Fearless The King Series Book One - By Tawdra Kandle Page 0,48

and that he had already been offered several scholarships and early acceptance to two colleges.

The idea of college and Michael going was something that hadn’t really occurred to me until Anne had mentioned it. The thought of him leaving King—and me—caused such a choking panic in my heart that I could hardly breathe.

For the most part, though, I was more relaxed and happy than I had ever been. What surprised and somewhat dismayed me was that the more comfortable and settled I became in my new life, the harder it was to keep up my mental wall. It seemed that it was impossible to relax one part of me without letting down all my guards. It was frustrating to hear so much more than I wanted to know, not to mention the constant base of chatter that filled my head whenever I was in school.

On the bright side, Nell’s open enmity toward me seemed to have settled into a seething hate. For the most part, she ignored me completely, as did the rest of her crowd. Occasionally she would throw a stinging barb my way, but if I failed to rise to the bait, she let it go at that. More troubling was that my lowered mental block meant that I could hear and feel even more of Nell’s dark feelings. I concentrated harder on maintaining that wall in Chemistry class than at any other time; no one besides Ms. Lacusta talked to me in that class anyway, so I wasn’t missing anything by keeping my head down and my mind closed.

It was difficult to keep Nell out during History, since I really liked that class and its teacher, Mr. Frame. Most of the time she kept her thoughts down to a low roar, but because the subject matter obviously bored her—unlike Chemistry, I guessed—her mind was prone to wander more in this class. I did my best to stay out of its way as it did so.

English class was usually the high point of my academic day. Well, what wasn’t to like: there was assigned reading, which was cool, and the only numbers were on the pages of the books. I enjoyed Mrs. Cook, the English teacher. She was interesting and fair-minded. But on this particular day, English was slowly killing me through monotony.

We were reading Shakespeare, which is a totally worthwhile pursuit. But when you’ve read all the major plays on your own and done a lot of research on the meanings and nuances, class kind of drags as the teacher tries to explain these things to a roomful of students who couldn’t really care less.

The bright spot on the day’s horizon was a pop-quiz. That would take up at least fifteen minutes. As Mrs. Cook passed out the papers, Amber Cole slid breathlessly into the seat in front of me. She was flushed and nearly late, and not a little flustered. I empathized, because I hated to come into class late myself. But it seemed more than tardiness that was upsetting Amber. Her hands were shaking slightly, and waves of intense emotion were breaking off her and overwhelming me. I automatically took the quiz paper from Mrs. Cook and tried to block Amber. But she was emanating terror, and as I looked down at my paper, I heard her as clearly as if she were shouting: What have I gotten into? What am I going to do? She says it’ll be all right… but… what do they want from me? I don’t know… should I go with them? Trust them? All these years of her torturing me… why should I believe her now? But she changed… she said she changed… I’m so scared.

I glanced at Amber as subtly as I could. She was bent over her own page, nervously drumming the eraser of her pencil on the desk. Her body language bore out what I was hearing. And what I felt from her was nearly suffocating me.

I redoubled my efforts to tune her out and focus on the quiz. Thank heavens Julius Caesar was a play I knew so well. Mrs. Cook’s quizzes were simple and predictable: ten short answer content questions and one brief essay question to test our ability to interpret the work. I flew through the first ten, wrote a fairly long paragraph for the last question and turned in my paper up front. Mrs. Cook smiled appreciatively at me and glanced at the clock.

“Five minutes, everyone,” she announced. There were some muffled groans