The (not so) Good Girls Bad Boys: The Good, The Bad and The Abandoned

25- Mind Games

"Can you stop that annoying tapping?" Axel hissed from behind me.

I placed a hand over my thigh to stop my foot from tapping but the worry that filled me didn't stop growing. I couldn't pay attention to a single thing Mrs. Gorki was saying. Heck, I haven't been able to pay attention in her Calculus class for the past few months.

"Sorry," I mumbled before returning to my thoughts.

Axel was silent behind me for a while as my mind wandered elsewhere, thinking about my mother's surgery today. Her cancer has been getting worse, and the tumors have been growing on her brain stem at a rapid rate. The way the doctors looked at my family when they told us about the surgery told me that the chances of it working were slim. My mother was already in critical condition, it would be a miracle if she could even survive the first five minutes into the surgery... If she even lasts that long.

As if Axel could sense my thoughts, he sighed behind me and leaned forward to whisper in my ear, "stop worrying about your mom, Lex. There's nothing we can do..." He reached forward and held my hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "All we can do is wait and hope that the surgery goes well."

I swallowed the lump and gave him a small smile that we both knew was fake.

He didn't tell me that "everything will be okay" and that "the surgery will go fine" because he knew that he couldn't make promises he couldn't keep. He knew better then to give me a false sense of hope.

It's such a funny thing, hope... One second, it will fill your with strength, it will be your armor against the world... And the next? The next second, the same hope that strengthened you will be what tears you down further then you ever thought possible, just because you had such foolish hope that things would work out when it all was clearly going downhill.

I stopped letting hope hurt me a long time ago.

Mrs. Gorki cleared her throat and I looked up to see she was standing in front of Axel and I, looking down at us disapprovingly over her sharp, thin glasses with her small, black, pig-like eyes.

"Anything you would like to share with the class Mr. Hart and Ms. Walker?" She asked, her pig eyes narrowed into slits.

Axel slid his hand out of mine and sat back in his chair, looking extremely relaxed next to my tense and squirming self. I wasn't used to getting into trouble with teachers, and the disapproving look in her eyes made me squirm.

"No, ma'am. We're sorry. Please, continue the lesson..." he said as gentlemen like as he could.

Mrs. Gorki gave us both one last glare before turning her attention back to the board.

"... Mrs. Porky," he finished under his breath. A few of our classmates, including myself chuckled at the infamous nickname.

Mrs. Gorki whipped around and glared at the two of us. "What did you say?" She growled.

Axel just held his hands up in defense, acting innocent. "Nothing ma'am. Please, continue the lesson, I'm very interested on this next question."

Mrs. Gorki's usually frowning lips tilted upwards in a small, smug smirk.

"Is that right? Maybe you could read the question for the class then, Mr. Hart."

The mischievous glint in Axel's eyes immediately vanished as the smirk on Mrs. Gorki's face grew. I wanted to smack the smug look off of that witches face as Axel squirmed under the eyes of the class. Usually he didn't care about what other's thought, but that's because he had nothing to care about. Yet when it came to reading, he suddenly felt the pressure of the student's eyes because no one knew he had Dyslexia. Of course the teachers knew though, and the fact that Mrs. Gorki was doing this, knowing full well he couldn't read the problem, made me want to punch her in her fat, piggy snout.