Ch. 7 - Preview #3

Hope everyone's having a good weekend. Here's the next part of the chapter.

***

Jen had meant to stop by the school and be gone before the other students arrived.  But the halls were already starting to fill up by the time she stepped foot in the building.

Damn it.  Heads were swiveling toward her left and right.  Already, students were nudging each other, pointing her way, murmuring and whispering.  She’d come to expect this attention in public by now, and admittedly she quite enjoyed it.  But not here.  Here, they were all a bunch of jerks.  Shallow.  Petty.  Closed-minded.  They’d picked on her and called her ‘Spider Girl’, simply because she was skinny.  If they admired her or treated her different now, it was for similarly superficial reasons.

“Whoaaa, she’s huge,” she heard one girl mutter.

“She’s gorgeous – holy shit!” some boy hissed.

See?  Exactly her point.  Not: ‘She was so courageous on the show, so determined’ … ‘She made the most of herself’ … ‘She fought so hard; never gave up.  Good for her!’   Nothing about her qualities as a person.  Nothing beyond her outward appearance.  Just as she’d expected.

Ugh.  She picked up the pace, not even diverting around girls now, making a few of them step aside too.  At the moment, she frankly didn’t care.  She just needed to apologize to Mr. Walker about her absences the past week and a half, and see if he’d let her make up missed work.  And, of course, if he’d let her miss this week too, because she just had way more important things she needed to focus on.

Brett Walker slumped heavily on his podium, head down.  He’d been that way ever since he’d come back from Principal Caldwell’s office, but he didn’t know what else to do.  Class was starting in just eleven minutes; such precious little time of peace before his students came through that door.

Maybe this recent epidemic of tardiness was a good thing.  Increasingly, some of the girls had taken to arriving a minute late.  Or five minutes late.  Or more.  Like they were testing how much they could get away with.  Had Dean Roker even glanced at his writeups about that?  He now strongly suspected she had not.  But at least it made for less pre-class chaos.  The loud noise, the horseplaying, the near-total disregard … It was as if their teacher didn’t exist for them before class officially began.  Seriously – he’d tried quieting them down yesterday, and they either didn’t hear him over the din or pretended not to.  Just kept carrying on like a pack of primates until the bell rang, at which point they at last began reluctantly meandering toward their seats.  Though, he wouldn’t say they were especially quiet or well-behaved, even then.  Well, the boys weren’t bad.  But the girls, though …

His mouth tightened as he worried about later.  Blaire Davis – whose platinum blonde hair and high heels made him nervous on sight.  Who strutted around like she owned the place.  Who gave a scornful laugh whenever he asked her to do something.  That tall, overdeveloped brat had lingered after class yesterday; and once the others had cleared out, she’d sauntered up to him and … you know the rest.  He’d put it all in his referral slip – which now sat at the bottom of Principal Caldwell’s trash bin.  Blaire’s behavior was beyond how any student should be allowed to treat a teacher, anywhere, ever!  And yet she was getting off without so much as a warning.

Her aim had been to get him to bump up her last test score – from a C to an A!  For no other reason than she simply wanted it higher.  Of course, he’d stood firm and rejected it.  He’d even told her he’d be submitting a referral the moment she left, and she could expect to face the consequences the next morning (i.e. today).

So now, when she shows up and receives not even a warning, she’ll know just how little power he has to keep her in line.  He had a bad, bad feeling that today after school would be even worse.

Except …

click clack click

High heels.  In the hallway.  Getting closer.

clack click clack click!

It had to be Blaire, showing up early.  Maybe she already knew somehow she wouldn’t be getting in trouble.  So she was coming before class, to follow up …

Oh god.  His door opened, and the footsteps kept coming.  He kept his eyes on the podium, his hand coiling tightly around his pen, pretending he was in the middle of writing something.

CLICK CLACK CLICK  Holy smokes, those footsteps were loud!  Were they this loud yesterday!? CLICK CLACK

Two large leather-clad feet came to a halt just at the left edge of his vision.  And just stayed there.  He bit down on his lip and began to write – random words, total gibberish, while he tried to plot his next move.

Twenty long seconds elapsed.  He heard every one of them tick by, on the clock above his head.  Then a distinct clearing of her voice, and: CLICK.  CLACK.  Two definitive steps closer, bringing enormous leather-bound calves and thighs into view.

Wait … Blaire was not this big.  His faltering pen tried to write a bit more, but he soon gave up and turned his eyes up, and up … and …

It took him several moments to realize who he was seeing: the red-haired girl from his class; sat in the front row; painfully skinny, until two weeks ago she started growing fast.  Then hadn’t shown up for over a week.

Turns out she’d spent the past week growing even faster.  Holy hell, she … was so … big … How in the--!?