Tainted Luck

Chapter 3

The next two days of school was the same, Fay controlling my mind the whole time. Whenever Fay wasn’t on my mind, Katie and Him were. It didn’t look like she cared that he was so much older than her, but I didn’t like it that he was hitting on her the day I walked in and he had his hand on her face. There should be a law saying that you can’t date someone who is tons years older than you, ok maybe thats a little melodramatic but still! 

“Emerson!” Mr. Bleak yelled at me in Math 5th period. “Mr. Strong!”

“Sorry, sir, can you repeat the question?” I asked jumping in my seat.

“Go into the hallway please, I wouldl like to talk to you in private,” he said as he began to give the class an assignment as I walked out the door. A few minutes later he walked out and closed the door enough so that he could still see the class.

“Yes, sir?”

“Emerson, is this about what happened last Friday? If it is, the best way to handle this is by talking to someone you can trust. You shouldn’t keep your feelings to yourself,” he asked.  “I’m not saying this because I’m a teacher and I’m supposed to care for my students, but I am saying this because it’s the truth.”

I tried to not make eye contact with him but I failed.  Mr. Bleak wasn’t that much older than Katie, but he was already greying. I would be fine if Katie dated him. I pushed that thought aside and focused on what was going on now and not Katie and Him. “Who could I talk to? I don’t want to talk to a counselor, which is just a sign of weakness.”

 “Emerson, asking for help is not a weakness, it’s a strength that not a lot of people have. You can always come to me if you need to,” he crossed his arms with his shoulder on the wall while watching me. After I didn’t say anything he said, “Keep that in mind, now pay attention in class and do the assignment I assigned to that other students.”

I focused on my work the rest of the class period and left silently for my next class of the day that I knew I wouldn’t have time to think of anything outside of school: Science class. Compared to all of the other science classes I have ever taken, this is the one is the hardest one for me yet. The anatomy just wasn’t my thing; I’m more of a space guy and how people ended up on earth.

“Today we will be talking about something different after some events that happened over the weekend and will go back to talking about the red blood cell tomorrow,” Mrs. Victory announced. “For those who have been watching the news have heard about the accident involving a missing child and a bear; today we will be talking about what she did that saved her life and what could have happened if certain bones were broken.” Crap, I definitely won’t forget about her now.

“Is she ok?” a girl in the front of the room asked raising her hand in the air.

“All I know is what the news has said, which is that she is still in the hospital with critical conditions. First off, what do you do if you are ever attacked by a bear?” Mrs. Victory said picking up a dry erase marker and making a chart on the board. On one said it said WHAT TO DO and the other said WHAT NOT TO DO.

“By being quiet?” someone asked.

“No, you want to be loud,” I said without thinking.

“Why do you say that, Emerson?” Mrs. Victory asked me.

“Because it shows that you are in the area and it will distract them. If you have the bear distracted it can give the other person with you a chance to find something big and heavy to hit the bear with,” I explained.

“Right,” Mrs. Victory said as she wrote it down on the board. “You should always carry something big with you that you can use as defense against any big animal when you are walking in the woods at all times. Everyone looked at him remembering what he had done, and how he saved that girl.