Billy: Messenger of Powers Read Free

ears heating up as blood rushed to them.
    The teacher silenced them with a glance. Billy suspected she could do this to serial killers and SEALs, let alone to nervous ninth-graders.
    “I was late,” he managed.
    “Clearly,” she replied. She held out her hand. Billy looked at it like it was an alien appendage. What was he supposed to do with it?
    “Your schedule,” the teacher prompted. Billy handed it over, noting how she seemed to frown at the fact that it had been crumpled into a pocket, rather than professionally laminated and framed. She read it quickly, looking at it over the top of the reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. “Well, William Jones,” she said after a moment, “at least you’re in the right place, if not at the right time.”
    The class nervously chuckled again, and this time the teacher did not bother to use her Death-Stare to silence them. She just handed Billy his schedule, then pointed to an empty desk in the second row.
    Billy moved toward it, and as he did his foot caught on something. He tripped, stumbling forward in a desperate attempt to keep from falling on his face.
    The students’ chuckles now turned to full-volume guffaws. Billy struggled to right himself, his arms flapping faster than hummingbird wings. He wished he was dead. Better yet, he wished he had been dead for a few hundred years, cremated, and the ashes buried under a small mountain on a frozen island in the middle of the Arctic Sea.
    At least the day can’t get any worse, he thought fleetingly. But he knew, even as he thought it, that this absolutely the wrong thing to think. Experience had taught Billy that no matter how bad things were, they could always be worse.
    “Harold Crane!” shouted the teacher. Her voice had moved up in intensity from bazooka to intercontinental ballistic missile. The class silenced instantly. Billy held himself motionless, still in a half-crouch, petrified by the teacher’s words. No one else in the class moved, either.
    The teacher walked to a nearby student. The kid was a bit smaller than Cameron had been, but Billy could see that Harold Crane was clearly cut from the same kind of stock: thick chest, strong arms. His hair was dyed red at the tips, long bangs hanging artfully down over his eyes, which now had an innocent look pasted across them. He might as well have had “Born To Bully” tattooed across his forehead.
    The teacher looked down. Billy and the rest of the class followed her gaze, and those close enough could see what she was looking at: Harold’s sneaker pushed out in the middle of the aisle. That was what Billy had tripped on.
    Harold’s look of innocence faltered. He shrugged. “It was an accident,” he said.
    “Very well,” said the teacher. “Be advised that if there are any more ‘accidents,’ they may result in ‘accidental’ visits to the Principal’s office.” Her gaze shifted to take in the whole class at once. “That goes for all of you.”
    She turned to walk back to her desk. As soon as her back was turned, Harold turned around and locked eyes with Billy. He made a quick slicing movement across his throat, then pointed at Billy before turning back to face the teacher as she swiveled toward them again.
    Billy sighed as he dropped into the seat behind his desk, his book bag dumping unceremoniously to the floor with a dull thud. What was it about his existence that made people like Cameron and now Harold so angry? Had he offended them in a past life or something?
    The teacher’s voice—still commanding full attention, but softer now that she was not actively perturbed—reverberated through the room.
    “I am Mrs. Russet,” she said. Her tone of voice clearly communicated that they should pay attention. Billy suspected that the President of the United States would sit up a little straighter if he were visiting Mrs. Russet’s classroom. “This is ninth-grade history, and I wish to make a few things very clear before we begin. First: I am