Page 124 of Tasting Fire
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Emmy and Mrs. Southerlanddidn’t have to pass by the office or any other populated area to access the other classrooms. Outside the band room, the hallway hooked a hard right and opened into corridor that looked fifty miles long to Emmy. So many doors on either side.
So many kids and teachers behind those doors.
A sudden and overwhelming panic rose up in her and she froze.
“What’s wrong with you?” With her gun, Mrs. Southerland whacked Emmy on the scapula hard enough to send a lightning bolt of pain up her neck. “Keep walking. You won’t manipulate me. I can see right through your drama.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Do you think I wanted to? I never wanted this prison of a job. All the riffraff—smelling like body odor and pot—walk in and out of my office. Doesn’t matter if they have a 4.0 or a 1.0. Equal opportunity, that’s what Principal Campos says. Bullshit. Some of those kids don’t have a single brain between three of them. And motivation? Oh, please. Their phones suck it out of them, even the ones whomighthave what it takes to be a college student. I used to choose the best and groom them for greatness. At least until Cash Kingston.”
Oh, God. He was her downfall. Her Achilles heel. It had been less than a year from the time she and Cash graduated to when Mrs. Southerland had transitioned to her position as a guidance counselor. “After Cash decided not to attend college, your business started failing, didn’t it?”
“You mean afteryouscrewed everything up. That boy moped around like an abused puppy for the better part of a year. I’d touted his success to my potential clients. I took him, a football player with mediocre grades, and molded him into the perfect recruit. And he just pissed it all away.”
“And without your poster boy, people no longer wanted to hire you.”
“No one understood thatyouwere at fault. You’re determined to destroy Cash’s life—then and now. Just like you destroyed my business and my life, Emmy McKay.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“But then you came waltzing back to town recently and nothing I did seemed to persuade you to get the hell out of Steele Ridge.”
“What do you mean? Did you have something to do with the brick? The rumors and fire? Oh, God, with Jesse Giddings?”
Whack.Another shoulder tap that almost sent Emmy to her knees. Little white pain spots zoomed in and out of her peripheral vision. Mrs. Southerland obviously knew a thing or two about places on the body that didn’t have a lot of fat cushion on them. “It was you! You’re behind all the incidents that started happening after I returned to Steele Ridge. But why now? It’s been years.”
“Years that I had to watch the motivation and futures of each graduating class dwindle down to nothing. This year, even the valedictorian didn’t want to go farther than Asheville for college. They have no ambition. That should disgust you as much as it does me.”
So far, they’d been marching down the hallway, passing doors. But now, Mrs. Southerland pivoted off the path and pulled a keyring from her bag.
Let them have barricaded themselves inside.
The key Mrs. Southerland was using must have been a master because with a twist of her wrist, she unlocked and shoved open the door. “Inside, Ms. Smarty Pants,” she said to Emmy.
Emmy was relieved to see they’d entered a science lab, and it looked as if the teacher had been smart enough to herd all the students to the back of the room behind two lab tables.
“Kevin Waller,” Mrs. Southerland called out in a singsong-y voice as if she were taking roll.
“Kevin, stay put,” someone said from behind the lab tables.
“If he doesn’t come out, I’m climbing over the top of those tables and shooting every one of you like fish in a barrel.”
The young man who stood up and walked out from behind the barrier carried himself so much like Cash used to that the breath stalled out in Emmy’s lungs.
Mrs. Southerland motioned him forward with her gun. “Closer.”
The boy swallowed, a seesaw of his Adam’s apple, but he strode forward as if he were the one calling a huddle.
When he got close enough, Mrs. Southerland dragged her gun down from his Bieber-like haircut to his ear. From his ear to his cheek. And from his cheek to the chin covered with patchy red-blond scruff. “Oh, Kevin,” she sighed. “All the girls love him. Remind you of anyone, Emmy?”
“If you mean—”
“He’s a quarterback, too,” she rolled right over Emmy’s words.
“Why don’t we go somewhere and talk about why you’re so mad at me—”
