I got a job, I thought.

‘Well, Mr Maxfield. Here we are – the beginning of your senior year. I must admit, I never thought you’d make it this far.’

I stared at my principal and thought, No shit. Especially when you did everything in your power to make that true. Still, the brass balls of her to call me into her office just to say this to my face couldn’t mean anything good. She thought she was above everything and everyone, and within the confines of this school, she was right.

Nine months, I told myself. Nine months and I was out of here. I wouldn’t even pause to shake the dust off my boots.

So I said nothing. Merely returned her beady-eyed gaze with a flinty one of my own. She studied a slip of paper with my schedule printed on it. ‘I see you’ve signed up for calculus and physics.’ She glanced at me over the glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. ‘How … ambitious of you.’ Lips pressed closed, brows somewhat elevated, eyelids lowered – her entire expression displayed her scepticism that I was capable of the change I’d begun in the last few weeks of the previous year.

I wanted to flick those glasses and that condescension off her face.

Instead of responding, I repeated my mantra silently – the tenets I’d learned in my first month of martial arts, last spring: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit. Often, the functions of these blurred together – because each was interwoven through the others. If I failed one, I could fail them all. What good was integrity if I had no self-control?

So there I sat, waiting for Ingram to be done with me.

She wasn’t pleased with my muteness – that much was all too apparent. Her thin lips twisted. ‘I understand one of our star students assisted you in passing your classes last spring.’

Ah. Pearl.

Aside from the day she checked me for a punctured lung, Pearl Frank and I hadn’t ever spoken outside of Melody’s presence or Can you pass this forward classroom-type chatter. I almost didn’t respond when she touched my arm in the library last spring and asked, ‘Landon, are you okay?’

With six weeks of school remaining to learn the thirty weeks of stuff I’d failed to absorb plus the new material, I was going under. But I had no desire to confess that to Melody’s best friend, who also happened to be the smartest person in my graduating class.

I blinked and rolled my shoulders, popping my neck. ‘Yeah. Fine.’ I’d been stuck in a hair-clenching position for the entire hour of study hall, staring at a section in my chemistry textbook.

Her brows creasing, she gestured at the open text. ‘Why are you looking at that? We went over Dalton’s Law last six weeks.’

I shut the book, scowling and standing. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t get it then, I don’t get it now.’ I loosened my grimace and shrugged. ‘No big deal.’

Pearl’s gaze missed very little. ‘But you’re studying it now because …’

I swallowed. I didn’t want to say it out loud – that I was making an eleventh-hour bid to alter my future. That I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it.

‘If you want, I can send you my notes from last six weeks, and you can ask me questions.’ Her dark eyes held a dare, not pity.

I nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your teachers, too. They’re just people, you know.’ I arched a brow and she smirked. ‘Well, most of them.’

Over the next several weeks, she saved me from failing my junior year – not just chemistry, but literature and pre-cal. Thanks to her help, my brain woke up from three years of hibernation.

‘Pearl Frank?’ Mrs Ingram prompted now, as if I wouldn’t remember the tutoring or who gave it. I wasn’t sure how she knew, but I damned sure wasn’t going to ask.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

She hated me right now. In my first few months of taekwondo, I’d become more aware of the clues that someone was progressing from irritation to rage. Recognizing the level of likelihood that someone might f**king lose it any second was necessary for defence, after all. Her physical indications were minor, but they were there.

‘I understand you were arrested last spring for assault. Plea bargained to probation, fortunately.’ Fortunately was not what she wanted to call it.

I said nothing.

Pearl told me once that Ingram was the type of leader who believed in addition by subtraction. ‘It’s half genius, half cheating. They remove the lowest-scoring students, employees with bad service records, et cetera, which raises the overall score or ranking of the organization.’

Finally, Ingram broke rank and flat-out glared. ‘Why aren’t you answering me, Mr Maxfield?’

One brow angled. ‘You aren’t asking any questions.’

Her eyes blazed. ‘Let me be clear. I don’t know what game you’re playing here, or what your business is with Miss Frank, but I don’t want her valuable time wasted for your nonsense. I don’t believe for two seconds that you have the essential work ethics or the life and interpersonal skills necessary to represent this school and its exemplary educational standards.’

I bit my lip to keep from correcting her. According to the state, her school was far from exemplary.

I tuned her out as she blathered on about my lack of integrity and critical-thinking skills and respect for authority. Funny how people who railed about other people’s lack of respect usually weren’t willing to offer any in exchange.

When she stopped, my ears rang. ‘Do we understand each other, young man?’ She clearly expected an answer to more than that question – or a heated reaction. She was doomed to be disappointed.

‘I believe so. Are we finished here, Mrs Ingram?’ I stood, casting a broad shadow over her desk from the east-facing window behind me. ‘I have a class to get to. Unless you want to make me late the first day.’ On cue, the first bell rang.

She stood, but still craned her neck to look up at me. I’d reached my dad’s imposing height over the summer, and she didn’t care for me looming a foot over her. I slid a hand into my front pocket and shifted my weight to one side – as close to a ceasefire as I’d give her. I wasn’t fourteen any more, and this woman was not going to trash my chances of getting out of this town and into college.

‘You’re dismissed. But I’m watching you.’

Uh-huh, I thought, turning and leaving without response.

I wondered why in the hell someone like her would pursue a career in education in the first place, but I wouldn’t ask. Everyone isn’t logical. Everything doesn’t make sense in the end. Sometimes you have to forget about explanations or excuses and leave people and places behind, because otherwise they will drag you straight down.