Winter of Discontent (Four Seasons Book 1) Read Free Page B

‘Yeah right, Mr Puniverse’ was the loudest and got the most laughs! She wasn’t laughing though. Kacey and the rest of her pets were roaring for all they were worth but not her. She looked quite sorry for me, like she didn’t approve of the mockery. I didn’t let this throw me though; I grabbed the moment and smiled at her, just briefly. Unfortunately it wasn’t brief enough and Kacey caught my look and grabbed her sharply by the arm.
    ‘No flirting with the geeks, Trent,’ she snapped sharply.
    ‘I wasn’t,’ came her reply. ‘He was the one smiling, not me. I was laughing, not smiling back,’ she stammered as she turned her face away from me.
    It confused me as to how disappointed I felt in her. I had no right to feel like that. I didn’t even know her name for Christ’s sake so how could I feel disappointment? I tried to shrug it off as I headed out of school but it hung over me like a lead weight. Oh well, yet another sleepless night ahead, I thought, as I boarded the bus for home.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
    Chapter Four – The Photograph
     
    Sarah
     
    I was so annoyed with myself. Yet again I’d allowed Kacey to pressure me into saying something I didn’t mean. I wasn’t laughing at the geek; I felt for him. I’d scraped the floor with my chair on my first day and, as the class laughed, I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. He must have felt a little like that and I felt bad for him.
     
    ‘I’m starting to think that perhaps you don’t really want to hang around with us,’ snarled Kacey as we headed out of school.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, it seems that whenever the geek squad is around you are more interested in what they are doing than what we are.’
    Kacey could be spiteful, I’d realised that almost from the first moment we’d met. I’d decided I would put up with it though. Making friends wasn’t easy especially when you are a newcomer part way through the semester. Kacey had sort of welcomed me into the fold on the first day and I didn’t want to argue about some geek that had snubbed me. Some geek whose name I didn’t even know!
    I tried to convince Kacey and the rest of the girls that I couldn’t care less about what the geeks were up to but Kacey was clearly in a snide mood and was having none of it.
    ‘Prove it,’ she said firmly refusing to believe me.
    ‘How?’ I asked sheepishly.
    ‘You need to show us you don’t give a damn about Erik.’
    ‘Which one is Erik?’
    ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Britney.
    Britney didn’t say a lot but when she did she always cursed. Fuck this, shit that, bastard the other. I hated it but I didn’t say anything.
    ‘The geek that you were flirting with,’ she elaborated.
    ‘I wasn’t flirting with him,’ I protested again.
    ‘Well, if you don’t care for him then you’ll take up our little challenge,’ Kacey goaded.
    ‘Sure,’ I said, as blasé as I could.
    ‘OK. Then I reckon you should get a photograph of him in his underwear and then post it online.’
    Kacey laughed out loud and the others lauded their approval.
    ‘Fine, no problem,’ I scoffed lightly, as we continued towards the parking lot.
     
    As I got on Aunt Suze’s scooter, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t just told them to go to Hell. This was so unlike me. I wasn’t mean spirited, I didn’t mock others and I sure as heck didn’t set out to hurt people.
     
    As I set off, I felt quite miserable. I should have gone straight home. I had plenty of homework to do, enough of an excuse not to take up their challenge today but I didn’t. I parked up a few hundred yards from the bus stop where Erik was stood waiting. When the bus arrived and he’d safely boarded I followed closely behind. I had no idea where he lived so I just pulled in each time the bus stopped and watched carefully to see who got off. It was a good twenty minutes out of town before we finally reached his stop. The road was quite open and not really busy so I held