Black Heart Read Online Free Page B

peripheral vision.
    I hit Kevin’s jaw so hard that I feel the impact right down to my bones.
    “Fight!” a couple of kids yell, but teachers come and drag me back from Kevin before he can get up.
    I let them pull me away. I feel numb all over, the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, nerves sparking with the desire to do something more. To do something to someone.
    They take me to the dean’s office and leave me with a slip of paper pressed into my hand. I crumple it up and throw it against the wall as I am shown inside.
    Dean Wharton’s room is stacked with papers. He looks surprised to see me, getting up and lifting a pile of folders and crossword puzzles out of the chair in front of his desk and indicating that I should sit. Usually whatever trouble I’m in is so bad I get sent straight to the headmistress.
    “Fighting?” he says, looking at the slip. “That’s two demerits if you’re the one who started it.”
    I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak.
    “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
    “Not really, sir,” I say. “I hit him. I just—I wasn’t thinking straight.”
    He nods like he’s considering what I said. “Do you understand that if you get one more demerit for any reason, you’ll get expelled? You won’t graduate from high school, Mr. Sharpe.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Mr. Brown will be here in a moment. He’s going to be telling me his side of the story. Are you sure you don’t have anything more to say?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Fine,” Dean Wharton says, pushing up his glasses so that he can massage the bridge of his nose with brown-gloved fingers. “Go wait outside.”
    I go and sit in one of the chairs in front of the school secretary. Kevin walks past me with a grunt, on his way into Wharton’s office. The skin along Kevin’s cheek is turning an interesting greenish color. He’s going to have a hell of a bruise.
    He’s going to tell Wharton, I don’t know what came over Cassel. He just went nuts. I didn’t provoke him.
    A few minutes later Kevin leaves. He smirks at me as he walks out into the hall. I smirk right back.
    “Mr. Sharpe, can you come in here, please?”
    I do. I sit back in the chair, looking at the piles of paper. Just one push would send a stack crashing into all the others.
    “You angry about something?” Dean Wharton asks me, as though he can read my thoughts.
    I open my mouth to deny it, but I can’t. It’s like I havebeen carrying this feeling around with me for so long that I didn’t even know what it was. Wharton, of all people, has put his finger on what’s wrong with me.
    I’m furious .
    I think of not knowing what compelled me to strike a gun out of the hand of a killer. Of how satisfying it was to hit Kevin. Of how I want to do it again and again, want to feel bones snap and blood smear. Of how it felt to stand over him, my skin on fire with rage.
    “No, sir,” I manage to get out. I swallow hard because I don’t know when I became so distanced from myself. I knew Sam was angry when he talked about Daneca. How come I didn’t know that I was mad too?
    Wharton clears his throat. “You’ve been through a lot, between the death of your brother Philip and your mother’s current . . . legal woes.”
    Legal woes. Nice. I nod.
    “I don’t want to see you head down a path you can’t come back from, Cassel.”
    “Understood,” I say. “Can I go back to class now?”
    “Go on. But remember, you have two demerits and the year isn’t even half over. One more and you’re out. Dismissed.”
    I get up, sling my backpack over my shoulder, and slink back to the Academic Center in time for the next bell. I don’t see Lila in the halls, although my gaze pauses on any blond-haired girl who passes me. I have no idea what I will say to her if I do see her. So, I hear you ordered your first murder. How was that? seems a little on the nose.
    Besides, who says it was her first?
    I duck into the bathroom, turn on the faucets, and splash my face