“Excuse me. Can I help you?” A woman in Noah’s classroom glowers at us. Her dress makes her look like a Pepto-Bismol bottle. Her hair is only a few inches long yet somehow curled. A pair of delicate reading glasses rests on the tip of her nose. The nametag pinned on her chest tells us her name.
I give her a vicious smile. “Let’s have a chat, Mrs. Burke.”
“Pull out your reading books. Twenty-minute reading starts now,” she instructs the class. Stepping into the hallway with us, she shuts the door and confronts us head on. “Do I know you?” The wrinkles around her beady eyes become more prominent as she glares.
“No, ma’am,” I reply.
Mrs. Burke rests her hands on her hips. “You both need to leave.”
“You’re going to want to hear what we have to say, Dorthea.” Knox’s voice is cold.
Her shoulders tighten. “How do you know my name?”
My sneer darkens my face. “We know a lot of things. Like what dear Charles does every Sunday night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My husband goes to church on Sunday nights.” She scoffs to cover her denial.
I lean an inch closer, my height swamping hers. “He’s in the hole ten large, Dorthea. How long do you think it’ll take to pay up if thirty percent interest is added onto his total?”
It finally clicks in Dorthea’s mind who we are. “Knox? Griffin?” Her focus jumps all over, trying to merge the image she has of us from when we were students in her classroom. Her lip curls. “You two were always more trouble than you’re worth.”
An icy calm glides over my chest. “Should I up it to forty percent?”
Her nostrils flare. “What do you want?”
Knox folds his arms. “For you to do your damn job.”
“I do.” She makes an annoyed noise in the back of her throat.
I tower over her more. “No, you’re not.” She finally shrinks back from us. “Make the bullying stop.”
“There’s none of that in my classroom.”
Knox’s jaw tightens. “Don’t lie, Dorthea. We’d hate to have to bring this discussion to Charles and take what we’re owed in blood.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she gasps.
“But we would.” I tilt my head to the side. “So, what’s it going to be? Stop the bullying, or does Charles need to make an appointment with the ER?”
Her skin turns ashen. “I’ll make it stop.”
“Wise choice,” Knox responds.
“We’ll be in touch.” I open the door for her like a gentleman, and she darts away from us.
When the door shuts again, we make our way back to our bikes. Before putting on his helmet, Knox turns to me. “An appointment with the ER?”
“Super badass, right? I gave myself chills with that one.”
Knox and I laugh together and take off out of the parking lot.
We’ve always been close. We’ve had to rely on each other for strength to continue. But now, we share more laughs than ever before.
Knox holds the level steady.“Don’t you think she’ll notice that her table doesn’t wobble anymore?”
“Who knows?” I mark a cut line on one of the longer table legs.
“Well, won’t she figure all this out?” Knox juts his head forward with his brows lifted, conveying his annoyance.
