Carolina Wren

Chapter 10

Wren's POV

Victor keeps his arm around my shoulder as he escorts me to the trailer where our next class is, North walking close on my other side even though we're outside so there isn't as much of a crowd. His stink face, more intimidating since he found me earlier, was just as effective as his bulk in carving out a space for us as we made our way to history. Once again, North crammed himself into the desk behind me after asking if it was alright and Victor slid into the desk in front of me.

I was starting to feel like a Wren sandwich.

Silas is waiting at the door into the building when we finish and I narrow my eyes at him. "This is starting to feel socially constructed," I say loud enough that all three of them hear me and the laughter follows us all the way down the hall to chemistry. Nobody denies it, though.

This is the first class where I only have one of them but I'm not surprised when Silas takes the seat behind me. It can't be a height thing, since they're all taller than me and plenty of them have sat in front of me, including North for a period of time, but they all seem to have this weird compulsion that involves making sure one of them is behind me.

A few minutes into Mrs. Watson's opening spiel, Silas leans forward and whispers in my ear, his warm breath sending chills across my skin, "Can I put my feet under your chair? I've been cramped all day."

I glance back at him, my head partially turned to catch his hopeful brown eyes. "Of course. Stretch away." I feel his feet slide up to the outside of mine and his small groan of relief, making me smirk. They really didn't build these desks with tall guys in mind.

After chemistry, Gabe meets us in the hall and jokes with Silas all the way to my next class. I don't join in but find myself smiling at them. I'm almost jealous of how natural they are around each other. No one is waiting for me outside the door but when I step inside the room, I'm immediately greeted by Dr. Green, his green eyes twinkling with humor as he gets a good look at me.

"Head feeling better?" he asks, his eyes straying to where he knows the bump is.

"Still sore, but it's fine," I tell him with a small smile. He lets me go and I look around the room, spotting Victor near the back. With a wave, I drop down into the seat in front of him. "Is it time to go home yet?"

I turn sideways in my seat just in time to catch his smirk. "Not quite yet, princess. What did Doc want to talk to you about?" Waving it away, I explain that I had to come by the school yesterday and he had done a concussion protocol on me after he saw the bruising from my wrestling match with Dylan. Victor visibly relaxes. "Oh, so he's already checked you out. That's good to know."

My eyebrows pinched together as I swirled my pencil across the blank space at the top of my paper. I'd had teachers in the past who I had liked more than the others, but I had never been as close as these boys seemed to be with Dr. Green. I had heard several of them refer to Doc and it was far more familiar than a normal student-teacher relationship. "Are you guys close with Dr. Green?"

Victor nods. "The school we attend isn't set up like most schools. We're split into small groups with an older student or teacher as the head of the group. The groups spend so much time together it's impossible to not have a close bond."

"So, Dr. Green is your group's teacher?"

"More like co-teacher. Mr. Blackbourne is part of our group as well."

There was no stretch needed to imagine Mr. Blackbourne as a leader. I had more questions about their school and how it worked, since I had never heard of anything like it before, but we were cut off by Dr. Green beginning to call roll. When he gets to my name, he sends me a wink that makes my toes curl and cheeks flush. Glancing around the room, no one besides Victor seemed to have noticed. His amber eyes were more curious than anything as he looked between me and Dr. Green.