Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(15)

Still, Lucy was sweet. Lucy had friends. Lucy didn’t make a good target because other kids liked her.

So Scarlett it was.

And today it was: Does something smell bad? Trashcan girl.

That one was maybe true in the past, but since Gram had taken me under her wing, I’d learned how important it was to bathe and how to do it properly. I didn’t smell bad now, I was sure of it, but it didn’t matter. I’d never live down the stink of the dumpster I’d been left in.

And even though the dynamic had changed and things had shifted a bit in my favor, I was still the butt of many jokes, and I still took strong exception to it. It was just that usually now kids had the sense to make the jokes behind my back.

Not today, apparently.

I’d been minding my own business, which was actually what I usually tried to do, when Tommy Mann had started in on me.

The teacher was out of the room and we were supposed to be working on an assignment.

I was not a good student by any stretch of the imagination but I had been trying to stay on task.

And here came * Tommy with his, “Does something smell bad?” right into my ear.

I gritted my teeth and still tried to ignore him. It hadn’t been a big enough insult to be worth dealing with my grandma if I made her angry again.

“Does anyone else in here smell something bad?” Tommy asked loudly. “Something that reminds them of garbage?”

There were some loud snickers around the room, but no one outright answered him.

Like a coward I wished, for at least the thousandth time, that Dante and I had been placed in the same class. We never were. He was across the hallway, but at moments like these, it may as well have been a world away.

“Shut up,” I muttered at him darkly.

I didn’t even see it coming. He was behind me, and though I heard some rustling, some movement, I had no idea what he was doing until the classroom’s full trashcan was being dumped over my head.

It didn’t have much other than paper in it, but it didn’t matter. It was more than enough to bring my temper out to play.

I threw the trashcan off my head, shook away all of the papers, and went after him.

I only stopped when he was a crying ball on the floor.

And of course that was when the teacher walked back into the room.

And now there I was, waiting for the vice principal to call me in.

Tommy was still in class. He hadn’t even been reprimanded.

I hated this part. It wasn’t even that I cared what they punished me with. Getting kicked out of school was a gleeful fantasy of mine on days like this.

I just didn’t want to deal with how my grandma would react.

Also, I hated verbal confrontations. I fought exclusively with my fists for one very important reason.

My voice was a coward.

Ms. Colby made me wait a good hour before she called me in. I’d known she would.

It wasn’t an exaggeration on my part to say she didn’t like me. More so than any kid in this school, I did nothing but make her job harder, but it felt to me like it went beyond that. She almost seemed to get a strange kick out of putting me in my place.

She was a thin, middle-aged woman with steel gray hair that she kept so short that a lot of the kids had taken to calling her Mr. Colby. At least that’s why I thought they called her that. I wasn’t friendly enough with most of the other kids to ask if that was the reason for it, so I just assumed.

“As usual, your grandmother couldn’t be reached,” she began with. “And knowing her, it doesn’t matter. She hasn’t shown her face here once, no matter what you’ve been up to. So your punishment for this is, clearly, going to be at my discretion. Before I begin, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

"I-I-I—, h-h-he—" was all I could get out. I never got much farther, especially with Ms. Colby. My stutter was particularly vicious with me when it came to her. The injustice of it, the fact that I could never voice my side of things out loud, only seemed to make the problem worse.

“There’s nothing you can say that will excuse what you’ve done. You can save your pathetic, stuttering breath today, Scarlett.”

My shoulders hunched up, eyes pointed at the ground. The pathetic comment really got to me, but it was more or less in line with the things she usually said to me after I’d gotten into trouble.

I resigned to just stand there and take it. It usually lasted awhile. She’d basically find several interesting ways to tell me I was troublesome, worthless, and a nuisance to the school.

And with any luck, she’d kick me out.

But something happened. Something pretty amazing. Before she could get any further, a furious Dante came storming into the office.

He went off on her and it was a glorious thing. He was foul-mouthed and surly when provoked, and he was plenty provoked just then.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dante raged at her. “A boy attacks her, she defends herself, and she’s the one that ends up in your office getting reamed out? Are you even kidding me?”

He was the opposite of me. I stuttered hopelessly, and he seemed to have a talent for saying what would make everyone around him shut up and wait in stunned silence until he was finished.

Ms. Colby seemed to be no exception. She was just staring at him. I didn’t think she could believe what she was hearing. Kids did not talk to her this way.