The Guardian Children (book 1) [SAMPLE]

Chapter 4

Next update: Monday July 28

~!@#$%^&*()_+

“So how was it?” Katherine asked me when I was buckling my seatbelt. “First day and I already get a call. That’s got to be some sort of record.”

My hands froze right after the click! sound of the seatbelt going into place. My happy mood started slipping away and I could only stare at her. I had completely forgotten about how that first period teacher had reported me to her. To be honest, I didn’t think he was serious about doing that.

Fortunately, Katherine was more amused than anything else and she laughed at my expression. “Don’t worry. I was going to wait for your explanation before making judgments. So? What happened?”

I grimaced, already knowing she would take this nicely and be cool about it, but not too thrilled about admitting it either. Somehow, Katherine had a knack for making me feel guilty about the smallest of things without even trying. Where almost everything else failed, she had this parental thing going down pretty well.

“The teacher made fun of my... girlish name,” I said.

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “He actually made fun of your name? That’s not acceptable at all! I’m going to have to go talk to that principal first thing tomorrow morning and give that teacher a piece of my-“

“Katherine!” I cut her off, growing slightly alarmed at her protectiveness. The biggest part of me, on the other hand, was touched and enjoyed being defended. “He didn’t exactly make fun of it... he just said that he was expecting a boy because of it. Everyone else did, too. Some girls were whispering about what I might look like, thinking I was a guy. It was kind of disgusting. And very disturbing to listen to.”

“So what happened then?”

I replayed to her everything that had happened for me to get in trouble, stammering a bit on the part where I had yelled that Katherine wasn’t my mother. Thankfully, she just told me to go on with nothing but honest sympathy on her face.

When I was finished, she seemed pleased. “Well, that’s improvement,” she commented happily. Then she started the car and drove off the school parking lot. “Last time I was called, you broke a guy’s nose for saying you had nice legs, and kicked him where the sun don’t shine.”

Last time she was called had also been the first time. For her, not for me; I’d been in trouble countless times before in the countless schools I’d been to. It was at the end of the school year. Katherine had taken me in about a week prior, so I had been in a particularly bad mood since because I didn’t want to live with anyone but the Foresters.

When I was in one of those moods, I would have snapped at anyone who even said ‘hi’ to me. Good thing it was only a comment about my ripped jeans showing my skin – which was why the guy had said ‘nice legs’ – since that gave me a valid reason to be pissed and ‘assault’ him. Katherine had shown some sympathy, but the principal was this close to expelling me if it wasn’t for her pleading my case. That was when I decided to give her a chance, if only because she got me out of getting expelled.

Of course, I got expelled later, but that hadn’t been my fault. I didn’t even have anything to do with it; I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this was the last straw for the principal and he snapped. Katherine and I left town to be closer to her work, and I changed school.

Frankly, I was all for staying and not attending high school at all, but Katherine thought a change of scenery would do me good. She thought that I might ‘learn to bite my tongue and think twice before I balled my fists’, as she put it. Come to think of it, since meeting her, I had improved a lot, and not just in controlling my temper.