Burn Before Reading(22)

"Mr. Francis!" I tried. The doors to the shop were supposed to stay closed at all times - so why were they open like this?

I saw the cause a second too late - Wolf's beautiful motorcycle sat in the garage, the navy-blue paint glimmering in the sun. Mr. Francis was bent over it, walking around it in a slow waltz as if inspecting it for problems. Lo and behold, the king of hot garbage was standing there too, and instead of his usual "I-hate-my-life" look, he had a mildly interested expression going on.

"What do you think it is?" I heard Wolf ask.

"Hrm. Not sure." Mr. Francis grunted back. They hadn't seen me yet. If I just backed up - "I'm thinking it's the fuel injectors, but that'll take at least a day to get to, more if I gotta order a part to replace it."

Wolf caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eye, and my stomach dropped. Busted. He glared crossbow bolts into me.

"What are you doing here?"

"So, what, they don't teach you how to read in private school kindergarten?" I point at the sign that clearly says AUTO CLASS on it over the door.

"I can read words just fine," Wolf fired back. "It's the faces of morons like you I have trouble processing."

"Well read this," I pointed to my lips, hanging onto my temper by a bare thread of exhaustion from my run earlier today. "Go. Take. A. Swan. Dive. Into. A. Piranha. Lake."

"Ah," Mr. Francis' voice cut between us - too well timed to be anything but strategic. "You must be the scholarship student. Welcome. Have you changed your mind and decided to take auto or wood shop or something of the sort?"

"Uh," My eyes scrabbled desperately for something, anything. Any excuse so Wolf wouldn't know I was here for - urk - him. They caught on the only part of a motorcycle I recognized from studying last night - the muffler. "Your muffler's crooked."

Mr. Francis turned to inspect it, but Wolf scoffed and brushed his long bangs from his face. The movement was so infuriatingly handsome on him I forgot who I was for a second. And then I remembered. And gagged.

"The fact you think you know anything about what we're doing in here is hilarious," Wolf said.

"Oh," Mr. Francis said softly. He straightened and smiled at me. "You were right, Beatrix. The muffler was a little loose and knocking against the pan - that's where the sound was coming from."

"Ha ha!" I pointed accusatorily at Wolf. He didn't even blink.

"You got lucky."

"Lucky or not; Shall I heat your own words up in the microwave so you can digest them better, your highness? After all, you've got a ton of them to eat."

"I'll be fine, thanks," He snidely shot, then turned to Mr. Francis. "Keep it here for me, would you Carl? I'll come pick it up after school. Or whenever this loudmouth brat decides to leave.”

"Hey! This loudmouth brat solved your bike issues!" I protested. Wolf stormed past me, his eyes blazing with irritation, cutting a huge swathe of burning ground around me. He was under the garage door and gone before I could throw out one last knife-in-the-back insult.

"Sorry about that," Mr. Francis said. "The Blackthorns can be a little...."

"Evil?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of...eccentric," He corrects. "Anyway, did you need something from me?"

"Uh, yeah, actually. Do you think you have one last spot in your auto shop class?"

"Which one?"

"Whichever one Wolf is in."

Mr. Francis pondered this. "Wanna show him up that badly, huh?"

"Call it a personal desire. A compulsion, a genie's duty. A geass, so to speak."

"Well I can't just let you in, that's an advanced class."

I proceed to tell him everything I learned, nearly verbatim, from the motorcycle magazine I read last night. Have I mentioned I sure know how to buckle down and study when I want to? Hand signals, engine caps, oil changes - I let him know it all. When I was done, Mr. Francis looked more than a little winded.

"Well alright then. Seems I underestimated you, Beatrix. You're in. Consider your sixth periods mine."

I did a little fist pump. "Yes! Thank you Mr. Francis! You won’t regret this! Unless I screw up horribly and get us all killed via battery acid! But that's, like, just a wild hypothetical, you know."

"Sure," He eyed me. "Don't you have another class to be getting to?"

I left the auto shop feeling considerably better. I managed to successfully invade one of Wolf Blackthorn's spaces by going around him, instead of through him. Now if I could just keep that trend up for the rest of eternity, until he decided to stop being a dick to me, whichever came first even though neither would come first because 'eternity' and 'hating me' were the same things for him, that'd be great. Wolf might hate me more for what I've done, but at this point he hates me for simply breathing, so. I'll take my chances.

If Burn is the hard target and Wolf is the impossible target, then Fitz is the easy target. He spent most of the last class of the day sleeping as he always does - his blonde head on his desk and his arms as his pillow. Mr. Blackthorn underestimated Fitz's apathy - I was pretty sure a few wrong answers and me asking him to tutor me wouldn't be enough. I had to make it convincing. I had to take it one step further. Mr. Brant's history class was my favorite, and Mr. Brant was my favorite - dry, witty, yet serious. And now I had to let him down.