Teen Phantom by Chandler Baker

Author:Chandler Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

TWELVE

Lena

Mrs. Dolsey really shouldn’t have done that.

She really, really shouldn’t have.

The rest of the class period passed in an unseeing blur. It was as though rigor mortis had passed through my body, locking up my joints and freezing my muscles, but my brain and my vital organs had somehow managed to continue ticking along. The worst part was that I could feel Chris beside me, feel him like the air pressing in and out from my own lungs, feel the temperature rising and wafting on him in heat waves.

I forced myself to take breaths, in through my nose out through my mouth, but guess what? It wasn’t working. It felt as if I were taking in steam and it was burning me all the way up.

This wasn’t my fault. This was not my fault. It was Mrs. Dolsey’s.

I just didn’t think Mrs. Dolsey should have yelled at Chris like that. It wasn’t right. I was reasonable but I was also Chris’s friend and she was out of line. Surely, everyone had seen that.

Rule Number Three: Absolutely no trouble.

Mrs. Dolsey didn’t know about the rules.

Detention was the very definition of trouble, and worse it was the kind of trouble that would get back to Chris’s aunt and uncle and, really, it wasn’t fair for her to single Chris out like that. It wasn’t fair at all. How would she like it if she were singled out that way?

I didn’t think she’d like it at all.

At some point, the bell that marked the period’s end rang, and it sounded to me as distant and unimportant as a mosquito buzz in my ear. Chris slid his book straight into his bag and stood sullenly like he’d just lost a championship game.

“Chris, I—”

He held up his palm, stretching out his arm in front of himself, pushing the distance between us without touching me. I wished he would touch me. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

“I—” I didn’t think it was my fault. It was dumb Mrs. Dolsey’s. But before I could say so, Chris was raking his fingers through his hair and pulling it at the roots.

“I just want to be alone for a few, ’kay? Need to think of a way to tell my aunt and uncle before the end of the day.”

“Chris, don’t—” My voice was never as loud as I needed it to be.

“See you around later. Detention, I suppose.” He wiggled his fingers—jazz hands—but he wasn’t feeling jazzy. He wasn’t even feeling like Chris.

“After school, Miss Leroux,” Dolsey said without looking up from her keyboard as I left the class.

I glanced back at her spiky-haired head bent over her computer as she tapped away, filling in boxes on a spreadsheet, already forgetting me. But she was also forgetting something else.

Everyone had a secret.

I left the classroom. Ideas twisted around like thorny vines in my mind. And by the time sixth period had rolled around, they had tangled and born their spikes so far into my thoughts that I could not escape them.

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