“Can you move up a little?” I ask quietly as my cheeks heat up.
“Fuck off,” Jasper says under his breath, glancing askance at the kid next to him like he’s embarrassed by my presence.
I grit my teeth. “Please?”
He shakes his head, keeping his eyes on his plate. I glance around in panic and spot a gap at the table next to us.
Before I get there, the gap disappears.
Now my cheeks are on fire.
It feels like every boy in this room is staring at me but when I look around no one meets my eye.
Screw this.
My nose can’t go any higher into the air, so I push back my shoulders and strut down the middle of the room like I belong here.
Technically, I do. I’m a student here as much as any of these pricks. They have no right to treat me like a turd.
Despite my flaming cheeks, or the way my skin is intent on crawling right the fuck off me, I make it all the way to the other side of the room without wetting myself. I push open the door, my heart thundering in my chest as the door hisses closed behind me.
Relief is brief, but delicious. The plastic wrap has crept up at one edge of my tray, and I catch a whiff of the food beneath. It doesn’t look like much, but it sure smells good enough to eat.
You can do this, Trinity Malone.
One day at a time, same as before. One day at a time, one after the other, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
A-fucking-men.
My intention had been to eat my lunch in my room—if I could find my way back there. But I’d barely gone a yard before someone emerges from the nearest stairwell. A stocky woman at least two decades older than Father Gabriel latches eyes with me.
I smile weakly.
She frowns—hard.
My smile wilts. I stop dead in my tracks. She picks up her pace, the skirt of her habit snapping around her thick-set ankles.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demands as she storms up to me.
“Lunch?” is all I get out before the woman grabs my elbow, spins me around, and shoves me back the way I came.
I stumble into the dining hall amid a cacophony of sniggers and giggles and chuckles.
A second later, everyone’s mouth snaps shut.
“Move,” the woman snaps.
I start forward on instinct, but she catches me above my elbow. “Not you.”
She surges ahead, stabs out a finger at the boy seated closest to the door, and drags a line to the side. “Move it, Nelson!”
The boy shoots to his feet, grabs his tray, and almost trips over his own feet in his hurry to get out of the woman’s way as she drags me across the floor.
“Sit.”
My ass hits the bench so hard, my teeth click.
“Eat.”
The woman steps back and claps her hands. “Children, this is Trinity Malone. She is a new student here. Each and every one of you will make sure that she understands and obeys the rules of our school, or I shall punish each and every one of you. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sister Miriam,” the school choruses.
I’m staring so hard at my food I’m surprised it’s not setting alight.
Sister Miriam lets out a huff, turns, and starts pacing the length of the hall. For a few minutes, there’s only the sound of her shoes hitting the tiles. Then, with another slap, she barks, “Eat!”
Plastic knives and forks scrape plastic plates.
No one says another word.
No one looks up from their plate except me. And I only risk peeking through my lashes.
My heart slows from a gallop to a trot, but I couldn’t eat if I’d crawled out of the desert having wandered forty days and forty damn nights.
One day at a time? I’m wondering if I could even get through the day at this rate.
Seriously, what else could possibly go wrong?
Chapter Five
Zac
CASSIUS: We have a problem.
I tap my finger against the side of my phone, stroking my bottom lip with the other hand.
“Afternoon, Brother Zachary.”
I glance up and give Simon a curt nod. Students file neatly into my class, seating themselves like a beautifully choreographed dance. My AP Psychology class is one of the smallest in Saint Amos—I only teach up to a dozen students in each grade.
I return the smattering of ‘hellos’ and ‘good afternoons’ before facing the chalkboard. “Today we’ll be discussing epigenetics. Can anyone tell me—?”
My classroom door rattles. I glance back at my class.
All my students are present. It’s highly unusual for a staff member to interrupt me once my lesson has begun. Word has long since gotten around how much that annoys me.
“Who is it?”
The door immediately stops rattling. Then a hesitant, high-pitched voice says, “Trinity.”
She cuts off when I open the door and snatches away her hands. Looks like she’d been pulling at the handle instead of pushing.
I tilt my head. “May I help you?”
The girl steps back, and huffs a dark curl away from her face. She’s wearing street clothes and a thoroughly confused expression. “Yeah…uh…is this Psychology?”
T. Malone.
My new student.
I’d barely glanced at the memo slipped under my door this morning. My mind had been on other things. More important things. So much so, I’d even forgotten to assign her a seat.
I step back and wave her inside, my mind moving a mile a minute.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m set in my ways. Which is saying something for someone who’s turning twenty-one in a few months. A strange girl showing up at my door shouldn’t have rattled me, but it did.
She stands at the front of the class, notepad clutched to her chest like a shield. A moment later, her amber eyes come back to mine, now even more confused than before.
I snap my fingers at a student in the front row and point to the chair behind my desk.
He hurries over, picks it up, and sets it by the wall.
“You’re late,” I say, when the girl keeps staring at me like she’s had a stroke. “Don’t let it happen again.”
Still, she doesn’t move.
“You’re my teacher?”
I straighten as my hand drops to my side. “Were you expecting someone different, Miss Malone?”
As if she realized what she said, she shakes her head and hurries to her seat. There’s a soft hiss as she plops down on my chair and the air leaves its pillow. Her fair skin looks even paler as her cheeks turn rosy with embarrassment.
It takes me a moment to gather my thoughts. As I turn back to the board, the text message on my phones comes back to me.
Could this be the ‘problem’ Cassius mentioned?
She’s not wearing a uniform which indicates her presence took others—such as Sister Ruth, who runs the laundry—by surprise. Else she’d have been decked out in Saint Amos colors.
Her slim body, her poorly fitted clothes, the nervous energy vibrating through her—I put her at sixteen. But her eyes tell a different story. They’re underlined with shadows, as if she hasn’t had much sleep, and don’t hold my eyes longer than a moment before she looks away.
Could be she’s shy, but I suspect it’s more a matter of her not wanting to give away more than she already has.