sakura
“Callan,” I said, tugging on his jacket, “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
We walked into the stadium for Redwood’s Friday night football game five minutes before halftime. Students from school screamed and cheered at the players on the field, some females flashing their tits to the other team.
I sank down into my jacket and hoped nobody saw us together. I didn’t know why he wanted to come to a Redwood football game tonight. Hell, I had never even been to a Redwood sports game, never mind football.
Wasn’t this a bit obvious that I was out with my teacher? Granted, we had been flirting a lot more during class since Wednesday. But that didn’t mean we had to go public. Maybe I should’ve mentioned that before agreeing to come with him tonight.
“Relax,” he said. “Nobody will see us. And if they see us, they’re not going to remember.”
“What do you mean, they won’t remember?” I asked, following him up the bleachers to an empty spot near the parents’ section. “We stand out like sore thumbs together and will be the talk of Redwood by tonight, Callan. You know how quickly people spread drama.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said again, so … calm.
Scratch that. Suspiciously calm was more like it.
He had been this way since Thursday morning, and I … wasn’t sure what was happening. One moment, he had been fucking me on top of his desk and telling me that he would put a baby inside me, and then the next time I had seen him, he was like this.
So collected.
Gunther had told me that he mentioned he was living at my house for a little while, and I’d expected Callan to go insane, but Callan hadn’t said a word to me about it yet.
“Go Redwood!” Allie Hall screamed from the student section.
My cheeks reddened, and I stared at the field. Maybe if I ignored everyone else, they would all poof away. Maybe they wouldn’t notice me. I was a loner and wanted to desperately keep it that way at least until the end of the year.
Jace Harbor walked up and down the sidelines, chatting with his teammates.
After another play, the entire student section jumped up and cheered. “Touchdown!”
Heart leaping from the sudden screaming around me, I rested a hand on my chest and glanced over at Callan, who watched me. I wanted to ask him to leave, but we had just gotten here, and I had a feeling that he would say no. He wanted me to watch for some ungodly reason.
“Let’s go, Redwood!” Nicole, the head cheerleader, shouted. “Woohoo!”
Someone from the opposite team grabbed the ball and ran about halfway across the field before a Redwood player slammed into him. Their helmets crashed together, the sound of hard plastic on hard plastic making me wince. How do people like watching this?!
A buzzer rang throughout the stadium, the bright white lights on the scoreboard reading 14 to 6. The teams retreated to their sides of the field, packing up to head to the locker room for halftime, when the lights in the stadium turned off.
Callan placed his hand on my thigh and leaned closer to me. “I found out that Principal Vaughn was the man responsible for switching out the present I’d bought you for Jett Harleen’s head.”
I peered over at him through wide eyes. “Really? How do you know?”
I was glad that he had found out who had done it, but why was he telling me this now? Here?
“Poison,” he said, and nothing else. And honestly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.
My phone buzzed in my pocket—along with everyone else’s—but Callan stopped me from retrieving it and captured my hands in his in front of everyone in the stadium.
“I made sure that he will never hurt you again.”
“How did you do that?” I whispered, but was cut off by a loud voice over the intercom.
“Redwood Academy, your principal has been jerking off to hundreds of recordings of Redwood students, naked in the locker rooms,” someone said, voice changed.
I furrowed my brow and glanced at the dark field.
“Is this who you think is fit to lead your school? Is this who we’re giving thousands of dollars to every year? Is this someone you think deserves to live?”
I leaned closer to Callan and intertwined my fingers with his. “Wh-what is going on?”
“Whatever happens—whatever happened,” Callan started, “I did it because I love you.”
“What are you—”
“That’s not the only punishment that the Redwood rich will receive for their sins,” the man said over the speakers. “Over the course of the next few months, all the lies, all the secrets, all the scandals that have run this town will be exposed. Nobody is safe from the truth.”
Callan pulled me onto his lap and rested his head on my shoulder as the lights brightened the field. Someone hurled a ball onto the grass. It bounced once, then twice, and then people began screaming.
Principal Vaughn’s head sat at the forty-yard line, his blood staining the white field lines.
People raced down the bleachers, nearly tripping over each other. Students hopped the fences and ran away from the field and right out onto the street. But I sat in Callan’s arms and stared at Vaughn’s pitiful head.
“Welcome to the end, Redwood,” the man said over the intercom.
And while parents, students, and players spazzed out around us, I smiled and prayed to the Redwood gods that this would be the end. The end of the billionaires ruling our lives. The end of those in power using us. The end of Redwood Academy as we knew it.