Her Dangerous Revenge

CHAPTER 45

He stared at her. "Did you do this somehow?"

She gave him an innocent look. "Are you asking me if I hacked the system to put us

in the same class?"

He kept staring.

"Don't be stupid." She rolled her eyes, taking on her usual air of arrogant

indifference. "I wouldn't even know how the hell to do that. Although..."

"I really need to stop accidentally giving you horrible ideas."

"You should," she agreed, turning around once Mr. Prichard—the youngest teacher

at the high school, maybe twenty-six—entered the room.

"Welcome to Psychology 101," he started, grinning enthusiastically at the sea of very

unenthusiastic faces. "I know it's the first day, so let's not get into the heavy stuff.

To start: can anyone tell me what psychology is? Don't be shy. I'm not looking for a

textbook definition here."

A freshman in the front row raised her hand. He nodded at her.

She gave a tentative answer. "The study of the mind?"

"An excellent answer." He turned and began drawing on the whiteboard with a blue

marker. The shape began to take form, until finally Cooper guessed what it was: a

brain.

Mr. Prichard wrote psychology inside the rudimentary drawing. "That's what we're

going to be talking about, folks. The mind. You can study this thing for years and

still never get the full picture. But that's the beauty of it, isn't it?"

He tapped his head. "Humans have always been fascinated about what goes on up

here and why. And sure, there's a lot of technical jargon that goes along with

understanding the brain and our behavior and how it all ties together. But if you walk

away with anything from my class, I want it to be an understanding of the concepts

we learn in this room , not just a list of formal textbook definitions."

A few people looked genuinely interested. Even Cooper had to admit the class

didn't sound half bad.

"But let's be honest. I know what you really care about." Mr. Prichard spread his

hands and grinned. "So good news. No pop quizzes, and no cumulative final."

That earned him a response. A couple of kids even clapped.

"Alright." He sat behind his desk and leaned back. "That's all for today. You're free

to go!"

The atmosphere lifted. Even Cooper was smiling, having decided he most definitely

was going to like this class. He

stood to leave with the rest of the class when Calla grabbed his wrist, using more

force than strictly necessary.

"Ouch!" he hissed, glaring at her. "Let go."

"Look," she said, but she released her hold on him. She stood and nodded her head

pointedly at someone standing by the door.

Cooper glanced over her shoulder. Blake Richardson laughed, standing alongside a

couple of the kids from the basketball team, his backpack across his shoulder. He

had a blue gatorade in hand and, as Cooper watched, he took a quick swig.

"His hand," Cooper muttered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Calla nod.

Blake's grip on the gatorade bottle gave Cooper a clear view of the thick, angry

scabs on his knuckles. As he watched, he began to notice other, less prominent

injuries, including a scratch near his left eye and a ring of discolored marks around

his neck. Cooper thought it looked suspiciously like the imprint of a hand.

"Have you seen his brother yet?" Calla asked, taking care to keep her voice low.

"What about him?"

She smiled, as if they weren't talking about two suspects in a murder investigation.

"I'll catch you up after school. Let's just say Mike looks worse. A lot worse."

Cooper bit his bottom lip. "Blake looks a hell of a lot like he got in a fight."

"Trust me. Mike's face told the same story." She kept up her easy smile, though her

eyes were dark and cold. Lifeless. "Steph had some interesting things to say about

our boy Mike. And about Jessica, too. But I hadn't seen Blake until now. This

changes things."

"Changes what?" Cooper asked, glancing back toward the doorway. But Blake was

gone. In fact, so were most of the other students.

"I thought something happened between Jess and Mike. But now I'm thinking it's

more complicated than that." She turned and gestured for him to follow. "Come on.

We're going to be late."

Cooper felt horribly confused. It was like he was stuck in a vacuum, and all the

oxygen was slowly being sucked out of the room, leaving him gasping for breath.

"Late for what?"

She glanced over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. "For P.E., obviously."