Carolina Wren

Chapter 52

Wren's POV

North was a looming presence beside me as the crowds in the hallway parted like the Red Sea just to get out of his way.

Thunderclouds seemed friendly and downright cheerful if you compared them to his mood since we got to homeroom this morning. Notes—a small mountain of them—were the source of his sparkling disposition. So innocuous, so harmless, by all appearances. They had been arranged in a heap on my desk when we got to class this morning, our second clue that Jade had gotten her payback.

The first had been the increased whispers and Nathan nearly pummeling someone in the face when they called me a slut as we walked by. It had been annoying yesterday but this morning had been so blatant, even an idiot wouldn't have missed it. Someone saw me and got up to run to whisper something to their friends at another table, tittering as they stared at me. Wolf whistles echoed from the other end of the hall, protected only by the guys not being able to figure out who it was.

Come to find out, my absence yesterday hadn't been completely unnoticed by my peers. I hadn't been in my last two classes and North got up and left halfway through last period after he'd gotten a text on his phone. It had been Mr. Blackbourne, sending him to take care of something but no one had known that, and they wouldn't have cared, anyway. The moment North was a few minutes late to football practice, the seeds had been sown and Jade had just enough ingredients to make a cocktail of trouble.

According to rumor, North and I had found an empty classroom and I had spent the last hour of school giving him birthday head. Some took it as far as to say they'd heard that someone walked in on us straight up having sex on campus. From what the others had managed to glean off of their classmates, it had started with text messages last night and it had been slowly spreading ever since. It wasn't even lunch yet and it's like the whole school now believes I'm stupid enough to have sex on school property.

The notes had started when I first came back after the babies were sick. Most of them were stupid—requests for my number, asking me on dates, asking about my bra size. Some were more brazen and inappropriate, but mostly harmless. They had pissed North off, even during those days where we weren't talking, but I'd kicked his chair when he tried blatantly intercepting them.

This morning, though, they had largely been geared towards the rumor that North and I had had sex in a classroom. The sheer number of them had been enough to annoy North, but when I had gasped and grown nauseous at one that detailed the way they'd pull me into an empty janitor's closet and show me what a real man could do, I hadn't been able to stop him from yanking it out of my hand and World War III was started in the halls of an underfunded public high school.

After a night of little sleep from staying up with my mind racing about Keegan's hearing loss, my morning up until that point had gone surprisingly well. Juni and I were the only ones awake when Sean came waltzing through the door to celebrate her turning five months today. Naturally, he'd brought a gift for her because he insisted that she needed more age-appropriate toys, but he'd also brought a gift for me.

"All good moms deserve to be spoiled," he'd told me when I asked him why.

It was simple, all of it stuff he could have grabbed at the grocery store for a few dollars. A pair of fuzzy purple socks. A couple tubes of chapstick in different flavors. Lotion that smells like cherry blossoms. A chocolate bar and a keychain with Charleston, SC and some flowers on it.

But it's the only gift I've been given since before my dad died, besides flowers that my brothers have collected or homemade cards that Dylan has made. Our clothes being purchased by Victor could be considered a gift, but this felt different. It wasn't a necessity. He was just thinking of me. He didn't ask, I didn't have to pick it out for myself. He had stood in a store, trying to decide what he thought I'd like the best.