School by Hunter Gardner

Author:Hunter Gardner [Gardner, Hunter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bitingduck Press
Published: 2014-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

On the desk in front of me was a bronze placard: Principal Dennis Gibbons.

Gibbons was short and rounded, with thin lips. His hair was a U-shape of gray, balding with pecan-brown speckles scattered around the bare skin of his scalp. The chair he sat in was black leather, but worn. It suited him. You got the feeling that he would spend the rest of his life in that chair, know what I mean?

The Principal’s Office is never a welcoming place to be, especially on a Monday morning, knowing that you’re about to be interrogated. But in some strange way I didn’t mind it. Everything had its place: tucked away or packaged, the pictures all aligned straight. I was comfortable and nervous at the same time, like when I went to the dentist. I would have felt a lot more comfortable if Officer Williamson hadn’t been in the chair next to me, though. I didn’t like that.

No one had spoken a word since Gibbons had offered me a seat. Williamson blew down on his mug of coffee. My eyes drifted in boredom, from the tower of off-white filing cabinets that lined the wall on my left to the calendar on the opposite wall that pictured snow-covered trees for the month of December. School would be out for Christmas in two weeks.

Eventually I had nowhere else to look except at Gibbons. “Well?” I asked.

Gibbons raised his pointer finger at me, deliberate but calm. “Lucas, I think you know why you’re here.”

It’s a trap.

I raised my eyebrows, patiently. I wasn’t going to bite.

Gibbons let out a tired huff. “Why was someone at my school’s dance with a gun, Mr. Donovan?”

He called me by my last name. I hate to admit it now, but I liked that. It meant we were talking business.

“What’d Jake say?” I asked. Not to help him, to help me, understand?

“Mr. Holden has yet to release a statement.”

Smart.

I shrugged, and sank into the couch. “I don’t know anything.”

I can play this game, too.

“Oh, I think you do.” Officer Happy tilted his head and took a sip of coffee. I guess he thought I owed him for letting me dash out of the country club parking lot, but I wasn’t in the mood for getting my hands sticky—not without putting some more pieces together first.

“I don’t know anything,” I told Williamson and turned back to Gibbons. “Honest.”

That was true, I really didn’t.

Happy cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you what I know, then.” He leaned in close and licked his lips.

“How’s that, Happy?” I leaned in too, spurring him on.

“I know exactly what you’ve been doing.”

My jaw loosened. My eyes started to burn, kind-of-staring-at-the-sun-like. “Wh-what?” I hadn’t been that nervous since I handed Beason a paper cup with a hundred dollar bill.

Gibbons wiggled around in his seat and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and opened it to face me. “Officer Williamson found this underneath the copier in the Teachers’ Lounge two weeks ago.”

It was one of Coach King’s quizzes.

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