Will shook his head no.
“Hunter.”
It wasn’t even a question. He turned back to James, who stood up immediately and blew vape smoke in the principal’s face. “Go to hell, asshole. I bet you’ll find him there.”
James walked out of the office, and Will and I followed him without saying a word.
“Fuck, James! Did you have to answer him like that?” William’s tone was tinged with rage.
We were rushing out the main entrance of the building while the others were still in class.
“Did you not hear what he fucking said, Will? And the way that he treated us?”
The morning air was cold, almost biting. I regretted leaving my uniform jacket inside. I felt my cheeks and the tip of my nose turn red quickly.
“But you basically admitted it like that! Why don’t you ever think before doing something?”
“What’s going on now?” I asked, frightened, leaning my elbow on the car roof. I needed support, the vertigo was getting the best of me. “He’ll expel us? Is he gonna expel us because we attacked him or because you talked back to him like that?”
“Chill, Jax. If he wanted to, he already would’ve,” James reassured me, rummaging in his jacket pocket. It wasn’t easy for me to be calm then.
My grandpa did nothing but remind me not to disappoint my parents’ memory, but it seemed that I couldn’t do anything but that.
“Maybe he has proof. And even if he didn’t, he’s still the principal—he can do whatever he wants.”
I was starting to get stressed out, and James could tell. He grabbed my shoulders, dug his fingers into the shirt fabric, and pinned his eyes on mine.
“Calm down, Jackson.”
I’ll calm down,I thought,but do you always have to put your fucking lips so close to mine?
“It’s not worth it for him to do that,” he finished, collapsing against the car next to me.
I saw him turn on his vape pen.
“Why?”
James kept vaping furiously as he loosened the knot in his tie with the other hand.
“The principal hasn’t called again, right? Why don’t we turn the phone off?” asked William.
He was so nervous that he was pacing back and forth.
“If I don’t turn it off, it’s just because I don’t have the pin to be able to turn it back on when we need the evidence on here. Besides, as soon as we threatened the principal, he stopped calling. That was the fucking plan, enough overthinking it.” James cut Will off between one breath of smoke and the next.
“Yeah, but other than knowing that something happened to the coach, he guessed that it was us, otherwise he wouldn’t’ve asked what happened to him!” I tried to make James think, revealing my fear.
“Why’s he coming out with this now? That asshole hasn’t shown up for over a year, why now?!” Will racked his brains while playing with his hair between his fingertips.
James let out a deep breath. “I have a gut feeling.” William and I froze.
“What?” asked Will.
“What if that night—” My heart skipped a beat. William on the other hand was getting impatient.
“What, James? Speak up!”
“What if Austin didn’t actually go through with it?” hissed James nervously, fidgeting with his lip.
