POISON - Billy Hargrove

- Eight -

Three small taps rapped on Mrs. Pollard's door, Melanie's head poking around the side of it. "You called?" Melanie sighed. "On the loudspeaker... that the whole school hears?"

"I did," Mrs. Pollard replied.

Mrs. Jeannie Pollard sat comfortably at her desk with a small stack of papers in front of her. The ruffled sleeves of her white blouse bounced as she flipped through them, looking for something. Finding what she wanted, she set it on the desk and pushed her large glasses up on her nose.

"I have a favor to ask you," she finally spoke up again, sliding the paper across her desk towards her. "Can you read this for me?"

Melanie took a few quick steps towards Mrs. Pollard's desk. It sat delicately between her fingers, some leftover graphite smudging against her thumb. The hand-written essay in front of her had no name, something that would normally bring Pollard's blood to a boil.

"It doesn't have a name," Melanie announced. "I can try to figure out whose it is, if that's what you wanted."

"I know who it belongs to. Did you read it?"

Melanie shrugged. "I skimmed it. There's a lot of mistakes, it's all over the place" she admitted. "Makes it kind of hard to read." She flipped the paper over to examine the back, which was blank, and set it back down on the desk. "This couldn't have been written by a high schooler."

"It wasn't," Pollard revealed, a smile tickling at her lips. "You know how I told you I have one middle school class this year? This is one of their papers."

"Right," Melanie nodded slowly.

Silence filled the room, Melanie looking desperately at Mrs. Pollard for a hint at what she wanted.

"I may or may not have told a student's mother that you would tutor her daughter in English on Tuesdays and Thursdays," she finally spit out.

Melanie's body sunk, her expression changing from confused to annoyed. "You did not," she grumbled.

Pollard reached her hand out, a new piece of paper in it. "Here's the address," she added. "I think this will be good for the both of you."

"I don't want to tutor some middle school twerp," Melanie groaned.

Melanie quickly impressed Mrs. Pollard with her writing ability when they first met two years ago. The new, cranky student was plopped into her English class back in grade ten, and they developed a friendly, teacher-student relationship in the two years following. Jeannie Pollard knew Melanie, and knew she would gel with this particular, struggling, student. Without a word, she reached her hand out further, towards Melanie.

Grumbling louder, Melanie took the address paper and shuffled out of the classroom.

She was expected to be at her new student's home at four o'clock the following day, giving Melanie a full twenty four hours to be annoyed before she had to suck it up and go.

"So, what did Pollard want?" Steve asked Melanie, lowering the dial on his car radio.

"To tutor some eighth grader," she muttered. "I have to go over there tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh awesome!" he cheered, not picking up on Melanie's annoyance.

She glared at him. "Not awesome," she corrected. "Just because all your friends are children doesn't mean mine are."

One of Steve's hands lifted from the steering wheel. "Hey, woah," he chuckled, "let's not get mean." As he approached a red light, he turned over and looked at her again. "I thought you wanted to teach after highschool, anyway? Isn't this, like, practice, or something?"

"I said I wanted to teach elementary. Not middle school, preteen, urchins."

"Uh, hi," Dustin chimed in from the back seat, leaning forward to be closer to the center console. "Urchin, back here."

Melanie looked at Steve. "See what I mean?" she replied, motioning towards Dustin.

"Oh, wow, real mature," Dustin clapped back.

Steve could only roll his eyes.

Author's Note: Billy is coming back next chapter, I promise! Stay with me guys. Thanks for reading (: