Fawkes

Someone's Watching

All of my next class I couldn't stop thinking. I thought about the party, I thought about the Joker and my confrontation with Bruce, and I most of all thought about Dick beating Lukas to a pulp.

Could he really take on the blond jock? He was much smaller and had less muscle, but something told me his vicious intentions would overrule anything.

I was shifting in my seat, not paying attention to the substitute teacher we had for math class as he explained the practice test.

"Dude, are you okay?" Artemis waved her hand in front of my face, "How hard did that ball hit you? You've been zoned out all class."

"What?" I blinked at her, "No, I'm fine. Just thinking."

She didn't question it further, one of the many things I liked about Artemis, and instead I focused on other things, like the teacher that was replacing Ms Gupta today.

He was tall and bulky with a bald head and pleated pants that looked too big for him, as if they were from someone else's dresser. He also wore glasses that looked like the type of glasses someone would wear if they were a nerd for Halloween. Tacky and definitely not prescription.

In fact, everything about Mr McTavish seemed fake. The way he wrote on the whiteboard like he wasn't a teacher. The way he spoke about quadratic equations like it was some foreign language he had learned overnight. The way his eyes kept glancing my way, even when neither of us were speaking.

The gut feeling was back, but this time it was harder to detect. I almost ignored it as Mr McTavish sat down and let us do our homework, but it returned once I felt his eyes on me again. Though it wasn't until he did the attendance that I really knew something was going on.

"Sandy Walton?" He asked, seeming as bored as he had when he said every other kid's name.

"Here!" Sandy's bubble voice answered.

Attendance had been going smoothly up until this point.

It was a small hesitation, a little intake of breath, but it was exactly what I was waiting for.

"Hershey Winston?"

I didn't answer, but even so his eyes lifted and he looked right at me. He knew who I was even though I hadn't said anything. He knew who I was.

Who I really was.

"Present," I responded steadily as his eyes lingered on mine and he marked something on his clipboard.

I began thinking up possible escape routes from where I sat. I calculated the substitute's weaknesses and went over ways that I could take him out swiftly and quietly. I couldn't make a move on him until he did on me, because I didn't want to get expelled, and I could've been wrong about this.

Except I knew I wasn't.

For the rest of class, I didn't touch my homework, nor did I think about anything that I had been thinking about before. My only focus was Mr McTavish and his plans for me.

It seemed that he wasn't going to make any sort of ruckus while the rest of the kids were in class, so as the bell for lunch grew closer, I grew more ready.

"So?"

I snapped out of my daze to where Mindy, Sam,  Justin, and Sandy were standing in front of me. I blinked a couple times, peering around to see everyone crowded around the door with their backpacks on. Two minutes until the bell.

I looked behind Mindy's shoulder to see Mr McTavish staring intently at a piece of paper, as if he was reading it. Except his eyes weren't moving.

"What?"