Grrrr, Megan moaned to herself. It was so frustrating. No one was taking this seriously. They were acting as if people just left all the time.
Her next class was World Literature; a class she had regretted signing up for the moment she stepped foot into the room last winter when second semester began. It wasn’t that she disliked reading, but the teacher was an old bitch and for some strange reasons didn’t like guys, or any girl who participated in sports — especially cheerleading. She was also vocal in her support of the Republican party and hated Obama because she felt he was a socialist Muslim who wanted to ruin the nation, one who was even responsible for the terrible oil spill in the gulf even though there was nothing he could really do about it.
Megan knew that her teacher was not alone in her opinions and wouldn’t care about them if she kept them to herself. The teacher didn’t, though, and seemed to find ways of comparing every negative aspect of Obama and the Democratic party — both real and fabricated — to the literature they were reading and then would go on a rant. Making the situation worse was that most people in town felt the same way, including her father and the school board, so no one cared when she complained. Plus the teacher had been working there since her parent’s were students and no one had the guts to get rid of her. Still, it made Megan sick every time she went on a rant, especially when it was fueled by something like a passage within the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which she would use to show what life would be like once Obama turned the nation into a socialist country.
Most students brushed that away and wouldn’t have despised her if that were her only flaw. The one that pissed off her fellow students was her thought that kids their age couldn’t help but get in trouble and be destructive during their free time and needed to be shackled down by the burden of homework and reading assignments in order to prevent such unacceptable behavior. It was really bad.
Even Jimmy Hawthorn, the guy who sat behind her and never really said a word to anyone unless spoken to, had voiced his opinion of her on several different occasions. She was awful, yet there was nothing Megan, or any other student in class, could do about it.
“Hey Jimmy,” Megan said a minute before the bell was going to ring. She twisted in her seat so she could see him.
“Yeah?” Jimmy asked, his eyes drifting away from hers.
“Did you hear about Samantha King?”
“What about her?” he asked quickly, his eyes back and staring into hers.
“She disappeared yesterday after school.” It surprised her that he hadn’t heard about it, even if he rarely ever talked to anyone. By now it was common news.
“Oh yeah, I think I did hear something about that. She ran away or something, didn’t she?”
“No,” Megan snapped. “Samantha wouldn’t run away. Something happened to her.”
“Like what?”
“Like she was kidnapped by someone. My dad doesn’t think so but—”
“Whoa,” Jimmy interrupted. “Your dad doesn’t think she was kidnapped?”
“No, but I know she was. Samantha had no reason to run away. Something happened to her.”
Ms. Gliek walked in just as the bell rang. Anyone who wasn’t in their seats, even if they were just standing next to them, was marked tardy. It made Megan so angry. Teachers, even ones she liked, focused too much on stupid disciplinary rules, tardiness being one of them. If a student walked in twenty minutes late that was one thing. Marking them tardy because they weren’t sitting in their seat properly when the bell rang, that was something else.
Jimmy had expected there to be a huge uproar over the fact that Samantha King had never returned home the night before, but aside from a few speculative comments, no one was really saying that much, and apparently the police weren’t even involved yet, which was amazing. He had thought for sure every single police officer would have been at the school asking questions, similar to the scene in the movie Scream after the two kids were murdered in the beginning, and that the FBI and news media would have all descended upon the town. Instead the only one who even seemed remotely concerned was Megan Reed, the daughter of the town sheriff, and a good friend Samantha’s. It was amazing and a huge relief.
At the same time he knew that things still had the potential to turn hectic and that his visions of the town being swamped with reporters and FBI agents and other law enforcement agencies could still happen, especially if Samantha wasn’t heard from. Once she was missing for a week or so people would start to panic. Until then he felt like he could relax his fears a bit, though of course he still had to stay alert.
Brett Murphy saw Jimmy Hawthorn and that new girl Tina talking in the hallway before school ended and knew he had to interfere somehow. He had to inform this Tina girl that she was much too pretty to be hanging out with the likes of Jimmy.
A look of fear spread across Jimmy’s face as Brett approached (at least this is what Brett saw).
“Hey Jimmy, how’s it going?” Brett asked.
Jimmy and Tina swiveled around to look at him. “What do you want shitface?” Jimmy asked.
Without warning Brett had Jimmy in a headlock. Tina gasped.
“Who’s the shitface now you stupid cock sucking bastard? Who is it?” Brett looked over at Tina while holding Jimmy and said, “Why do you hang out with this loser? Don’t you know he’s the punching bag of the entire—” all the air rushed out of him as Jimmy’s elbow connected with his stomach just below the ribcage.
His arm loosened.
“Let’s go,” Jimmy said to Tina after pulling free.
Brett, gasping for air, straightened himself and looked around. The bitch who had once reported him for using a hall pass to go get a Coke from the vending machine during class hours was looking at him. God, he hated all hall monitors, especially that one.
Before she could get close he walked away, his mind thinking about one thing: Jimmy. The bastard was going to pay for this.
“I don’t know why, but he’s picked on me ever since the first grade,” Jimmy said. “It all began with the game Four Square if you can believe that,” he added with a smile.
“Four Square?” Tina asked. “Really?”
“Seriously. When I was little, that game was all the rage during recess. The school had like five Four Square patterns laid out, yet huge lines still developed all the time at each one. I wasn’t very good at the game but liked it and always got knocked out, but then one day I started to do really good and got to the King Square and was allowed to make the rules. It was really cool but everyone ganged up on me to knock me out, which obviously is how the game works, but being that young and being ganged up on and then being knocked out right away really got to me and I started crying and ran behind a tree. After that, Brett never left me alone.”
“What a jerk,” Tina said.
“Yeah, but now it doesn’t really bother me. He thinks it does, which is why he keeps at it, probably because it used to make me cry in junior high school and he once pinned me on the ground and pushed my face in goose shit. I started working out my freshman year though since they had a weight room and now every time he tries to hurt me I just push back. He doesn’t seem to realize that I could kick his ass if I wanted to.”
“Plus you sit alone everyday so people probably think it still gets to you.”
“Well, it doesn’t, I just prefer to sit by people whose company I enjoy.”
Tina smiled which caused Jimmy to blush.
After that neither one knew what to say, but thankfully their silence didn’t last long since Alan came and joined them for the walk home, the words, “so I hear you two are going to prom together,” leaving his lips.