"You really don't have to stay.." I told him, afraid he would snap at me again.
He did. "No, I have to stay. Because some teenage girl isn't allowed in the art room alone, and I'm stuck watching her like some babysitter." Mr. Grant said bitterly, not bothering to hide his frustration.
I sighed and pressed my hands together, trying to supress the fearful nerves that my teacher gave me. He scared me, a lot. He was always so rude.
No one liked Mr. Grant. Of course, all the girls did in the beginning of the year, I thought he was attractive. Everyone did. I still do, but he was so mean, and that resulted in everyone hating him and dreading his class.
And me, for some reason. I always got along with my teachers, I knew what to say right to who- but not Mr. Grant. He was impossibly mean and hostile with his tone. Especially to me.
Mrs. Rain was my Advanced IB Art teacher, and we were bestfriends when it came to that class. Sure, she was in her forties and just began getting greys, but she taught me everything I knew. She trusted me with everything. Especially the Art Room Mr. Grant and I stood in.
When my fingers pressed against eachother, I folded them in my lap and refrained from sighing again. "Mrs. Rain sent that email because it was a rule, you could leave and she would be fine. I could call her and she'll tell you you can go home." I was being reasonable, but no matter what I said he'd comback with a sassy remark. It was like everything I said made him hate me more.
Usually he'd just be so irritated with all the other kids he would just glare at them and they'd shut up, but with me. For some reason, he treated me worse than everyone else. I was top ten percent in my graduating class- which held 12 hundred students.- so it was a big deal. I didn't really care about my relationships with my teachers, as long as I was persistant with perfection in my classes and I understood their teaching.
I never understood Mr. Grant's, and I had to provide my own calculus tutor to avoid his awful aura.
I now had an art project to do based on beauty and serenity, and with him around I definetly couldn't do it.
"Just get started and hurry up, I'm not going to go home and get in trouble because a student told me to." He muttered through his hard clenched jaw. I could tell on his pretty face that he was more angry than I've seen him before.
I didn't know much about him, maybe he had a family to go home to. I didn't want to keep him around and end up screwing my project up. "I'm going home then." I said quietly and gathered my stuff I had just set out.
He shot me another look this time, I didn't see it, but I felt it. I couldn't do anything right for him. My grades in his class were only relatively high because of my tutor I can barely afford. "Just. Hurry. Up." He was about to snap. I knew if I said one more thing he'd blow up.
It never mattered to me if he liked me or not, but it mattered whether he wanted to keep my grade up or not. So I said, "Bye Mr. Grant." And I walked out feeling so wrong. I've never had that mocking, 'sweet girl' tone to a teacher before. It didn't matter! The project wasn't even for him.
I picked up my pace after hearing an angry curse, and the slamming of a door. Most likely the art room door because it had that scream when it rubbed against the rusty metals.
It would be the most awkward and awful thing to slow down and have him walked past me on my way to my car, so I distracted myself with my phone and saw my few missed calls from my brothers.
Right when I was about to call Austin- my oldest brother- back, my other older brother, Chris, called me.
I didn't greet him when I picked up the phone I never did, neither of us ever did.
"Are you going home yet?" He asked quickly. I wanted to ask why it mattered to him because it's not like he's living there, but I wasn't going to waste my time arguing with him, I didn't like talking to my brothers in the first place.
"I'm on my way," And heard after I got to my Jeep, the front doors of the school click shut and hard, staccato steps on the concrete. Mr. Grant's fancy Italian shoes that were so shiny, and tapped like he was royalty or something. He probably thought he was.
"We're coming over in ten minutes." He said.
I didn't bother asking why although it made me wonder. They'd usually check up on me since I lived alone. All of them graduated and went to college, or are just getting out of college like Chris- who was the closest to my age. Bailey, the middle brother who was six years older recently graduated from Harvard University. Austin, the oldest, graduated from Duke University. Chris was five years older than me and just came back from Yale when my Senior year began. So this year was the first year in a while that I had my brothers back.
They were obsessingly protective, but they didn't have to make much of an effort since all I did was study and read.
My father was in the military, and he'd been gone for years. Before that he came back for two days just to leave again, and he did it all for us. He and my mom had Austin, my oldest brother, when they were only fifteen. They were adults right away and were shunned from everyone and built a family. After three boys they stopped. My parents were eighteen and exhausted from having started early on maturity. They waited five years, working and working, barely making it with the pennies they got from their minor jobs. It wasn't fair because they could no longer attend highschool. They couldn't just waltz into a college either- neither of them had a deploma.
They thought they were done with their kids in their early twenties, but when they wished for a girl they got one. And I was the fourth letter of the alphabet- Diana.
Austin, Bailey, Chris, and Diana. We were named in chronological order. My mom died when I was six, so I vaguely remember how beautiful she was. After that my dad didn't know how to provide for us.
My brothers kept my mother's last name out of respect, and believed she deserved to have the ongoing family name. I kept my dad's. Diana Apollo. My mother was Ana Valiant- describing her perfectly- according to my father.
He was the smartest man you'd ever meet. He never finished highschool and never went to college, but he read any possible thing that happened on the earth. The human body, the worlds history, he knew numbers like he had the worlds fasted calculator in his head, and he knew stars. Stars were my favorite with him.
My dad could've done so much, and he didn't need a degree or anything close to that because any college graduate wouldn't stand a chance against his wise mind. He was sad though, without my mother. And he decided body over mind, and fought for our country.
It turns out when my mother died she left us with a fortune. From her grandparents.
My father wanted nothing to do with it, so we used it to our needs. And soon gained more and more money because of my brothers jobs. Doctor, lawyer, and Chris just begun his job as a psychiatrist.
Right now, I lived alone.