Owning the Vampire King

The Chance Meeting in the Hallway

The walk to my first period class of the day was pretty silent, as William had decided that talking to me was nonessential today. I'm pretty sure he was still upset with me for not holding his hand, but I already know the ridicule that would come with doing it. He'll get over it.

He looked around the building in curiosity as we walked but refused to ask the questions I knew he had. I rolled my eyes at his stubbornness and walked into the classroom, knowing he was hot on my heels.

I had the misfortune of taking a math class first period. AP Calculus was my first class of the day as well as my least favorite. As a senior in my last semester, I couldn't wait to be done with it. It's not that math was hard for me I just didn't like it. At all.

When I walked into the room I found that there was an extra seat rather than the regular twenty-four. The desks had been rearranged into a formation of five by five, but they made it work. I sat down in the third seat three rows back and told William to sit at my right side.

"Don't speak unless you're talking to me or someone speaks to you first. I don't want any trouble, understood?"

He gave me a sullen nod before inquiring, "may I have a book to read while your teacher speaks?"

I smiled at him and handed him the book I had been reading previous to coming to class. He took it and opened it to the first page, laying his head on his arm as he read. I could tell he was still upset about me letting go of his hand before we got on the bus, and I felt a little bad about it. Almost bad enough to hug him and apologize. Almost. I could always just explain myself later.

The math teacher, Mr. Rogers cleared his throat and addressed the class. "Picking up where we left off yesterday, I have drawn some examples of derivative and integral emphasized graphs on the board. Would anyone like to explain the derivative compared to the integral?"

I raised my hand, knowing that no one else would.

He gave a soft chuckle, "As always, Miss Brave is awake and ready to answer questions. Go ahead and give it a go."

"Well. The derivative of the function, written f of x, evaluated at x equals a gives the slope of the curve in the graph at x equals a and is written f of x over or divided by dx. That's shown in the first example graph. In comparison, the integral of the function f of x over the range x equals b to x equals c gives the area under the curve between those points. That's obviously the second example graph."

Mr. Rogers grinned at me and nodded, "Very good, Lillian. Very good. Today we will be working on differentiation. There are sheets for you all to work on silently after the lesson."

He handed out worksheets after a brief explanation, and there were dissatisfied groans heard around the room. Several students looked at me before rolling their eyes. "Teacher's pet," I heard it grumbled from the back of the classroom.

I tried my best to ignore him as well as the others as I did my worksheet. I glanced beside me to see that William was quietly reading the book, his facial expressions changing as he read. I smiled to myself and went back to working on my handout.

When the bell rang, I stood up, grabbing my notebooks and belongings and went to hand in my completed work. As usual, I was the last to leave the classroom. I walked up to Mr. Rogers as I held out my finished papers.

"Very good work today, Lillian. If you have a moment, I actually had a proposal for you."

"What's that Mr. Rogers?"

"Please, call me Aaron."

From behind me I heard a grunt, and turned to see William scowling at him. His eyes were a dull red.