Rise of the Fallen 1 - My Soul to Keep Page 5

  “Just meet me out here after school and try not to talk to anybody. I’m sure I’ll get a thousand questions as to why I’m bringing you to school. I’m going to tell them you’re a charity case, so don’t say anything.”

  “Whatever, Clarisse.”

  “Uh uh. Claire. Claire Awl is my name here, worm. Keep it straight.”

  “Claire Awl?”

  “Yeah, when I registered for school the lady behind the desk had a huge can of pink hairspray sitting on her desk. It’s the first thing that popped into my head.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Claire Awl, Clairol hair care products. If you laugh, I’ll stab you in the face. By the way, you’re going to see some strange shit with your new eyes. Try not to gawk. If the vampires and werewolves realize you can see them, they might try to eat you.”

  “Will you quit joking around?”

  “I’m not.”

  * * *

  It took me until I got into my homeroom to see Claire really wasn’t. I had no less than two vampires in my class. Jenny Warburn and Elizabeth Keating were the last two people on earth I would have expected to sell their souls to become one of the walking undead.

  Looking at them sort of hurt my eyes. I saw them as they sat in the room with their blood red eyes and elongated teeth, pale skin, and quick inhuman-like movements. Superimposed over that, I could see them as they've always looked.

  Jenny focused in on me and caught me staring. Her right eyebrow raised in a good impersonation of Mr. Spock.

  I pretended nothing was wrong and gave her a quick smile. I tried not to laugh when she made a disgusted face and turned back toward Beth, completely ignoring me. I guess it was better she thought I liked her than thought she was a vampire. I don’t think she’d eat me for finding her attractive. More like she’d eat me if she found me attractive. Sometimes plain can be good.

  I shuddered at the thought of why anyone would want to be a vampire and the answer hit me. People were afraid to die. I wished to be one of The Fallen, but it had been an attempt to save my soul. I don't know if it actually worked. I may not end up being a dead human working for them, but I still ended up working as one of them. The Chosen sounded like a severe band of assholes. I just hope I picked the right team.

  Mr. Parker, our lovely principal, came over the loudspeaker to read the morning announcements and say the pledge of allegiance. I kind of zoned out on both ends. I remember standing and vaguely muttering something that might have been the pledge, but I couldn’t say with any certainty. I might have declared my undying love for the Soviet Union and not have known.

  The one thing that did catch my attention was Mr. Parker calling my name and telling me to report to the office. The entire class, in unison, said, “Ooooh.”

  I blushed furiously and tried to think of a reason I would be called to the office. I drew a blank. I gathered my backpack and headed out the door without so much as a nod from Mrs. Flack, my homeroom and literature teacher.

  About halfway down the hall, the bell for first period rang and the rest of the students of Underwood High exited through every door and made their way to class. I had algebra first period, so whatever I did, I hoped it took at least an hour to straighten out. I utterly loathed it in all its various forms. I also sucked at it and had been forced to take pre-algebra as a freshman. I considered it a two year sentence with no chance of parole. The fact that I had been doing algebra homework when I got into this whole Fallen mess made me hate it just that much more.

  I pushed my way through the mob and made my way to the stairwell. I managed not to let anyone shove me down the stairs as I traversed them, too slowly for my tastes. The sound of hundreds of pairs of feet striking the linoleum simultaneously echoed through the stairs and halls. Thank God there were only about four-hundred students. Anymore and the building might have been shaken apart under the onslaught. Rickety didn’t begin to describe the brick and mortar hundred and fifty year old building. My family moved to the area within the last few years. Otherwise my grandparent’s grandparents might have once walked the halls.

  I opened the glass door leading to the front desk of the school. The receptionist, Mrs. Rhodes, stood behind the counter filling out tardy slips for the ones not lucky enough to have been picked up by a pink Beetle. She usually had a somewhat perky personality. Filling out a line full of tardy slips made her look a little angry. I took a seat on one of the two benches in the waiting area while she finished.

