Touched With Sight (2 page)

When it was finally time for biology, Catherine was surprised to see a bunch of her classmates clustered outside the lab. Normally there wasn't any wait; they just went right inside since the lab stations were already set up from the previous classes.

“Door's locked,” Johnathon Ramsey said, as she tried the handle with an audible click. She had to curb her strength—if she wasn't careful, she could break off the knob, and that would attract undue attention.

A lick of apprehension went through her. She slowly let her hand fall to her side. “Why?”

“Dunno. Ellen tried to go in earlier, but Hauberk slammed the door in her face.”

“
It's true,” Ellen said, in her chipmunk voice. She looked at Catherine nervously—she was friends with Bonnie Sung, who didn't like Catherine and nutured that same dislike in all her minions—but the desire to gossip overrode any compunctions she had about talking to her. Catherine found herself inordinately pleased by this. It was a bid for social dominance, and she had come out on top. “He wouldn't even let me talk with him about my make-up test!”

One good turn deserved another. “That's fucked up,” Catherine said sympathetically.

Ellen gave her a grateful smile tinged with nervous guilt as she looked around for Bonnie.

Making sure the alpha female isn't around.

“I think if fifteen minutes go by and the instructor doesn't show, we get to leave,” Johnathon said hopefully. “I could head over to the Doughnut Shack, maybe get some hot chocolate.”

Food sounded good. Especially while pent up in a school full of humans, who smelled a little too much like meat. But she tried not to think about that. “Doesn't that rule only apply to college students?”

“Like a simple rule's ever stopped you before, Pierce,” he said, laughing—and she felt a rush of fear, wondering if he was implying that he knew she had broken into the lab, after all.
But how could he?

“
There's no way I'm sticking around this place if I don't have to,” he continued. “You, of all people, should understand that. This is my class of the day. After this, I'm done.”

Catherine nodded, not committing herself. She was watching the other students guardedly, gauging their reactions, wondering how much they were getting out of this discussion. From their glazed expressions, not much. She let herself relax a little.

Johnathon leaned back against the wall. “Maybe we should all go for doughnuts. You, too, Pierce. And the Tran Man, if he's here—” Johnathon looked around quickly “—doesn't look like he is, though. Weird. Don't think I've ever seen him miss a class before.”

“
Yeah, where
is
David?” Ellen piped up. “I wanted to ask him a question about the test.”

“
I don't know, I'm not his keeper,” Catherine said, more harshly than she'd meant. She was wondering the same thing.

“
But you are his partner,”Johnathon pointed out. “You'd think he'd have warned you if he was gonna pussy out on the day of the dissection.”

“
He didn't tell me anything. Maybe he's sick. He'd
better
be sick,” she added. Internally, she was reeling.

Was this about what happened last night? Had David thought over what he'd said to her and changed his mind?
That fucking coward doesn't even have the guts to face me
, she thought, furiously.

But maybe it wasn't a betrayal. Maybe something else had happened. Something…
worse
.

She didn't have to try hard to fake her confusion and anxiety. The other students seemed to chalk it up to nerves about doing the dissection without David. Thanks to Hauberk, her low grades weren't exactly a secret. At any rate, it made them leave her alone.

“I wish we didn't have to do this lab,” one person said. “I've been having nightmares about it.”

Be careful what you wish for. Especially out loud.
Few creatures turned upon one another as quickly, and with as little prompting, as humans.

The door opened exactly a minute shy of the requisite fifteen minutes. Johnathon opened his mouth, perhaps to give voice to his disappointment, though he shut it like a trap when he saw Mr. Hauberk's face—grim, furious, his eyes as cold as gray marbles behind his wire-frame glasses.

“Come in.” His tone brooked no argument.

Hell
, thought Catherine.

There were some hushed groans of disappointment but they all filed in quickly and quietly, Catherine included. Mr. Hauberk was one of those teachers who always  looked annoyed but today his expression went beyond irritation—he looked positively
enraged
.

Fucking hell.

“Take your seats,” he said, in the same harsh tone as before. “Quickly, quickly—we've already wasted fifteen minutes.” Never mind that
he
had been the one responsible for wasting them.

“
He's finally snapped,” one boy whispered to his seatmate, who nodded solemnly in agreement.

Mr. Hauberk's face was the color of a gooseberry, which made the purple veins in his neck and forehead stand out in stark relief. It really did look like he'd snapped. Or was on the verge of apoplexy.

“Somebody,” he said, once they were all seated, “I don't know who, but
somebody
broke into this classroom last night and stole the specimens that were going to be used in today's lesson!”

There were some gasps at this, even a few appreciative murmurs. Mr. Hauberk stared them all into respectful silence.

“
I'm not going to go into how dangerous that was. I know—I hope—all of you are aware that this place is not a playground. That there are reasons you are not allowed into this room unless an instructor or lab assistant is present. This—” his eyes swept over the room “—is a very serious offense. Theft is never a crime to be taken lightly and Principal Avers and I both agree that such behavior is completely unacceptable at Barton. This means
expulsion
.”

Gods forbid
, thought Catherine.

The class was absolutely silent now. For the first time, Mr. Hauberk had finally gotten what he'd been asking for since the beginning of the year: their complete and undivided attention.

“We have gathered some evidence that points to a few select names. That is why we are asking anyone who knows anything about this…this crime—anything at all—to come forward.”

Catherine didn't miss the look Hauberk  shot in her direction, though she wasn't sure if it was because he thought she was the guilty party or he was annoyed that she didn't appear to be paying attention.

