Jessica's Fate

Chapter 88

I was not at all surprised to find that the dance was very much like all the other dances I'd avoided while I was in high school. The smart girls were the wall flowers, the popular girls ran the dance floor and the boys were mostly either by the snacks or with whatever girl sunk her claws in them.

That's mean and catty of me.

My bad.

I mean, danced with the girls they were dating.

I don't think Pete really knew what he'd end up getting himself into with chaperoning a dance. He was kept really busy, breaking up the really close dancers and going into all the dark corners to chase out the ones who thought they were being sneaky and had a good make out corner. I really shouldn't complain because he was sliding his arms around me and kissing my cheek as soon as he'd join me because we couldn't really dance, and it would be highly improper to kiss while here and trying to be the very models of appropriate behavior.

"Sorry." He murmured, before brushing a gentle kiss to my cheek.

"It's okay." I smiled. "It's fun to see you at work." I teased.

He rolled his eyes and laced his fingers through mine and took me on a quick tour to check in with the wallflower girls and to double check that the boys weren't spiking anything at the snack table. "I just didn't think I'd be practically the only one doing any work." He huffed a sigh before throwing a dark look at where the other teachers who were here had congregated and were basically standing around doing nothing while he busted his ass.

"I can tell the kids like you though." I said, giving one of the girls a quick smile as she glanced at us when we walked by.

"I guess." He said, smiling at a few of the others before turning us towards the snack table.

Wow. If looks could kill, I might be suffering a lot right now, I thought as I caught the dark look full of venom that the last girl tossed in my direction. "So, just curious." I commented softly. "Who's the last girl of that group?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Who?" He scanned them. "Oh, Tori." He nodded slightly. "Hated that paper I made them write on Divergent. She's someone that would get along well with you. She also feels strongly about the third book..."

"Interesting." I murmured. Clearly, I was guessing here but I had to assume that we'd not get along well because I suspected she felt strongly about my boyfriend too. She also looked vaguely familiar and I was having a hard time placing her. Maybe it would come to me by the end of the dance.

"What?" He asked, catching the look on my face.

"Nothing." I shrugged. "She just seems vaguely familiar to me and I'm not sure why, but I think you're a bit more than just her favorite teacher if I had to take a stab at it."

His brow furrowed as he considered what I was saying before shaking his head. "Being back at high school is getting to you." He said. "There's no way that's happening."

I rolled my eyes at him. "You didn't go to high school, did you? If your Academy upbringing was like my brother's then you never went to traditional school at all, did you?"

"I had tutors." He said before his jaw tightened and a scowl showed up on his face.

"Precisely." I snorted. "Excellent tutors, I'm sure. But it kept you entirely out of the weird high school dynamic that exists in all high schools."

He snorted. "Weird dynamics? Yeah, right."

"you absolutely can't see it." I realized, shrugging. "You'll see it at some point in your teaching career. It's very thin lines that connect everything and the boundaries between teachers and their students are stretched amazingly thin all the time. It's not at all uncommon for kids to have a crush on a teacher or two." I stated. "Not just limited to girls either. Plenty of boys out there with crushes on their teachers."