by Logan Fox
Of course everyone starts laughing.
And, of fucking course, Sister Sharon looks back as Cassius rushes over to help me up.
“Quiet!” Sharon whacks the edge of her desk with her wooden ruler. Then she turns shrewd eyes on me. “When you’re ready, Trinity, I’d like to start class?”
The fall must have knocked out my senses, because I don’t even struggle when Cassius kindly grasps my elbow and helps me to my feet. Or when he slides the chair under my ass like he’s seating me for a dinner date.
“New Girl’s a bit of a klutz,” he says, loud enough that everyone can hear.
I glare at him.
His fingertips trail along the back of my neck as he moves around his desk and takes his seat.
I sit stiff and unmoving for the first half of the lesson, afraid that even the slightest movement will bring undue attention to myself while hoping that sitting still will make the back of my neck stop tingling.
I don’t succeed at either.
“Turn to page eighty-four of your textbooks.”
I glance around and spot my English textbook laying on its back beside me on the floor. Thank the Lord Sharon didn’t see it there. She hands out knuckle raps if you dare to dog-end a single page in your textbook. Imagine what she’d do if she saw—
As soon as the book is in my hands, I know something’s wrong.
A spike of dread shoots through me when I turn it over.
What the hell?
This isn’t my textbook. Mine was a grubby second-hand copy—this one’s squeaky new.
I risk a quick glance over my shoulder.
Cassius is slouched in his seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. He has a textbook propped up on the desk in front of him.
That’s my textbook.
“Trinity?”
I spin back to face Sister Sharon. I open my mouth to apologize right off the bat for whatever she wants to charge me with, but then her eyes move down and land on the textbook.
“Have you forgotten how books work?” she asks sweetly, and my stomach sinks like a rock dropped down a well.
“No, Sister.”
“Then open it.”
Something tells me that’s not a good idea.
I should tell her it’s not my book, that Cassius switched it, but it’s obvious he’s one of her favored students. Plus, I never got around to writing my name in the front.
Screw it. I’m not gonna let this guy ruffle my feathers. My ass is still aching from my fall—I think I bruised it—and I don’t want him to think any of this shit affects me.
WWJD, right? He’d turn the other fucking cheek.
But I can’t move. I’m terrified.
Sharon’s eyes narrow to slits. She walks over and uses the tip of her ruler to flip open the cover.
I stare down at a photo-realistic drawing of Brother Zachary. Then I tip my head up and gape at Sister Sharon as my cheeks catch fire.
Why?
Why would Cassius do this to me?
“Wow,” comes a breathy whisper from behind. “That’s downright blasphemous, little slut.”
“I didn’t draw that!” I scoot back my chair and jump up. “Sister, I swear this isn’t my textbook.”
Thwack!
Everyone in class except Cassius flinches when her wooden ruler slaps down on the book. Sister Sharon has good aim—she manages to cover Zachary’s penciled ass and the cock he’s got shoved in my ass.
“I could come up with better excuses in my sleep,” Sister Sharon says, her wrinkled lips pursing with disgust.
I half-turn to glance at Cassius.
He’s sitting there with his elbows propped on the table, his head in his hands, mouth open with shock like he doesn’t know exactly where this book came from.
“Sit!”
My ass thumps into the chair.
“Hand out. Flat on the desk.”
I turn wide, pleading eyes to Sister Sharon but my hand’s already moving over the wooden desk. She uses the tip of her rule to flip closed the textbook, and then taps the far side of my desk.
“Here.”
My hand slides to the spot she selected. I close my eyes and drop my head, stifling a gasp when she brings her ruler down on the back of my hand.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack!
It’s like she’s trying to beat the sexual deviancy out of me. I keep my head down even when I hear her walking away. Then I glance back at Cassius without lifting it.
There’s no mistaking the satisfied gleam in his eyes.
“Why?” I mouth to him, blinking back tears of pain. I slide my hand back and cradle it in my lap as I wait for his answer.
“Eyes up front!” Sharon slaps her ruler on the edge of her desk, and the whole class sits up, me included.
When she turns her back again, I’m already anticipating the warm breath on the side of my neck, and Cassius’s smooth voice in my ears.
“I don’t like you, New Girl,” Cassius murmurs. “I think you should go back to where you came from.”
“Fuck you.” I sit forward so I don’t have to listen to him anymore.
A hand knots in my curly hair. Cassius wrenches my head back. I’m so shocked, I don’t even gasp.
His lips brush the shell of my ear as he whispers. “I’m just getting started. If I were you, I’d find a new school.”
I spend the rest of the lesson silently seething as I try to ignore my aching knuckles and scalp.
As soon as the bell rings Cassius swaggers past me and out the door.
I scoop up my things and hurry after him.
Words are going to be said. Possibly even yelled. I won’t stand for this and Cassius is going to know it in the next five seconds.
“Not so fast, Trinity.”
I skid to a halt by Sister Sharon’s desk.
