I got to the academy in record time and put in the code at the gate. I was surprised how quick I got there. I’d been thinking about Vicki, and nearly killing myself by driving like a crazy man to get here on time. I parked with a breath of relief and looked over to see that Trent really was sleeping.
Lightweight!
The bell rang as soon as I parked the car in the garage, and we ran as fast as we could in a rush to get to our suite. We had a class to get to, different ones, but we had to get there fast. As soon as we got slipped in the door, we dropped our bags, and didn’t even check if the doors were closed properly, before we changed into our uniforms.
Damn! I hated this thing, sometimes it felt like a damn prison jumpsuit rather than the uniform of a respectable academy. One thing about going to a university that I would love was being able to wear whatever we wanted all of the time, and not be marked in the same boring grey clothes all the time.
It didn’t take us long to get changed. We were used to changing in a hurry since we’d done it so many times, especially when it meant being caught in a compromising position.
We gave each other a nod, and we were ready to roll. The only thing that we needed was our bags, and keys. We both grabbed them as if on automatic pilot, and then we rushed out of the door. I hadn’t even made it to class yet, but the sweat was slowly but surely gathering in my shirt as I opened the buttons of my blazer and ran to class.
“Bro, see you later,” Trent shouted as he rushed down the hall in the opposite direction to his first class.
I waved as I rushed to mine, already feeling tired, and the day hadn’t even started. I didn’t have as far to go as he did, but the closer I got, the more I wanted to turn back, and go to the suite. I wasn’t in the mood to study after all, but I had to focus on the reason for rushing here in the first place. I needed to put all my frustration back in the box, where it belonged, and throw away the key.
“Sorry, I’m late,” I said as soon as I opened the door. I didn’t wait for a response from Mr. Wilson as I sat down and noticed that the first two seats in front of me were empty. I did a quick scan, and noticed that the two chairs in front of me, belonged to Goldie and Claire. Neither of them was in class, and I found that a little strange, and it made me feel even more guilty than I was before I came to class.
Fuck!
I should have turned my phone on before coming to class to see if Claire replied to my message and to find out if they’d got back safely. Now, I had to wait forty minutes to find out if they did, and I didn’t know if I could hold out that long. I’d been so selfish worrying about Mom calling, and demanding that we came to see her, Trent and I weren’t ready for that.
My thoughts turned back to Claire and Goldie as the instructor’s voice droned on in the background. If they weren’t in class, that meant that they hadn’t been back since the party. I shook my head at my paranoia. Maybe they had come back after the party, but today they weren’t in class. Perhaps, like Trent and I, they’d had a little too much to drink, and couldn’t handle it because they’d mixed it with some E or some other drug that would get them high, and they were completely fucked up yesterday?
That must be it.
Claire loved to party, but one thing for sure she didn’t know when to say no/ That was usually a job Trent and I shared. We often had to tell her to stop drinking or at least slow down before she made herself sick. As much as she tried to make herself out to be a party animal, I was pretty sure that underneath it all the innocent girl that we once knew was still there and crying to come back out. Fuck, I was acting as if I was her dad, and she was my responsibility. Maybe I felt that way because Trent, and I were the ones that made her this way? Before us, she wasn’t into partying, drinking, smoking or even taking drugs. Now, she was doing all of them.
As soon as the class was over, I’d get to the bottom of it. I’d find out what happened at the end of the party. I just needed time to go faster; Claire told me about the party, and I was trying to get on her good side. I thought maybe I could find out the number of her PI and get him to warn Vicki’s stepdad off. I frowned at that idea. Like that would really work.
It would be better to come clean to Hawk with the PI by my side. Maybe I was the one that had been watching too much of the Bourne series, because this was so out of my league. I didn’t know what to do, and I prayed if there was a God that telling Hawk would be the right thing, and everything would sort itself out.
Then again, if Mom was still around then Hawk wouldn’t be able to handle anything. He seemed a little out of control, and not himself last week, and I remembered him saying that he couldn’t even leave her alone long enough to tell us of her presence on the grounds. How the hell was he going to deal with this mess?
Shit, I had no choice. I couldn’t go to the police, and there was no other person to turn to. I had to tell Hawk.
I didn’t know what I’d heard during the class because I hadn’t paid any attention to the instructor at all. Whatever it was, it was lost to me know because I hadn’t heard a thing. All I knew was that I had to get out of there so that I could find out what happened to the two girls who liked to run around the Academy as if they were fully grown women that owned the place.
“James, can you wait a minute?”
Shit, I didn’t even see Hawk walk in, I was too busy thinking about whether to go to Claire’s room or maybe Goldie’s or just to call Claire? I managed to switch my phone on during the class, and I noticed that there was no reply to my text, which made me feel even more nervous about what was going down with them.
“Did you have a good time at Jet’s party?” Hawk asked as the last student left the class. Whenever Hawk arrived in the class, everyone would leave like a swarm of bees off to their hive. They didn’t want him to pick on them for anything, they wanted to be as far away from him as possible. Luckily, I wasn’t one of them. He was a stricter teacher, one of the strictest here, and an even stricter Headmaster, which was why he was good at both jobs, and prided himself on it.
“It was a’ight,” I said trying to decide whether to tell him now about the issue with Claire or later.
“James don’t speak like that. It doesn’t suit you, and I would like to think that you could do better than that.”
I nodded my head as he rightly corrected me, and I sat on top of the table facing him.
“I’m going to be late,” I said thinking that this wasn’t the time or place to have this conversation, I would skip lunch and then go, and see him to tell him everything.
He laughed, “You have a free period, and judging by the lack of attention in your last class, I suppose that you’re still high or drunk from the party on Saturday night.”
He was digging his heel in, and I didn’t like it.
“How’s Mom?”
He went quiet, and I could tell that I’d got to him as he adjusted his collar, and his smugness disappeared. He became nervous, and agitated. I didn’t know which one that I hated more, his disapproval or his agitation?
“Gone. Now, if you were really interested in knowing about your mom’s wellbeing, then you would have spent some time here during the weekend, and not run away as you did. She called or rather I called and told you both that she wanted to speak to you. Trent spoke to her for a while, but then after that both your phones were off.”