M-195-10 Cruising
Cruising
M-195-10
Midwood
Jay Greene
$1.95
Cruising
M-195-10
Midwood
Jay Greene
$1.95
Excerpt
Julius could feel the boy’s eyes on him, following every move he made at the blackboard.
“Thus we see,” he explained, “how the development of the Plantagenets affected not only the course of history in Great Britain, but through-out all of Europe.” He finished the last of his diagrams and turned back to the class. “Are there any questions?” His eyes scanned the sea of vacant faces, knowing the chances were unlikely that any one of them understood a word he’d been saying, much less felt inspired enough to ask a question.
There was a snicker in the back of the room and Julius’s head snapped to attention. “Might I ask what you find so amusing, Evelyn?”
The girl covered her mouth to keep from giggling again, but suddenly burst into laughter a second time, setting off most of the others in the classroom. Julius’s hand tightened on the piece of chalk he’d been holding until he could feel it crumbling in his fist.
“If the joke is so funny, perhaps you would like to tell it to Mr. Deems.”
At the mention of the principal’s name, the girl’s smile began to fade. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hoffedinck.” There was a murmur close to her and suddenly she and several of the others sitting around her were laughing hysterically again.
“All right!” Julius slammed the history text against his desk with such a resounding crack that the laughter died as though it had been sucked into a vacuum. “Since everyone finds this lesson so amusing, you will have a chance to laugh about it all night. I will expect each of you to turn in twenty copies of the diagram on the blackboard by tomorrow’s class period.”
A loud moan went through the class. “Please, Mr. Hoffedinck,” the girl protested. “It wasn’t my fault. Joe—“ She stopped abruptly, covering her mouth, but she’d already said enough.
Julius glowered at the boy sitting across the aisle from her, the same one he knew had been watching him all period, waiting for the opportunity to once again disrupt the class. He’d been a discipline problem since the opening of the school term and getting worse each day.
“Look at him,” Julius thought bitterly. “Cocky son-of-a-bitch!”
The boy was slouched low in his seat, his shirt half-open down the front, his hand inside scratching the hair on his chest. A smug look of defiance was written all over his face.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.