Soul Lines (Completed)

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen
Elle's POV

"Flash Back"
May 5th (2016)

The class was a prison sentence without Jacobi to whisper jokes in my ear, poorly timed, and to keep me entertained playing tic-tac-toe. Most mornings, nowadays, after his twelfth birthday, Jacobi trained with his pack, leaving me to deal with Mrs Murdoch every Monday morning.

She wasn't the worst teacher at school, but she blatantly preferred the students from her pack over everyone else. She 'dealt' with the rest of us, giving frosted smiles and only half-deserved results.

She had a list.

It was notorious. She did nothing to hide its existence.

It was filled with the people she refused to like, based on nothing but her skewed principle alone. Members of the Viridi, Vermiculo and Caeruleum packs were inevitably on the list, as well as a select number of humans who had angered her enough to make the cut.

Those who made it onto her list were treated as the dirt beneath her shoes. To her, they were no better than the cockroaches that tainted the earth, disgusting creatures she could not be rid of. Those on her list were graded harshly, and she often had a short fuse for their shortcomings. Mrs Murdoch made sure those on the list understood where they ranked in her classroom every day, never letting them forget.

I was on that list.

I'd never done anything to anger her, but as soon as I'd walked through the classroom doors with Jacobi hanging onto my every word – I had been telling him about the dinner catastrophe the night before – she'd settled a target on my back. If I tried to talk in class, even to answer a question, Mrs Murdoch would turn her beady eyes down on me and sneer at the sound of my voice. I was always wrong when I answered her questions, even if I echoed her sentiments.

I couldn't help the crushing need to be liked by those around me, and she was a thorn in my side. My skin prickled whenever she ignored me, and I flushed with heat when she chided my answers. I'd tried placating her, flailing to succumb to her every need, to fit within the mould of her liking. But, so long as I was friends with Jacobi, she would continue to turn her disgust my way.

I knew I should have done something else while I waited for her, but I'd finished the assignment, and she was talking with an Umbra member. I didn't have anything to go on with, so I turned to the back of my book and sketched a rough cartoonish image of Jacobi's wolf. I'd drawn his ears freakishly large, and his eyes were too small for his face, but I didn't fuss over the imperfections.

Mrs Murdoch saw me before I noticed she'd finished with the other student. I didn't have time to ask her what I could do next before she snapped her fingers, drawing the room's attention to me. 'Miss. Clarke outside, now!' she shrilled.

My chest burned, and I hung my head. If Jacobi had been in the room, he would have done something twice as bad so that he would be sent out alongside me, but I trudged through the door alone, clutching my notebook to my chest.

I hadn't noticed Lachlan before, but he was leaning against the opposite hallway wall when I slinked through the doorway. He was further down the hall, by Mr Letton's maths room, and I didn't see him at first.

I had my notebook in my lap and was busy scratching out the last details of Jacobi's fur. It was hard to get the specifics right when I only had a blue biro. I was so consumed with getting the correct pressure of my pen that I didn't notice when he pushed away from the wall and started walking towards me.