The Smell of Rebellion

Chapter Fourteen

A/N: Thank you all so much for all the reads! I promise more updates will come soon in an orderly manner. I hope you all enjoy!

-

Miss Honey looked confused. Anxious, too.

"Watch, Miss Honey," she said, swallowing and setting the cup down on the nearest surface. Her eyes narrowed, and she tried to fuel her anger again. She kindled her spite with more hateful thoughts: The Trunchbull, Bruce, the Chokey, Hortensia—

"Matilda, if the Trunchbull sees," Miss Honey said, rushing over.

"Just watch, please," Matilda implored, swallowing and trying to light a fire inside of her again. She saw Miss Honey stop a few feet away from her and she channelled all of her rage into that cup.

"I-I think we should go, before—"

Matilda said urgently, "Wait." She could feel something again, the buzzing, the energy. Maybe she could do it again.

She took Bruce. She broke him. She threw Amanda. She grabbed Eric. She threw Nigel.

The cup began to vibrate violently, wobbling unsteadily under the force of her stormy gaze.

Miss Honey's mouth parted slightly in shock, a hand placed on the box as she stared at the violently shaking cup in disbelief.
Mum and dad, the yelling, the screaming—

I wish they'd just love me.

The dam broke and the cup finally tipped off the axis, shaking but levitating in the air, following the command of her eyes dragging it through the air. It stayed there, floating shakily in the line of sight between Miss Honey and Matilda.

Her teacher stared in disbelief. Frozen.

They don't love me, they won't love me, they—

Miss Honey slowly, hesitantly, reached out to hold the cup. Her fingers curled around it and she exhaled softly as she turned it over, as if the cup was magic.

"I moved it with my eyes," Matilda found herself saying, the inferno dying down, the pieces of her impermanent emotion melting away. "Am I strange?"

You nasty, little, freak!

She stared at Miss Honey with a slightly curved brow, a hitch in the skin between. She worked her tongue between her teeth as she waited for an answer— a small, irrational piece of her wondered if Miss Honey would say she was.

Opening and closing her mouth, Miss Honey said, "How do you fancy a . . . nice cup of tea?"

She looked at the cup, then at Matilda in disbelief, before they both hurried inside.

-

After they were all dismissed, Miss Honey grabbed both of their coats off the hanger and hurried towards the gate. She threw hers on hurriedly, smoothing it over all of her clothes and handing Matilda hers.

Matilda took it gratefully, and didn't complain when she raised the hood for her.

Underneath the stone, once they were both guarded from the rain, they hurried in through into the rain. Matilda headed straight forward, but her teacher extended a hand to guide her somewhere else.

"Oh, no, no, no. Not that way. This way." Miss Honey veered from Matilda's usual path home and headed left. They walked past the gates and down a grassy hill that reached her knees.

"What do you think it is?" Matilda had been thinking about it for a while. "This . . . thing with my eyes." What was it if she wasn't a freak? Supernatural events weren't real, she'd read hundreds of books on it, but still . . .