Lovefool

To Make You Do

A couple of hours later, I arrived at the last class of the day. Just fifty more minutes than I was in the clear. Hopefully, the guilty conscious that I'd been carrying around since earlier would disappear then. What was I thinking? Tanner was the one who cheated. Not me. Tanner was the one stupid enough to get caught in plain sight. That wasn't my doing. All I did was update a silly list based on the facts presented to me.

I strode past the teacher's desk to my seat at the front. One of the intolerable perks of having a last name beginning with the letter B. Assigned seating at its finest. The classroom was already half full with everyone chatting amongst themselves as Mr. O'Brien, the school's vice principal, rushed in with a stack of papers tucked underneath his arm.

"Hello, everyone." His dark eyes skipped over the other students and landed on me. "Harriet."

A common practice amongst the faculty, they always zeroed me out as some loner charity case in need of human interaction or else I might wither away like some wilting flower devoid of water and die.

Little did he know.

Oh well. Best to keep the facade going that I meant to portray. "Hi, Mr. O'Brien..." My voice trailed off as a couple more people trickled through the doorway. I fully expected for Mrs. Thorpe, the sociology teacher, to have been one of them. "What're you doing here?"

Mr. O'Brien set the papers down and rearranged a few stationary crystal trinkets of Mrs.Thorpe's. That was a big no-no. At almost nine months pregnant, the last thing any sane person did was touch or move anything of hers. That was unless they wanted to be at the receiving end of that woman's fury.

No one wanted that.

"I'll be teaching sociology for the rest of the semester," he said, earning a few groans which made his smile widen.

"What?" My face fell. "No."

Mr. O'Brien stood tall, removing his navy suit jacket and hanging it off the back of the chair. "It will be fine, everyone. Trust me."

The school's beloved vice principal was a bit of a quack. Middle-aged and known for his caring disposition, he had never taught a day in his life. Previously, his role was that of the school's guidance counselor, but once Mr. Gardner, the last vice principal, keeled over from a heart attack at the tender age of seventy, they needed an adequate replacement. I guess Mr. O'Brien was the most qualified for the job. Which wasn't saying much.

The final bell pierced my ears as a few straggling students darted into the room.

Tanner slipped in last. "What are you doing here?"

One glance at the residual scarleting on his left cheek instantly soured my stomach. That or it could have been the questionable looking burrito I settled for at lunch. I was going with the latter.

He didn't wait for Mr. O'Brien's response and sauntered to his seat at the back of the room.

Mr. O'Brien grabbed a pile of papers and rapidly strode toward the first row of desks. "Not that it's really any of your concern, Mr. Wilson." He paused to hand me a total of six stapled packets to pass back. "But Mrs. Thorpe is officially on maternity leave; seeing as her water broke in the teacher's lounge at lunch today."

That was just a little TMI in my opinion. But that was Mr. O'Brien. He liked to share. Feelings. Opinions. His wife's awful oatmeal cookies. You named it, and he offered it. Even if it was too much.

I kept my eyes forward on the smart board, avoiding all distractions of the male sort.

"What's this?" Alana Dirksen's nasally, and annoying voice carried above the mumblings of everyone else.