what more than a few old principals had called them.

“Miss Sabien, this is Dr. Duncan Newberry.”

Emery felt her blood run cold. She was sure that Duncan was the devil himself. Even though Jamison had told her, over and over, he was harmless on the larger scale of things.

The man had harassed Emery until the girls were nearly two then vanished. Seeing him now brought back all the dark feelings she had about him and truly told her that her girls had good reason to get themselves in the trouble they were in, just like she assumed they did.