  I looked over on the other couch and caught my breath. A girl around my age sat quietly wearing a pair of sunglasses. I figured she might be hung-over until I saw the collapsible white cane next to her on the couch, neatly folded up. She was beyond cute. My heart started to beat a little faster as I looked at her. She wore a flowered dress. It looked simple, but beautiful on her. I imagined she would be beautiful in anything. Or nothing. I mentally slapped myself. 9:30 in the morning was a little early for perving.

  Her hair hung over her shoulders in waves of red. Not gaudy, fake looking, or the color of an apple, but auburn. The fluorescent lights above us made it shine perfectly. I wondered if her eyes would be green to match. I figured it would be impolite to ask. Her skin looked like cream without a hint of freckles like you would expect. For someone in her young teens, she didn’t have one blemish either. She looked, for lack of a better word, perfect, except for her eyes. Maybe God made her too perfect and taken away her sight to balance her out. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, guilt made my heart hurt.

  “Hi, I’m Jessica.” It took me a few seconds and a quick look around the room to realize she was talking to me.

  “Hi, I’m Connor. Haven’t seen you around school, are you new?”

  “Yup, my dad and I just moved here. I begged him to let me stay home and start school on a Monday, but he figured the sooner the better. What are you in for?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. The principal called me down.”

  “Well, good luck with that. I’ll see you around.”

  I gave a little smile at her choice of words, knowing she couldn’t see me. I sat there feeling a little weird because she still faced me with her head tilted to the side as if listening to everything. Just before I built up enough nerve to strike up another conversation with her Mrs. Rhodes called me up to the counter. I gathered my bag off the floor and walked up with a confused look on my face.

  “Come on through, Connor. Principal Parker’s waiting for you in his office.

  I nodded meekly and let her open the gate separating the admin offices from the waiting room. I walked through and she let it go, letting it creak slowly back in place with a little click. I turned and walked down the hallway fighting down the panic that seized me every time I made this trip. Fear of my parents kept me from getting into too much trouble. I hadn’t done anything I knew of, but life wasn’t always fair.

  I peered around the doorway to Mr. Parker’s office and saw him sitting there typing something on a very archaic looking computer. The one we shared at home looked light years ahead of the cream colored beast he worked on. Cedar Hills didn’t have a lot of money, and it looked like county education budgets had gone from a trickle to a stop. I knocked lightly on the doorframe. He looked up from his screen and gave me a somewhat angry glare.

  “Come in, Connor. Have a seat and I’ll be right with you.”

  I nodded and slid into the green leather chair in front of his desk. I gently set my book bag down on the floor in front of me and waited. I tried not to stare at Mr. Parker, but I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t skinny either. I figured he was about the same age as my parents, but Mr. Parker had one huge thing that severely tarnished his reputation with the students of Underwood High. Mr. Parker had the absolute, quintessential, no margin for comparison, take every last award, worst comb-over in the history of mankind. He looked like he took the hair growing out of his neck, combed it upward, and forced it to spiral around the top of his head several times. Very few
could look at him or have a conversation with him and not laugh. I tended to concentrate on his caterpillar like eyebrows. It helped.

  “So, Mr. Sullivan, do you know why I called you down here?”

  “No, sir. I haven’t got a clue. Did I do something?” I tried my best to look innocent, which in this case I was, or at least I thought so.

  “I personally took your mother’s call yesterday morning letting me know you were home sick. I tend to have lunch at the mall, so you can imagine my shock when I saw you having lunch with a girl...”

  Time stopped, my mind stopped, my heart stopped, and I managed to croak out an, “Oh.”

  “That’s exactly what I said when I saw you, Mr. Sullivan. Now how do you think your poor mother is going to react when I tell her I saw you yesterday on a date? Do you think she’s going to be happy?”

  I could only imagine how my mother would react. My father would probably high-five me when he found out I had lunch with a girl while ditching school. Mom was sure to go thermonuclear. I meant to tell Mr. Parker that it wasn’t me he saw at the mall. My mouth opened and I said, “It wasn’t a date.”