“Sister?” I do my best to look humbled and not like I’m on my way to attack someone in the hallway.
She perches on the edge of her chair before taking a piece of paper from her drawer. Bowing her head, she starts writing. “This behavior is unacceptable.”
I open my mouth but she doesn’t allow me to speak.
“You’ve caused enough disruption by joining my class so late in the year—I won’t stand for further theatrics.”
I’m being outright bullied and she thinks I’m trying to get attention?
“When is your next lesson with Brother Zachary?”
A cold dread seeps into my bones. “Why?”
“I ask the questions,” Sharon says. Her pen scratches on the paper as she signs whatever she was writing with a violent flourish.
“Right now.”
“Good. You will take this letter—” she looks up and folds up the piece of paper she was writing on “—and you will hand it to Brother Zachary the moment you set foot in his class.”
She holds out the paper. It’s not even in an envelope. But as if she can read my mind, she adds, “It’s for his eyes only.”
This can’t be good.
My fingers are numb when I take the paper from her. I turn and head for the door.
“And Trinity?”
I pause, biting the inside of my lip.
“If you disrupt my class again, there will be severe consequences.”
My heart’s still pounding in my throat when I make my way down the hall.
Instead of confronting Cassius about his prank, I slink down the hall and pray no one notices me. I clomp down the stairs and stand in front of Zachary’s classroom door.
A student hurries toward me from the other side of the hall, and for a moment I’m convinced he’s a messenger about to make my day even worse.
Instead, he pauses about a yard away from the door and watches me intently. “You going in, or what?”
Shit, I didn’t even recognize him. It’s Simon—a kid from my psych class. I step back and let him go ahead of me while I try and gather my courage.
But it�
��s a lost cause—I’m rattled.
There’s no denying I have a target on my back. But who put it there?
And why?
Zachary looks up from his desk and then down at the paper I’m holding out. It trembles ever so slightly. He takes it from me, the class falling silent behind me when he opens it. Two of the students from my English class are also in psych, but I’m positive the rest of the class already knows about what happened in English.
Did any of them see the drawing?
I’d almost peeked at the letter when I was standing outside, but then I thought back to that stained glass window I’d seen on my first tour through Saint Amos.
That big eye in the sky.
Always watching.
Omnipotent.
Anyway, I don’t want to know what it says.
Ignorance is bliss, right?
Zachary folds open the letter and scans it. He closes it up and slips it into his desk drawer. Then his eyes fall to the textbook I’m crushing against my chest.
I’d forgotten all about it, but as soon as his eyes settle on the hardback cover, the drawing inside flashes through my mind like a still from a porno film.
I imagine, anyway. I’ve never seen one. I’ve never had access to the Internet without parental supervision. The dirtiest book in the library I was allowed to use was Pride and Prejudice.
“The book,” Zachary says evenly, when I don’t make a move.
I hand it over reluctantly as my cheeks grow hot.
Zachary flips open the front cover and goes to turn the page. His hand freezes and then drops to the bottom of the page.
“Surprisingly accurate,” he murmurs just loud enough for me to hear.
My ears start to buzz. “What?”
He flips the cover closed and sits back in his seat. Slowly shaking his head, Zachary studies me with magnetic eyes. “What are we going to do with you, Miss Malone?”
“It’s not my book,” I say.
He cocks his head. “You stole this from someone?”
“What? No!”
“Then how did you come to be in possession of it?” His eyes narrow with irritation.
The name is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t say it. Which is ridiculous—if Zachary and Sister Sharon knew what Cassius had done, he’d be the one facing off with Zachary right now.
He’d be the one about to be punished.
He’d…
No, nothing would happen to him. It’s obvious Sister Sharon has a soft spot for him, and I’m pretty sure I saw him visiting Zachary on my first day here. It was only a glimpse as we passed in the hallway, but I’d recognize those blue eyes anywhere.
I could try and accuse him, but I was the outsider.
The outcast.
No one was going to believe anything I said. It burns like righteous fire inside me, the fact that telling the truth would only get me into more trouble, but I’m not stupid enough to believe I’m capable of convincing these strangers.
Maybe I’ll go talk to Gabriel. If anyone would believe me, he would.
So I drop my gaze and hang my head like I’m overwhelmed with remorse.
“Take your seat,” Zachary says.
When I reach for the textbook, he lays a hand on it to stop me. “We’ll discuss this after class.”
In a weird, hallucinogenic moment, I think he’s talking about the drawing. What was there to discuss? The drawn-on expression of ragged bliss on my face as he pounds me from behind? The fact that I’m bent over this very desk?
Or how the longer I think about the drawing, the more I can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like, being with him.
I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end of class.
Chapter Eighteen
Zac
God damn it, it had been almost impossible to keep a straight face when I’d seen what Cassius had drawn inside that English textbook.
I hadn’t wanted to risk a face-to-face meeting this soon after our last one, so I’d sent out a group text to my brothers early this morning. I hadn’t mentioned much about what Rube had said, just that our goal today was to make Trinity’s life pure hell.