She continued doodling in her notebook, avoiding his eyes, wary but mostly unconcerned. This part about evidence sounded alarming, but it was strictly standard procedure. Operation Last Hope.

But she forgot how to breathe when Johnathon Ramsey raised his hand.
He wouldn't—

“
Yes?” Mr. Hauberk asked, too eagerly.

“
I was just wondering, sir, does this mean we get to leave class early?”

Nervous giggles ensued. Catherine released the breath she'd been holding in. Her heart was pounding so loudly that it was all she could hear.

Mr. Hauberk looked crushed. “No. In lieu of the vivisection we are going to have a pop quiz on meiosis. You will remember this from last week's lecture and lab, I hope.”

Ellen raised her hand. “I'm sorry, Mr. Hauberk, but since we've all been focusing on anatomy this past week this quiz seems a little unfair. Especially since some of us still haven't gotten to take our make-ups for the last quiz,” she added pointedly.

“If you'll recall the syllabus—Miss…Pilchard, isn't it?—paragraph three clearly states, and I quote, 'Students are responsible for taking and reviewing lecture notes. All material covered in class is fair game.' And might I remind you—all of you—that your final is cumulative and will cover chapters one through twenty. If you cannot retain the highlights of the material discussed the week before, this does not bode well for your final grade.”

He paused a heartbeat before adding, “Unless someone would like to come forward?”

Blackmail…is that even allowed?

Sure enough, Mr. Hauberk started writing on the board in his messy scrawl and said, “Clear your desks off except for one piece of paper and a pen or pencil. This is a pop quiz. You may work in small groups of two or three. Latecomers will work alone. Names on the back, please.”

Catherine's seatmate, a pretty girl named Christina, was already frantically scribbling away.

Fuck this.
“Let's be partners?”

“
Um.” Christina gave her a once-over. “Sure, if you want.” She didn't sound very enthusiastic about the idea. “What do you think the answer to number one is? True or false?”

She hadn't even looked at the questions yet. “False.”

Christina looked at her and wrote down “true.”

Bitch
.

There was a loud slam and the door swung open.

Chase walked into the room, accompanied by his sinister entourage. Mr. Hauberk couldn't see the shades surrounding him, of course, and merely sighed. “Thank you for deigning to join us, Mr. Hill.”

Chase opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something witty, and tripped over the recycling bin.

Several students snickered and nudged each other. Mr. Hauberk closed his eyes. “Please take your seat silently. We are in the middle of a pop quiz.”

“
What about number five?” Christina was asking. “I think the answer's centromeres, don't you?”

“
Sure, whatever.”

Across the room, Karen Shields had stopped writing. Her pen was frozen in her hand as she stared at Chase. Blue eyes wide in disbelief, she was completely oblivious to her partners' whispered protests that time was running out and they still hadn't gotten down the answer to question number four. She looked a question at Catherine.

You see them, too?

Catherine let her head drop slightly, as if she were dozing off.

“Hey!” Christina demanded. “What the hell are you doing? Pay attention.”

Karen's face darkened. For one tense moment, Catherine thought the female witch would attack her. She bristled, and Predator ran circles beneath her skin, her claws teasing the undersides of Catherine's nails.
We need to talk
, Karen mouthed, before turning back to her paper.

Catherine stiffened in her seat. That was the last thing she needed.

“Time's up. Please hand your papers up to the front.”

Christina gave her a dirty look as she passed up their quiz. “Thanks for nothing, partner,” she whispered. “See if I work with you again.”

Catherine turned to look at her slowly and the other girl buried herself in her textbook, hiding behind it as if it were one of those Japanese folding screens.
That's more like it.

Over the shuffling sound of the papers being passed up and notebooks opening—nearly deafening in this quiet classroom to Catherine's hypersensitive ears—Mr. Hauberk opened up his master copy and began lecturing at them.

Catherine pretended to absorb herself in what the teacher was saying, playing the role of the good, attentive student for once. He was saying something about sympathetic nervous systems (as opposed to the unsympathetic kind, she supposed). She nodded thoughtfully at every fullstop,  but didn't take in a single word he said. No, she was too busy pretending not to notice Karen's eyes boring into her back. What on earth did that witch want to talk to her about?

David's ghostly warning rang in her ears.

Don't get on her radar screen. She and her family don't take rule-breaking lightly.

But thinking about David was a mistake, just one more thing to concern her.

When the bell rang, Catherine shot out of her seat, startling the people sitting around her. Before she could escape, though, Mr. Hauberk said, “Catherine? Could you come up here?”

Fuck. Busted.

She forced herself to walk the very long distance to the front of the room, head held high. If she didn't look guilty, then she wasn't guilty. Humans were heavily reliant upon body language, and she could feign as well as any actor. With each step, though, her heels seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the floor.

Don't get on her radar screen. Don't catch her attention.

“Yes, Mr. Hauberk?” She was proud of herself. Her voice sounded flip, haughty.

He handed her a thin stack of papers.
Slips for my expulsion?

“
Please give these to David Tran.”

David was being expelled?

Her confusion must have been obvious because Mr. Hauberk added, slightly impatiently, “It's today's homework. You're his lab partner, so I assume you have some means of getting this to him, yes?”

Relief washed through her. She was safe. David's goody-goody nature had provided the perfect foil. “Yeah, okay.” She took the papers from him, and he winced when she folded them clumsily.