  “I don’t care if it was a bar mitzvah. The point is, young man, you were supposed to be in school. What do you think I should do with you?” I could tell he was getting angry, because the amount of saliva spritzing me the farther we got into the conversation increased rapidly.

  I looked up and pretended like I was really considering what he should do to me. I love it when grownups ask us moronic questions. They know we’re going say something like, “Let me go,” or “Forget the whole thing.” Why on earth they would expect us to say, “Punish me to the full extent of the law and your power,” is beyond me.

  I did however say something that shocked the hell out of me. “She’s my girlfriend, sir. We had a little pregnancy scare, so we met at the mall to get a test from the drug store inside …”

  Chapter 7

  Mr. Parker’s mouth dropped open like a toddler had crawled under his desk and whacked him in the giblets. I tried not to giggle as he slowly closed his mouth and stood up from behind his desk. I expected him to start shouting obscenities about the stupidity of pre-marital sex, but he walked around and closed the door behind me. I could practically hear the phone call he would make to my mother in my head.

  “Connor, I hope I don’t need to give you a lecture about how dangerous it is for someone of your age to engage in such activities?”

  “No, sir. Trust me when I say, it was an accident and won’t be happening again for as long as I live my life as a single person. Such activities are best left to those with more experience and have joined their lives in holy matrimony.” I fought hard to keep my face sincere and deadpan. I didn’t know what the hell was going on with me, but I liked it. Not only had I come up with the most unbelievable lie in the universe, I sounded heartily sorry for it too.

  “Good. Tell you what. I won’t get involved in this at all. If you’ve learned your lesson, no harm has been done. Just be grateful it was a scare and not the real thing, young man. To help you learn even more from this unpleasantness, I have an idea. You’re going to do something for me I hope will teach you how to be a little more responsible in the future. We have a new student here at our school. She has a disability requiring the help of other students. She has a visual impairment and will require assistance getting from one class to the next. Would you be interested in helping her as sort of a penance for your errors?”

  My mind focused in on Jessica, sitting out in the waiting room and I nodded enthusiastically. I definitely wouldn’t mind spending more time with her. I hate to admit it, especially after the lie I just told Mr. Parker, but I hadn’t even kissed a girl let alone done enough to get one pregnant. I definitely wouldn’t mind kissing Jessica if the chance ever came up.

  “Good. Mrs. Rhodes has her schedule, and I believe most of her classes coincide with yours. Please make her feel at home here at James Underwood. I’m counting on you. Mr. Sullivan, please be a little more careful in the future?”

  “I plan on it, sir.”

  He nodded and I stood, collecting my belongings. I refrained from running down the hall to introduce myself again to Jessica. I rounded the corner and saw Mrs. Rhodes sitting with her talking about her classes. I walked through the gate and made my way over to them.

  “Um, Mrs Rhodes?”

  “Yes, Connor?”

  “I just talked to Mr. Parker. He asked me to take Jessica around to her classes….”

  “Really? That’s good! Jessica, may I introduce you to Connor Sullivan? I guess he’s going to be showing you around our wonderful school.”

  “We met briefly before. Thank you, Mrs. Rhodes,” she said and gave a dazzling smile. My heart dropped into my stomach.

  She stood and I tried very hard not to notice the amount of leg visible as she slid forward on the plastic couch that had been made decades before I was born. Why did every piece of furniture in our school have to be green? Politely, I kept my eyes riveted to the crack on the cushion a full seat to her left. I won’t lie. It was more for my benefit than hers. If I hadn’t averted my eyes, walking down the hall in a few moments would be pretty embarrassing.

  “Hello again,” I said with what I hoped to be a measure of sophistication.

  “Hi, yourself. Which way are we heading?” She flipped her cane with her wrist and it went from a mass of jumbled pieces to a complete cane in a split second. I guess she'd been blind for a while.

  “Can I see your schedule?” Mrs. Rhodes handed it to me with a brief smile before heading back behind the counter.

  I glanced through it and smiled as I realized almost all of our classes matched up. I briefly wondered if I'd been set up by Mr. Parker. The only difference was fourth hour. I had PE and Jessica, study hall. Would they let me drop PE? I doubted it, but it would be nice.

