Better Hollow {Finished}

Chapter 16

Chapter 16:

A month went by, everyday Ramona faced James. He was in almost all her classes, haunting her. James was shocked the first time he saw her, she'd changed almost completely. Her red hair was shorter, almost shoulder-length. Ramona's eyes seemed devoid of a soul, like when he left, he'd taken it with him. She'd hollowed out, her cheeks were less full, her collarbones stood out more, her elbows more angular.

"Ramona, are you with us?" Mr. Fletcher asked, snapping Ramona back into his body odor filled class.

"Yes, I am very sadly with you," Ramona said, rolling her eyes at him. This was not the year for putting up with his misogynistic bullshit.

"Do you have a problem? Is there somewhere else you'd rather be?" he asked her, his beady eyes bulging from his head as his bushy eyebrows attempted to climb off his face and onto his bald head.

"I'm so glad you asked, because I do have an issue. For the past, two... almost three years, I've sat in your smelly ass classroom, listening to the same misogynistic rant over and over again. This entire time, I have pondered where you store all your audacity, but I think I've finally conjured up an answer; it must be stored in all that extra fat you have hanging around your major intestines," Ramona said, shaking her head as she mocked Mr. Fletcher.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, provoking her to go further.

"Year after year you said the same old shit. You manage to make a joke out of police brutality, women's' rights, sexual violence, the list goes on. It's preposterous that you think you have so much power just because you've got a remote controlled projector and a statistically average yearly salary. News fucking flash, you and all the other Klan members have no business being in this world. Since no one else has the bravery to say it; I hope all that high cholesterol catches up to, and when it does, I'll be the one laughing at your funeral," Ramona sneered, staring at Mr. Fletcher.

"You can excuse yourself," he jeered, pointing to the door before turning back to his lecture. Ramona grabbed her stuff, wrapping her arms around her books and fleeing the class, spitting her gum out at him as she walked by his desk.

She marched out the door, her converses smacking the ground as she walked down the dingy tiled hallway. Ramona pushed open the bathroom door, going into a stall, and throwing her books on the ground. She pulled a cigarette from the box she'd kept in her back pocket for the past month, lighting it in a hurry as she stood in the stall.

Smoking was one of the last ways she held onto James, knowing it was killing her, but at this point there's not much that doesn't. In a way, it seemed like she'd turned into James. Perhaps, she never left him, she simply became her own version of him. Ramona had always sympathized with the villain, but now... now she was the villain.

She smoked the last of her cigarette, waving away the cloud of smoke, and flushed the evidence down the toilet. She picked her stuff back up, and left the bathroom.