RILEY
SPENCER USUALLY ALLOWED a period for teamwork to answer the questions on the board. Today, he skipped that altogether and filled the whole lecture with new theory, seeming to cram in extra to avoid a break in between. Somehow, I believed it was to prevent Lauren from addressing me again. I wasn't dying for us to keep talking, but it wasn't something that should be avoided. If Luc wasn't here, then I had to gather whatever I could manage.
Spencer blocked it from happening.
So, when the lunch bell rang through the school and the floor rumbled with all the chairs screeching back, I lost Lauren in the mass and she vanished. She hadn't stayed behind to continue our conversation; she only gave one last glance to Spencer and strolled out. I furiously stared at my teacher, wondering how he survived the ordeal at the warehouse. Lauren could have at least taken one problem out.
I chided myself for thinking that.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked him when all the students were running towards the cafeteria.
Spencer clustered his papers and spared me a scornful glare. "You think I'd allow her in the class if I'd known she was coming?"
"How do you know her?"
This man was already seemingly born with a chronic bad mood, and now it appeared ten times worse. His jaw was tight and his eyes pierced me like the arrow his son shot in my shoulder. I returned the stare testily. Since the rest of the kids were gone, I didn't have to play pretend and keep my head down.
"More like how can we not know her?" he muttered.
I stepped forward. "That doesn't answer my goddamn question."
He grabbed his bag and began heading out. Just as he was about to cross the threshold, I made the door snap shut in his face, forcing him in the room with me. He turned around, nose crinkling from his displeased frown.
"I want freaking answers to what is happening," I said. "And it's not like you have the advantage here."
"Little girl, if you don't want a knife stuck in your forehead, you better open that door now. You really think I have nothing on me?"
If anything, it only made me angrier rather than scare me into opening the door. My nostrils flared as I scanned him, feeling that foreign wild pulse wave inside me, spiking in my veins.
I closed my eyes, knowing this wasn't right, not by a long shot. Those were the mood swings, not me.
Not me.
I couldn't make Spencer spit it out here unless he wanted to talk of his own free will. This school didn't need another puzzling incident or broken material. With an exhale, I relaxed my muscles and stared back at my teacher. The door creaked ajar.
"Fine. Have it your way."
❃❃❃
Lauren had vanished again, and her brother still hadn't returned. I was torn between twisting Ben's ear until he spilled the beans or warning him and Devin about Lauren. I couldn't even tell which one was more of an emergency at this point. But as I came across Ben in the corridor before we headed for the cafeteria, and I saw his pale face, I knew he'd caught the rumors.
"Is it true... you talked with her?" he blubbered.
I nodded, biting my lip. "Hardly, but yeah. She's really back."

YOU ARE READING
The Skylar Experiment : Dead Ending (second draft)
Science FictionBook #3 Lauren is back, and the small town of Oakwood reels into a near-psychosis. In the dead of a harsh winter, mutants struggle to come to terms with reality; NIO is always watching, closing in slowly but surely. A sentence is pending over Riley...