Sara Read Online Free Page B

bell rang, I went to the office and dropped the class.
    â€œHaven’t you taken shop every year?” Mrs. Wilson, the school secretary, asked as I filled out the form. “Why don’t you want to take it this year anymore?”
    I looked up at her. I knew Mrs. Wilson went to Zach’s dad’s church. Her son Ronny had graduated at the end of the last school year. He’d been on the football team and had always been a bully and an asshole for as long as I could remember. Her daughter Pamela had gotten pregnant her senior year, when I was a freshman. I smiled at her. She always wore baggy floral print dresses and her graying hair was always pulled back into a tight braid. She always smelt like roses. I thought about telling her the truth, but changed my mind—there wasn’t any point. I just shrugged. “Lost interest,” I’d said as I signed the form and passed it across the counter to her.
    Just then Glenn looked up and saw me. “Hey,” he said with a shrug, turning his eyes back to his shoelaces.
    â€œHow’s it going?” I asked, unlocking my locker and pulling my shirt over my head.
    â€œHonestly? It’s not half as bad as I thought it would be.” He grinned at me. “I just wish the teachers would just shut the fuck up already. Some asshole defaced my locker, big deal. It’s not the first time someone’s called me that, and it’s not going to be the last time.” He rolled his eyes. “I think they’re all afraid I’m going to go home and hang myself or something. I mean, I guess I kind of get it, but they’re just making things worse.” He laughed. “Like Mrs. Drury—you know she’s making us write an essay about civil rights?” He made a face. “Yeah—that’s going to make people really happy I came out.”
    â€œDon’t even joke about suicide,” I replied, undoing my shorts and stepping out of them. I folded them neatly and put them in my locker, pulling on a pair of workout shorts. I sat down and started tying my own laces.
    He stood up and leaned against the lockers. “They need to stop worrying about me. I’m not a victim. I won’t be a victim. If someone has the balls to say it to my face, they’ll get punched. And what happened to my locker doesn’t make me feel bad, you know. It didn’t hurt my feelings. What it did was piss me off.” He slammed his fist into the locker he was leaning against. The loud clang echoed through the empty locker room. “If I find out who did it—” He threw another couple of air punches, making noises that I gathered were supposed to simulate his fists breaking bones.
    I slipped a tank top over my head. “Come on, Rocky. Take out some of that aggression on the bench press, okay?”
    The only other people in the weight room were a couple of sophomores who just nodded when we walked in and started putting plates on the bench press bar. After that, we didn’t talk much—we were focused on the weights and getting a good workout in.
    But I noticed that afterward, when we were showering, the sophomores were nowhere to be seen.
    I got undressed and wrapped a towel around my waist. Glenn didn’t even glance at me, which I am sorry to say made me feel a little better.
    I hated myself for even thinking that way, for worrying about him looking at me.
    There were only two more classes to get through before the day was over. My class load wasn’t particularly difficult—government with Mr. Howell was probably going to be the toughest; I’d barely scraped by with a C in his history class my junior year, and probably wouldn’t have done that without Glenn’s help. His government class was supposedly even harder than history, and passing was a requirement for graduation. As Mr. Howell thundered his version of the “acceptance” lecture before going over everything that was going