Another Lifetime

Chapter 26

DeAnna Kastell

I was still working on the job I'd taken last night during home room whilst Mr Montrose was embarrassing Trina with her hobbies.

"Still not cracked it?" X asked me, leaning his head on my shoulder so he could look at the screen. It meant nothing to his brain but to mine, it was a puzzle with a missing piece.

"I'm nearly there," I told him, "just a few lines of code to go," I informed him and he didn't understand it but I didn't care if he understood it because I didn't love him for being a tech genius.

"Mr Kingsley, Miss Kastell, would you mind?" Mr Montrose asked and we looked up from my laptop.

"I'm working, he's bothering me," I defended and he gave me a look, "I genuinely am, work for a tech company that just hired this lil' da Vinci as a consultant," I said defensively and returned to staring at the screen, trying to work out what was wrong with the last lines of code before I gave the programme a test run.

"Put your laptop away DeAnna," Mr Montrose told me and I saved my work and logged out, not wanting to cause trouble, people were still talking about my drug problem and I didn't want more reasons to talk about me circulating around this school.

I put my laptop away and pulled out my sketchbook from my bag instead. I had been drawing the court room all night and since X came to pick me up. X closed my sketchbook and I looked up at him. He shook his head and I leaned against him.

Trina continued to talk about her weekend but it was seriously boring compared to the revenge plans Jessie was still working on for mostly Brian and just a slight prank for Sarah. She also wouldn't tell me her plans, only told Harry her plans for some reason. It was probably because he'd just go along with it without questioning any of it; the boy love a good prank and loves getting even.

"Thank you Miss Lanter," Mr Montrose said and sent Trina back to her seat. "Miss Brand, why don't you show and tell?" He asked Jessie and she had a wicked look in her eye.

Jessie stood up with a notebook, "this is my plan to ruin the life of the cheating scumbag known as Brian," she said and it looked like a very complex game plan, "there's going to be some strategic exposing of childhood fears, some classic public humiliation and getting the family involved because his brother loves me and Dea," Jessie explained and she looked so proud of this plan.

"I think you have far too much time on your hands Jess," Mr Montrose told her bluntly, "but I can see you put a lot of effort into this and you are clearly committed to your cause," he said and put his feet up on the desk.

"I'm incredibly committed to this plan, Mr Montrose, and it will be carried out with military like precision," Jessie said as Harry burst into the room. The truce was holding strong and Harry was going to ask to transfer into this homeroom to escape Brian.

"Brian's talking shit about Dea," he said and everyone went to go see what he was saying, Mr Montrose had no control now. The break up had divided the school and most people were on my side because he'd been continuously cheating on me and hadn't cared enough to notice I was hiding my recovery but some of the male population e.g. Lots of jocks but not all, not going to tie them all together since they didn't all side with Brian in this, thought he was perfectly allowed to cheat on me because I hadn't put out.

"If he's talking about my sobriety again then I'm going to break his nose," I decided and no one would stop me. We were heading towards Brian now too, and I could tell X wanted to punch him too but that was just general hatred of Brian.

"I mean she's fucking a 'former' drug dealer even though she's an addict, bet he's the one that got her hooked," Brian said and X went to move forward to go full prison rules on him but I stopped him, even though Brian totally deserved it.