165
A l l G o o d C h i l d r e n
Advance Reading Copy
Werewolf eases his busted hand through his coat sleeve.
“Verbal and physical abuse are not appropriate responses,
are they, sir?” I shout.
“What?” he asks angrily. He looks in my face and backs
into his lecture projection. Words and images from history
flicker across his face. His eyes glitter in the blue light.
Dallas hustles over. “Our teachers work hard every day to
be role models. We owe them our respect,” he says.
I don’t glance at him. “Xavier Lavigne is a fifteen-year-old
boy!” I shout at Werewolf. I want to rip his beard off with his
smirk.
Dallas grabs my shoulder, shoves me to the wall, leans
into me. “We are all lucky to go to a school with good role
models. We would not be lucky if we had to go to school
by ourselves.”
He holds me there to keep me from digging my grave.
He’s risking his whole act like this, in front of Werewolf and
the zombies and the surveillance camera. “We’re all lucky,”
he repeats. He holds my gaze and nods, over and over, until
I nod back.
Werewolf is disturbed and angry, but he doesn’t accuse
us of anything. He dissolves his lecture and squeezes behind
Dallas, scampers to the doorway. He holds his broken hand
over the place where his heart would be if he had one. “I don’t
expect to see you all here next term.”
Ö
“He’s suspended,” Celeste says. “I’d rather you didn’t come in.
I don’t know what’ll set him off.”
