Page 9 of Lessons In Grey
“31.”
“Damn,” he muttered. “There goes our shot at girls this year.”
My eyes flicked in the male’s direction. Average height, light brown hair, a little on the thicker side which meant the best cuddles. He still had a chance. Not everyone was into the chiseled tattooed asshole.Don’t give up yet, Todd, you’ll find some girl to fuck this year.
“Do you fuck your students?”
Blatant.
“I won’t answer that.”
I rolled my eyes, pulling out another gummy worm. That meant yes. Don’t worry, Rags, I see you. You’re a little ho, just like me.
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Green.”
Bland.
“You all have very little substance to you,” the Professor said. “These questions are all surface questions. None of them mean anything, none of them give you any important information. It makes me worry for this year.”
I stuck the tip of my tongue out and slid the worm over it once again, staring at him carefully.
His eyes flicked to mine as if he could sense me staring at him.
I refocused on his lips as I chewed slowly.
“Anyone?” he asked, so very clearly wanting me to speak.
Alright, fine.
I swallowed and shrugged. “Did you know that people with depression or anxiety almost always have cold hands and feet?” I asked, many people shifting to look at me. “It’s because the heart is focused on pumping blood to the brain. Since the minds of the people who suffer from this never find peace the heart stops pumping blood to the limbs that are less important.”
The silence that followed was heavy, but his eyes remained locked on me, and I wondered if he felt a type of relief hearing from me.
There she is, the girl I had met that night.
But I wasn’t her. I changed every day. Every single day, I was a different thing living inside of a shell that was cracking every second of every day. Soon I would shatter and there would be nothing left of me but that shell.
Everyone would finally see how empty I was. They would know the truth.
Katelyn laughed nervously. “Sorry, her family died last year so she’s obsessed with darkness.”
I kept my eyes up while my insides shriveled. The curse of being a Glass, I suppose. The whole world knew our secrets. The whole world knew about the affair, the wreck, Helen and Jordan moving in, Jordan being a freeloader. What they didn’t know was what went on in that house, which was good. Those secrets were all I had left in the world, and I’d keep them until the day I found my inevitable end.
The Professor pushed away from the desk and slid his hands into his pockets as he started pacing, his steps slow, each one carefully thought out. “The sufferers of silence are filled with nothing but soliloquies of fractured sentences. This makes many people uncomfortable because once they speak, their words start hitting pieces of them that they thought never existed.”
He turned to the class, looking around the room. “I’m sorry that, to some of you, all some people speak is nonsense, but there are those of us who understand such fractured sentences. Just because you’re afraid of your own mind, Katelyn, doesn’t mean you have the right to apologize for the words of others.”
I tapped my pen three times, glancing towards Katelyn out of the corner of my eye to see her cheeks bright red.
Good. For once, I wasn’t the one blushing from the humiliation.
I dropped my eyes to my work. I spoke, I gave him what he requested, now I was done for the day.
“What does it mean?” another girl asked as I tried to focus on my words. “What she said, what does that mean?”
If he called on me, I’d riot.