Fragmented Dreams

Chapter 26: Diana Loses her Temper

"Are these right?" Will asked, taking the homework from Zach's hands.

"Of course they are, Scott checked them this time."

"You're welcome," Scott said.

"Okay, can you guys focus for five minutes so we can get through this," I pleaded, flipping through the pages of my handout. The boys ignored me and I groaned internally. "Guys, seriously?"

"Why are you stressing about this so much, Massey? This class is a joke," Zachary scoffed, glancing up from his phone for a second. I bristled as he said my name. I had no idea how he pretended like nothing was going on. I wanted to call him out on his evil activities so badly but screaming 'why are you working for the Dark King' in the middle of class would be a stupid move. Zachary noticed the teacher was walking back around to our side of the classroom so he stuffed his phone under his textbook and pretended to read from the pamphlet we had been given.

I scoffed openly at his response, tapping my pen against my notebook. "Maybe some of us would like to learn the basics of CPR so we could possibly get certified?"

The boys all laughed at my comment.

"It's a hundred compressions in a minute then two breaths, what else do you need to know?" Scott piped in, not even looking up from his laptop.

"Oh, I don't know? How about the depth of compressions, how to give the proper types of breaths, learning to do everything in the proper order. All sorts of stuff," I bit back nastily. Zachary and his cronies all snickered and returned to their own personal work. "Fine, whatever," I huffed, sitting back in my chair. I would be counting the seconds until this class was over.

"I might be persuaded to practice a little," Zachary smirked, looking up from his reading. Will gave Zach a strange look, twirling his pencil nervously in his hand.

"Oh goodie," I replied, crossing my arms under my chest.

"Oh yeah, we could do a little one-on-one mouth resuscitation, just the two of us," Zachary offered, his grin growing larger. Will burst out laughing, covering his mouth as he did. I gritted my teeth and glared at the large bully, who was now inching his chair over towards me, scraping the linoleum as he went.

"Thanks, but no thanks," I scowled.

"What's wrong? Am I not your type Massey?"

"I heard she's into older men," Will snickered.

"Really? I thought she was hot for teacher. Jim saw her and Mr. Burke walking off together at the open house," Scott piped in, smirking at me from over his laptop. "We've all heard the rumors."

"Mr. Burke and I were not dating," I insisted for the tenth time today. "He just had a question about one of my paintings." That was my story and I was sticking to it. I sure wasn't going to tell anyone that Mr. Burke attacked me and transformed into a giant wraith. I especially wasn't going to let anyone know how Casimir ended up killing him with a sword made of sunlight. The story we wanted to stick with was that he had run off, quitting without any notice. Or at least Casimir and Grandpa had made it look that way. They told me that they had come up empty when they had snuck into his apartment to search for any evidence linking him to the Dark King. They took a few personal items from his place, sending an email to the staff about leaving but apparently the cops were not buying it. I wondered if they would press the issue and ask me any more questions about Mr. Burke.

Will was shaking his head at Scott, his smirk grew wider. "No, I heard she's into way older men."

My face furrowed in confusion, I had no idea how rumors like this got started. High School was exhausting.