The Prince by Skye Warren

Author:Skye Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance
Publisher: Book Publisher
Published: 2017-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

For the next four days Damon lives in the trailer with me.

Mostly he disappears during the day. He isn’t there when I get off the bus. But he always comes back at night. He works through the trigonometry book with me, teasing me when I get the answer right, encouraging me when I don’t.

“Won’t your dad lose his shit if he sees me in his bed?” he asks.

“I lock the deadbolt,” I say. “Even Daddy would have to knock to get in. And I’d wake you up before I opened the door. How did you get in, anyway?”

“The kitchen window.”

There’s barely a foot and a half in that space. Only enough for the feral cats in the neighborhood to sneak in and have a drink from the leaky faucet and dash out again.

He doesn’t act like Daddy. There are no rules and no drinking. But he does take care of me. Like a big brother, I decide. That’s what it’s like. A big brother who brings food and does math with me. I can almost forget that Daddy’s still missing.

I can almost forget that he might not come back.

It’s on the fifth day that everything goes wrong.

Mrs. Keller calls me to her desk. “Why did you tell Mr. Scott the wrong answer?”

I shrug. Maybe I didn’t know the right answer. She’d know that I’m lying. I can do a lot more than multiply numbers together.

Her eyebrows press together. “He has resources that we can only dream of at the school. Advanced teachers and materials.” She pauses, taking a deep breath. “There would be boarding. You would have to live somewhere else. Do you understand?”

This is my way out. An escape from West Tanglewood Elementary. A chance to be someone other than the teenage mother or the girl on the street corner.

“What about you?” I ask.

Her brown eyes widen. “What about me?”

“I could do what you did. I could be a teacher.”

Her nose scrunches like it does when someone gets a wrong answer. “Penny, I don’t think you realize how special you are. It’s not just that you’re the smartest girl at this school. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, anywhere. And I wish—”

My head tilts. “You wish what?”

“I wish that you would give Mr. Scott the right answer. I convinced him to give you another chance. He’s coming back tomorrow.”

Curiosity sparks inside me, but it’s not because of his special school. What did he do to Damon to make him run away? If he has so much money, why does Damon sleep outside?

The questions follow me home on the bus. They nip at my heels like the wild dogs that sometimes follow me around the trailer park. They keep my eyes open when I’m in bed, waiting for the soft shift of the walls that means he’s come back.

I find him in the kitchen, pouring a can of soup into a bowl.

“What are you doing up?” he says without turning around.

“Couldn’t sleep. Where did you go today?”

He gives me a warning look.

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