The Taste of Silver | Fortune's Fool #2

03 | tables had turned

[ t a b le s h a d t u r n e d ]

♥ gabriel ♥

FROM THE CORNER of my eye, I could see a pair of eyes fearfully watching me. For the past five minutes, I'd been ignoring it and instead, was trying to read through Mrs Marshall's - Mr Holland's replacement - illegible comments on my essay but now I was getting pissed off. She was terrible at teaching but at least she wasn't sick enough in the head to have an affair with her student.

My fists clenched together at the thought that Mr Holland had the guts to justify himself using-

That bastard.

Neither of them was worth spending my damn thoughts on. Feeling my breath speed up in anger, I took a gulp from my flask and changed my line of thought before I flipped.

Clicking my silver pen shut, I twisted in my chair to look behind me at whoever the hell had been intently watching me. I met a rightly terrified pair of eyes.

Timothee Johnson.

I raised an eyebrow. He was likely having flashbacks from the last time I'd focused my full attention on him. I snarled coldly at him, my upper lip curling in distaste as I thought about what he said that day. A split second later, he shivered and looked away petrifaction dripping on his face like melting wax down a candlestick.

An image of his bloody face with a broken nose came to mind; his hand pressing against the floor as he scrambled away from me.

Gabriel, he had it coming.

"Excuse me. Can you face the front please?" I heard a hoarse yet feminine voice order me. "Gabriel Reid, is it?"

I turned back around to see Mrs Marshall whose eyes were darting between the seating plan and my face. She was tall, blonde and with light brown eyes. "Yes, Ma'am. That is what it says on the seating plan, does it not?"

A couple of people sniggered, eager to gain my approval.

I gave them a frosty look that showed I wasn't up for messing about. I wasn't trying to be funny. She'd already wasted twenty minutes of the lesson doing God-knows-what.

Over the past half-year, I'd boosted my English grade from a D to an A and I knew that if pushed a little further, I'd be able to get an A*. That was only going to be possible if she taught.

"Drop the attitude, young man," she answered back, looking at me sternly through her black glasses.

"It's been 16 minutes and approximately 43 seconds since this lesson commenced. I gladly will if you begin teaching-" I responded monotonously, the lack of pitch in my voice highlighting the dead seriousness of my words.

There was no point me wasting my time in this class if the teacher was incapable of doing what she was being paid to do.

Before she could comment on my impoliteness, I continued putting an icy emphasis on my last word. "-Ma'am."

I could have sworn she froze in fear for a moment as if the lack of humanity exuding from me had sucked the words from her mouth.

"I- Um, Yes. Yes," she said shakily. "Sonia, can you hand out these articles to everyone, please. I'd like you all the skim through and find three differences between the writers' point of view. Jot down the methods used too."

The teacher looked at me again as if half expecting me to smile in gratefulness. I glared at her. She was too stupid to be teaching if she thought I'd thank her for doing what she's employed here to do.

Mrs Marshall has only been teaching for twenty minutes when she'd got distracted again. I didn't have another ounce of energy to bother with this her again.