Totally Tormented by Lucy Covington Read Free Book Online

nothing to do with the reading.”
    “Wow, way to be pessimistic,” I teased.
    “Not pessimistic.” She shrugged and opened the big double doors. “Just a realist.”
    I wanted to ask her why a girl who had a picture of a goddess taped to her notebook for good luck had suddenly become a realist, but I didn’t have time. We were filing into the classroom.
    Dr. Klaxton was two minutes late, which I thought was kind of ironic.
    I halfway expected him to single me out for some kind of torture, but he didn’t.
    He was the same as always, standing at the lectern, pontificating on his thoughts while every so often slipping his spidery fingers into his coffee mug to grab a jellybean.
    When class was over, I breathed a sigh of relief. We hadn’t gotten called on.
    Which was more than I could say for a kid in the front row named Tyler who had been interrogated to within what seemed like an inch of his life. Rachel had been right –Tyler wasn’t just asked about the reading. He was also expected to make inferences based on what he’d read. Which was a lot trickier than just regurgitating the stuff you’d memorized.
    “We made it,” I said to Rachel as we closed our notebooks.
    “Yup. So all that studying was for nothing.” She sounded sour. It was the first time I’d really heard her sound like she was in a bad mood.
    “Okay,” I said, sliding my bag over my shoulder. “Out with it.”
    “Out with it?”
    “Whatever it is that’s making you so upset.”
    “I’m not upset.” But her eyes shifted to the side, a sure sign that she was lying.
    “Something’s obviously bothering you. You’ve been salty all morning.”
    She sighed. “It’s not anything. I’m freaking out over nothing.”
    “Well, what is it?”
    “I don’t –”
    Dr. Klaxton approached us without warning. “Well, well, well. What do we have here? Two girls having some kind of gossip fest in my classroom?” He was standing in the aisle a few feet away, looking at us with distaste.
    “We weren’t gossiping,” Rachel said. “And the fact that you would just assume that since we’re girls we – ”
    “We were just leaving,” I said quickly, grabbing Rachel’s arm and starting to pull her toward the door. No way I was going to let her have an interaction with Professor Klaxton while she was in this kind of a mood.
    Dr. Klaxton sighed. “Why are you young people always in such a hurry?”
    I wanted to say it was because if we were ever late, we risked getting humiliated by people like him. But I didn’t.
    Instead, I just stared to walk toward the door.
    “Ms. Cramer,” Dr. Klaxton called after us. “May I see you for a moment?”
    I turned around. “Why? I mean, um, what’s this in regards to?”
    “It’s in regards to the paper you slipped under my office door this weekend, even though I specifically told you I wouldn’t be accepting it.”
    Rachel gave me a weird look. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her what I’d done.
    “Oh,” I said. “Um, okay.” I turned back to Rachel.
    “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll see you back at our room later.”
    She continued toward the door.
    I turned around again. Dr. Klaxton came toward me. “Do you speak English, Ms.
    Cramer?”
    “Of course.” I squared my shoulders, determined that I wasn’t going to let him get to me, no matter how hard he tried.
    “So you did understand me, then, when I told you that I wouldn’t be accepting your paper.”
    “Yes.”
    “So then why did you leave it under my door?”
    I thought about it. “Because I didn’t want to take no for an answer.”
    “I see.” His lips pursed and moved to the side. I was beginning to recognize it as one of his signature moves, the thing he did when he was thinking. “You do realize that my research assistants spend their days essentially being my slave?”
    I nodded.
    “And you still wanted to go out of your way to obtain that position, even after the interaction we had in class the other day? The one