Carolina Wren

Chapter 51

Wren's POV

Instead of going to Japanese during 7th period, I headed downstairs to the office, Silas acting like a battering ram to get us through the crowds of people pretending they weren't watching us. It was moderately quieter this time, the respect Silas had earned through the football team meant that there weren't as many comments sent in our direction, 'accidentally' spoken too loudly.

There had been a lot of debate over who would be going with me to take Keegan to his appointment with the audiologist at the hospital. Obviously, Sean would be there, but he had to leave earlier than I needed to, and Mr. Blackbourne hadn't wanted me to miss any more classes than necessary. Luke had wanted to go, and I had been in favor of it because he was the one with the best connection to Keegan, but Sean had argued that they needed Keegan to be calm and Luke was usually a playmate. I had argued that they're all basically playmates because I'm the one parenting the kids, but Sean had won. Luke was too easily distracted—and distracting—and we needed Keegan to focus.

Victor had seemed like the next most obvious solution, since he was both calm and had connected with Keegan over playing the piano at the mall, but it would draw attention if me, Sean, and Victor were all missing from Japanese class. Nathan wasn't exactly the best with the littlest kids and he and Gabe don't have a license yet. A fact that I was informed didn't always stop them, but it was too risky with a toddler in the car during school hours.

Mr. Blackbourne had gone into detail about what could happen. After school and on the weekends were less risky, but during the school day or late at night looked suspicious. If we got pulled over with just me in the car, I might go unnoticed, but we wouldn't luck out that way with the little kids. And if the police called Sheila, she could accuse me of kidnapping them. Without a license or any way to prove my identity, she could cause mayhem.

The constant threat that Sheila presented wasn't unknown to me. I was constantly walking on eggshells, just trying to do what it took to keep the kids safe. Somewhere along the way I must have lost sight of the true depth of the issue, outside of when she was actively out to hurt us, though. Something in the sternness of Mr. Blackbourne's words and the solemn look on the guys' faces as they agreed to take even more care than usual to avoid suspicion told me that I had become too complacent with the subtle danger we were always in.

I wasn't sure what to do with that sudden awareness. It wasn't new information, but it felt like I was starting to realize that I had lost one of my senses. That I was numb.

North, who was getting his conditional license after lunch, had fought tooth and nail to get to be the one that went but for the same reason that Silas would only be dropping me off at the office, he couldn't go either. They were both needed at football practice and whoever took me would be helping at the hospital and then going to round up Dylan and Juni. And since Mr. Blackbourne had to stay at the school with Sean gone, Kota drew the short end of the stick and would be the one stuck listening to my brother scream the entire way across town.

He was waiting outside the main office doors, back leaning against the concrete wall, green eyes flitting over students from behind his glasses as they passed by. His serious expression morphed into a smile when he saw us. He pushed off the wall and immediately started zigzagging through the crowd. "I already have your permission slip," he told me after Silas waved and walked off, towering over almost everyone else around him. "Not actually in the system, but it should keep anyone from giving you any grief about leaving. And if they do take notice, it's in the official records book, so we can just pull it back up."

The school still used a binder with double layered slips, so when you wrote on the top paper it copied to the lower one. Mr. Blackbourne had mentioned it during our class today, assuring me that it would conveniently disappear unless needed, because the school administrators never bothered to check the binder anyway. It was all part of helping me stay a 'ghost' if I wanted to. I had never been this careful in my previous schools, but Mr. Blackbourne had said they had already started working on a contingency plan going back to my old high school and even my intermediate school to erase things if I decided that's the path I wanted to take in the future.