  “Looks like we’re off to the wonderful world of algebra,” I said and got a groan from my new partner. Guess she felt the same way I did about it.

  “Joy. Lead on, MacDuff.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” she said with a giggle sounding vaguely like music.

  “Um, I’ve never done this before. Would it be easier for you to hold on to my arm or do you want to walk and I’ll just tell you about stairs and stuff?”

  “Ooh, a handicapped virgin. This is always fun.” She didn’t sound bitter, more like teasing. I wondered how many “virgins” she had to deal with. “Since it’s the first day and I have absolutely no idea as to how this place is laid out, would you mind if I hang on to your arm?”

  “Not at all,” I said with minimal cracking in my voice. The thought of actually touching Jessica sent my heart into overdrive. I could practically hear it in my ears.

  I held my arm out to her and waited. It took me about a minute to realize she couldn’t see it. I reached down with my right hand and gently grabbed hers to pull it on top of my waiting arm.

  As soon as my fingertips touched her skin, my heart went from fast to threatening to jump out of my chest and run a marathon. There weren’t any sparks of electricity like you see in the movies, rather a quiet feeling of power, belonging, home, safety, and chocolate. I didn’t want to let go. Ever.

  I heard Jessica give a little gasp and I hoped it meant she felt it too. I pulled her hand closer to me and spread her fingers over my wrist to let her know I would guide her. She closed her fingers on my wrist and I concentrated very hard on the linoleum floor beneath me, the sunlight coming through the window, and the smells surrounding us. Anything to take my mind off the feeling of her hand on my arm. I took one small step forward to let her know which way we were going and she took a step to match mine.

  “How far is our first class?”

  “Not far, just up the stairs and to the left. Mr. Johnson is our teacher, nice guy for a troll.”

  That earned me a short burst of her musical laughter and I smiled. They needed to make a recording of her laugh and play i
t for the criminally insane. I’m sure they would be cured within a week.

  We made it up the stairwell without her falling. I sighed with relief when we made it. I won't lie, I was worried. The strangest thing about the whole situation was the reason for my fear. I was more afraid she would get hurt than that the whole school would see me drop the blind girl down the stairs. Luckily everyone already started first period and the stairs were relatively vacant. I probably would have dropped her if I had to maneuver her through a torrent of students.

  Mr. Johnson had his back to the class and furiously scribbled archaic algebraic equations on the green blackboard (why are blackboards green?) like some sort of magic spell. I know it’s just numbers, but when I looked at it spread out in all its glory, it looked more like Sanskrit or Cuneiform than math. Either way it hurt my head.

  “You’re late, Mr. Sullivan. Please take your seat,” Mr. Johnson said without turning around. Apparently he didn’t get the memo about getting a new student.

  “We have a new student, sir.”

  He turned and gave me an annoyed look before realizing she was blind. The depth of her handicap hit me. How would she do her home work, take tests, follow along on the blackboard? I hated algebra with a passion, but at least I could see it. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for Jessica.

  “Welcome to our classroom Ms…”

  “James. Jessica James.” I stifled a giggle and vowed to start calling her Jessie. It became sort of a moral imperative.

  “Shut up,” Jessie whispered out of the side of her mouth. She must have heard the beginnings of my laugh.

  “Well, there just happens to be an empty desk next to Mr. Sullivan. Why don’t you sit there and we’ll get back to the lesson?”

  I nodded at Mr. Johnson and took a tentative step toward the pair of desks in the middle of the room. Jessica felt the tug of my arm and took a step to match mine. Maybe this would be easier than I thought. I walked her to the opening at her desk and as soon as her cane clanked against the metal leg, she reached out with a tentative hand and felt around. I could imagine what the wooden top felt like to her soft hand. When she reached the edge, she waved her hand around the empty space of the chair. She gauged the space and slid neatly into the empty spot leaving me to gawk at her for a few minutes before I realized she was listening for me to leave. Realizing every set of eyes in the class were watching me staring at Jessica, I did just that.