The Saint Read Online Free Page A

Anything beyond a kiss, well, then you’re on your—”
    Kieran groaned and turned away, which meant he was in the perfect position to glimpse the incoming missile just in the nick of time.
    He called out the standard warning. “Heads up!”
    Winston, who was seasoned in the ways of mischievous high-school boys, sidestepped instantly. Unfortunately, Linda, who wasn’t, stood there looking confused.
    â€œWhat—?” She frowned.
    A pop, a splat, a splash. And suddenly her lacy white cover-up was splattered from neck to knee with sticky orange liquid. She looked down, horrified.
    Somehow Kieran managed not to laugh. He didn’t even smile. He actually tried to feel sympathetic. He didn’t allow himself to believe it had been fate, intervening to spare him any more of Linda’s lip-licking curiosity.
    But it had been a lucky shot, hadn’t it?
    Principal Vogler, on the other hand, was furious. A courtly man himself, he obviously found pegging a woman with a water balloon to be an outrage. He reached out and snagged the nearest teenage boy, a kid with dark hair and deep blue eyes. “Bedroom” eyes, in fact.
    â€œCome here, young man,” Winston bellowed.
    He didn’t wait for the poor kid to say a word. He dragged him by the collar and forced him to face Linda.
    â€œMs. Tremel, this is Mr. Eddie Mackey. I believe he has something he’d like to say to you.”
    Â 
    T HERE MUST BE A LINE from Hamlet for a moment like this. Claire studied her sedate navy-and-whitespectator pumps and considered the issue. How about the one that said a person could “smile and smile and be a villain?”
    It seemed apt enough. Mrs. Gillian Straine, the principal of the Haversham Girls’ Academy, never stopped smiling. It was how she wooed the best parents, the best girls, the best alums, the best college recruiters. But after almost two years teaching seventh grade here at HGA, Claire had learned how sharp the steel was that lay behind that smile.
    Today the metal was in full, lethal force as Mrs. Straine sat at her huge mahogany desk, in her magnificent wood-paneled office, and read a letter of complaint that had just arrived. The letter stated that Miss Claire Strickland was teaching the girls from texts of questionable morality.
    The letter was apparently very long—or else Mrs. Straine was a very slow reader. Claire adjusted her modest navy skirt and tried not to be nervous. But Mrs. Straine’s smile was so tight right now her lips had almost disappeared. Not a good sign.
    Maybe the better quote was “To be or not to be.” To be or not to be fired.
    Finally Mrs. Straine looked up. “This is very troubling,” she said softly. She said everything softly. It forced other people to be perfectly quiet, and to lean in slightly, in a deferential pose, in order to catch her words.
    â€œIs it true, Miss Strickland? You have unilaterally decided to teach Hamlet to your seventh graders?”
    â€œNot the entire play,” Claire said. “Just some of the famous speeches. It’s part of a larger unit on Shakespeare.”
    Mrs. Straine took off her reading glasses and tapped them against the letter. “It says here you’ve been telling the children there are such things as ghosts. It says you’ve told them about fratricide and suicide.” She shook her head. “They even accuse you of using the I word.”
    Claire frowned. The I word? What on earth was the I word? Insanity? Iago? No, that was Othello.
    Iambic pentameter?
    Mrs. Straine closed her eyes, apparently grieved that Claire was forcing her to utter it.
    â€œIncest,” she whispered.
    Oh, for heaven’s sake.
    â€œI didn’t call it incest,” Claire said. “Shakespeare did. Or rather Hamlet did. It’s just a small part of the overall story. You see, Hamlet’s mother marries his uncle—”
    â€œI know what happens in Hamlet, Miss