I should have known Apollo and Cass would take it as a challenge.
I’d left the details up to them and, looking back, that might not have been the best decision. I’ve already caught a few whispered rumors about something happening at breakfast with Trinity. And I know she was absent from prayers this morning, although I’m not sure if my brothers had anything to do with that or not.
I’ll get their full reports later this afternoon.
At least I made sure to tell Reuben not to go anywhere near her. I don’t trust him in his current state of mind. This close, with so much at stake? It would be too easy for him to unravel.
I throw myself into my lesson like I always do, but I’m distracted.
Cassius’s drawing is to blame.
Her shapely thighs and plump ass. Curls bouncing around her naked shoulders.
In the drawing, I have both hands on her hips, leaving her perky little tits free to bob.
I’d had every intention of holding her back after class and putting the fear of God into her…but that picture had roused something that had lain dormant inside me for a long, long time.
Maybe it was her innocence. From the way she keeps blushing, or how she’s always hiding behind her books to shield her body from inquisitive eyes, it’s obvious she’s inexperienced.
Shy, and secretive, and naive.
But with just enough backbone that, for a moment, I’d thought she would rat out Cassius. But then she’d chickened out and had taken the blame like a good little soldier.
I need a clear head right now. I can’t afford to be distracted by what I think her ass would look like while I fucked her from behind.
Those types of thoughts are what lead to acts of deviance and perversion in the first place. This is more natural than the ones I’m normally obsessed with, but regardless.
She looks relieved when I don’t say anything as she passes my table after the bell rings at the end my lesson. And when she glances back over her shoulder, her frown makes me wonder if I’m being too soft.
That, or she’s wondering about my response to the letter.
I thought I’d been casual as fuck, staring down at that drawing, but maybe I hadn’t.
I’d hoped to join the boys in their fun, but I can’t be as close to this as I’d wanted.
One of us has to keep a level head.
Chapter Nineteen
Trinity
I’m famished by the time lunch comes around. I head for the dining hall as quickly as I can. While the day had been sunny for the most part, gray-bottomed clouds are scooting in from the horizon. Every time one of them passes over the sun, the temperature drops a few degrees.
The fact that the smell of stew makes my mouth water is a testament to how hungry I am. There are about thirty students in the hall when I arrive, most seated with their trays in front of them.
I hurry over to the tray table, already reaching for one of the covered trays when something catches my eye.
A bright pink post-it has been attached to one of the trays nearest the edge of the table.
TRINITY MALONE
The tray is isolated by now—obviously no one dared touch it.
I pick it up and grimace.
More gruel.
Gray. Pasty. Disgusting.
The other trays are heaped with vegetable stew and fat slices of chunky bread spread thick with butter.
This. Is. Such. Bullshit.
I take my tray and make a beeline for the kitchen. I hurry up to the first cook I spot and thrust out the tray with its blatantly pink sticker. “What is this?”
The cook—a guy that could have been my age or a year younger—gives me a condescending scan before sneering at me. “Your food,” he says.
“Why don’t I get stew?”
“Because we don’t make special food around
here.”
I frown at him. “Special? What are you talking about?”
He dismisses me with a flick of his hand and then pushes me aside with his shoulder. I start after him before someone calls out a few yards behind me. “Orders from the top.”
I turn to another cook. “I don’t understand.” I put the tray down on a nearby stainless steel workbench. “I don’t eat anything special. I just want normal food like everyone else.”
“Well, we got told you’re vegan and have these—” the guy shrugs, working his shoulders for a second “—lactose-gluten-sodium allergies and shit.” He points at the tray. “That’s pretty much all we got that you can eat.”
“But…I’m not.”
He shrugs and turns back to peeling potatoes.
“Can’t I—is there any normal food left? Even just some bread?”
“Not for you. Not unless our orders change.”
“Okay, so who?” I storm up to him, stabbing a finger at the floor. “Tell me who gave the order.”
Another shrug. “Ask Apollo. He’s the one who came and told us.”
Apollo?
The guy with the video camera?
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
What if Sister Miriam’s the one who told me to film you in the first place?
But that doesn’t make any sense. None at all. Sister Miriam can pretty much watch me all the time. More so than Apollo can, if she wanted. I mean, she literally stripped me down in the laundry room to take my measurements.
Another prank then? I’d thought breakfast was my own bad luck, but maybe someone had taken off the post-it at the last minute, seeing it was the only tray left uncollected.
Or maybe he wanted to make sure I got another serving of gruel.
Why?
Why the hell was I being targeted like this?
My mind scrambles as I head back to the dining hall, leaving my disgusting lunch behind. I’m starving, but I’d rather pass out from hunger than be subjected to a prank like this.
I meet Apollo as he’s coming back inside the kitchen. He’s wheeling a much smaller trolley than the one he uses for the students. There’s still one wide, covered tray on it that looks similar to the one Reuben brought to Father Gabriel’s room the other night.