That Kid: Noah Pryce

Chapter 36

[JENNY]

This is so frustrating.

A lot of things has happened to me recently that I lost track of this week's exams. I literally forgot about it!

If it wasn't for Francine, I wouldn't have remembered.

Anyways, the morning period had just ended and I haven't been totally thinking clearly. Even my notes during class had turned out to be just a bunch of doodles and nonsense scribbles. Then there's this thing about me not talking to Harris yet ever since our little argument the last time. I'm pretty sure he's still mad at me because of it.

Golly jeesh. Remembering I have History class with him this afternoon is making my head hurt. Should I change seats later? Uuugh. I hate this. I miss Harris and his goofiness.

In the middle of my spaced-out thoughts, I felt a hand slid through my hand. I blinked and realized Noah's fingers had just intertwined with mine as we walked down the hall on the way to the cafeteria. I glimpsed at him and he gave me a sweet genuine smile like nothing ever happened. Like everything was okay. Like we didn't do anything disgusting during the weekend.

***

"What are you doing?" I followed Noah as he dashed to the kitchen. He was turning the stoves on, then the microwave oven, leaving its door ajar. I could start smelling gas-like scent mixed with the air and I felt the atmosphere warming up. Then he began cutting the wires of a few appliances there were inside.

"What are you doing???!"  I reiterated, this time almost to a yell. He still didn't answer. Instead, he breathes in,  inhaling the air that smelled gas, and sniggered.

When he finally took notice of my presence, all he said was "We need to get out of here before this place blows up."

The next thing I knew, he was dragging Mr. Morris' body back to the kitchen directly near where the stoves were. He lit a match and tossed it somewhere to the direction of the stove. Before I could make sense of everything, I was being hauled to the outside of the apartment.

On cue, the whole place exploded just in time for us to walk out of the door. Noah and I flew forward and collided with the pavement in front of the building. Slowly a few people from the neighborhood started to appear in numbers.

"Shit. We better get out of here."

****

I snapped out of my thoughts as we pass by a certain spot in the hallway where there was a shelf containing medals and trophies from the school's sports team, majority under Coach Morris' supervision. There was a mini table next to it.

In the center of the table was a framed portrait of Mr. Morris himself. The frame was surrounded with flowers and small colored candles were lit around it on the table. There were flowers under the table too, and more candles placed in glass.

Some of the athletes were huddling around it. There were those who were crying, one was stating out some sort of prayers, while the rest just stood there pretending to give their sincere condolences. Okay so the last part was my own opinion.

To be honest, it's actually a surprise for me seeing that there are actually people who's sad of Mr. Morris death. I wonder if they'll feel the same way once they found out about his... pedophilia condition.

"Why are they mourning for that fucktard?" Noah scorned in a whisper. His grasp on my hand tightened as his body tensed up in anger. I swallowed the lump stuck in my throat before licking my dry lips.

If only you hadn't killed him. I wanted to reply that but ended up not saying it because of a reason even I can't comprehend myself. The point was there could have been another way to punish him like sending him to jail instead of burning him to ash along with his entire apartment.