Counting Backwards Read Online Free Page B

goes through this long talk about “sharps,” how they’re learning tools and it’s important that we respect them as such, that if anyone misuses “sharps,” they’ll be escorted to the front office, and he’ll be counting “sharps” at the end of class. If there are any missing, there will be “serious consequences.” I remember my razors and wonder if that’s what sharps are, so I lean across the aisle and ask the guy next to me.
    “Scissors,” he says with a smile, and draws one finger across his neck, like he’s slicing his own throat. I face forward, thinking the next time I have a question, I’ll ask the teacher.
    The male safety comes around with a box of scissors—sharps. They’re the old-fashioned metal kind with rounded tips and dull blades. Still, with enough force they could definitely break skin. I glance around the room and wonder if they’re worried about us cutting ourselves or one another. Maybe both.
    I get my worksheet and cut out these strips of paper with facts on them, which are supposed to be ordered on construction paper like a time line. I’m arranging my facts and pasting—with actual paste—and it’s not bad, a little Zen even, when the same kid from before strikes up a conversation.
    “You Mexicana?” he asks with a Spanish accent I didn’t hear before.
    “No.”
    “Puerto Rican?”
    “No.” This could go on all day. “I’m American Indian—Seminole.”
    “You got a boyfriend?”
    I glance over, and he licks his lips suggestively.
    “You don’t want to mess with her, Sulli,” Brandi says. “You don’t know where she’s been.”
    “Jealous, baby?” Sulli says to her with a slimy smile. Brandi shoots him a death stare.
    “Trust me, Trailer. You’re not his type.” With a flip of her ratty hair, Brandi turns back around. I glare at the back of her head and wish I could think of something biting and clever to say, but my comebacks always come too late.
    Mr. Chris calls for us to clean up, and the safety comes around to collect the scissors. I drop mine into the box. At the front of the class Mr. Chris counts them—out loud. Why out loud? Maybe to build suspense.
    “We have one sharp missing,” he announces, shaking his head sorrowfully, like someone has died. Everyone glances around the room. Brandi smiles wickedly at me.
    “Let’s assume this was an accident,” Mr. Chris says. “I’m going to turn my back. If the missing sharp doesn’t appearafter one minute, we’ll be forced to search your properties.”
    He might be crazier than the class because he actually turns his back on the psychos and the minute goes by, terrifyingly slow. No one comes forward, so the safety lines us up along the back of the room where there’s a ton of books in stacks—mostly biographies. I scan the titles while the safety goes through our backpacks. He gets to my stuff, and I remember the book of matches I stuffed in there to give back to Margo.
    Crap.
    “Here,” the safety says. He pulls a pair of scissors out of my backpack and holds them up high like a cereal-box prize. “Hidden in her folder.”
    “I didn’t put those there,” I tell Mr. Chris. Meanwhile Brandi and her friends can hardly contain themselves. Could it be any more obvious?
    “Everyone else may go,” Mr. Chris says with his eyes trained on me.
    Sulli winks as he passes by, and Brandi swipes a pair of scissors right out of the box on Mr. Chris’s desk. Nobody sees it but me. Is this selective sight or what? I should tell on her, but she’s already out the door.
    “I swear I didn’t take them,” I say to Mr. Chris. “Someone put them there to make me look bad.”
    “I believe you,” he says, like he’d believe me whether it was true or not. “But it’s very important you leave the sharps here,with me. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself accidentally. You don’t want to hurt yourself, do you, Taylor?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “And you don’t want to hurt anyone else, do