The Saving Bailey Trilogy 1: The Bullet List

Chapter 1

                                                                        Chapter 1

        The hallways are so quiet, I’m afraid my thoughts will be overheard. I walk their paths and turn their corners with the echoing footsteps of a killer. My mom’s Walther, a shiny death toy in my hand, promises vengeance. I am stroking its cool metal when the bell rings, signaling it is time for my classmates to come out and pay for what they’ve done. In one swift motion I spray bullets over the students, painting them red. The kids don’t run or scream. All is silent, except for the rapid firing of my gun: Bang! Bang! Bang!

         “Are my lessons really so boring that you can’t stay awake for them?”

        My head pops up, the whole class is staring me down, and Mrs. Latcher is holding a textbook in her hands.

        “They’re nothing compared to the things I dream up while sleeping through them,” I say, slowly pulling out of the haze of my slumber.

        The class gasps. Wrong answer, Bailey.

        “Jeez this ain’t a soap opera,” I blurt out. If it were, Mrs. Latcher’s estranged lover would burst through the door right now, proclaiming his undying love just before shooting her dead. Instead, I’m going straight to detention.

        “I can walk on my own, thank you,” I mutter, trying to shake my arm from Mrs. Latcher’s grip as she accompanies me there.

        “I am sick of your attitude, young lady. No one is going to talk to me like that in front of my class. Is that clear?”

        “Clear as mud,” I whisper so she can’t hear.

        When we reach the detention room, she pushes me through the door and says to the supervising teacher, “Watch this one, she’s been very fresh with me.”

        I take a quick scan of the room and am not surprised by what I see: the usual troublemakers, the type of kids you expect to see fleeing from the police on the TV show Cops someday. All except for one, that is. Clad is twiddling his thumbs and leaning his chair so far back he seems to defy gravity. I sit beside him and kick his chair from under him.

        “What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, picking himself off the floor.

         “Didn’t you hear? I’m fresh.”

        “Yeah fresh, that’s dope.” We share a laugh, and he sits down again. “Seriously, how did you end up in here? Get on Latcher’s bad side, did you?” He pushes his feet off the ground and tips his chair back again.

        “I guess I’ve always kind of been on her bad side,” I say, realizing it myself for the first time.

        “I don’t think there’s a good side to her,” Clad reassures me.

        I nod. “I fell asleep in class and pretty much told her to cool her jets.”

        I have not yet mastered the technique of entertaining myself in a room with bare walls, so I resort to making friends with the ceiling. I count the black, moldy tiles that are buckling out from the force of a water leak. The room is quiet enough that I can count Clad’s breaths and hear the ticking of the clock as the minutes wear on and turn into hours. I try to sleep the time away but as soon as my head hits the desk I am jostled awake by Clad.