I stood as still as I could and fixed her with a deadpan stare. “Here’s a thought, Alice. Maybe I just have more talent than you do.”

  May snickered. “I don’t think that’s it. I think Mr. Carp is just so freaked out by you, he’s hoping that you’ll drop out of his class and terrorize the other teacher instead.”

  I was brittle inside. With each word, I could feel all of my bones and muscles start to tense and pop. It was crumpling up like an empty water bottle.

  Alice went on, “God, you are so right, May. That is exactly what this is. He’s just hoping to get rid of you, Pinky. And I don’t blame him. Honestly, I sit behind you and I’ve seen some of the stuff that you’ve been drawing. Do you even realize how absolutely nuts you look?”

  May added in, “Are we sure that her dad died? Maybe he just shipped her off to stay here, because he was worried that she would take up a real kitchen knife and—”

  I screamed.

  Like a psycho.

  The sound ripped itself out of my throat against my will, this guttural echoing scree, and then I threw myself across the hallway. My fingers curled in the front of May’s shirt as I tackled her.

  She hit the ground. I came down over her, straddling her at the stomach.

  May shouted some incoherent words. My fist came down hard on the curve of her jaw, sending her head snapping to the side.

  Now Alice screamed too. Someone bellowed, “Fight, fight, fight!”

  But it wasn’t a fight. It was a pure out beat down. I had caught May off guard, and there was no way that her flailing weak little kitten slaps could knock me off of her. The other students formed a circle around us, shoving Alice out of the way.

  My fist came down on her again and again. I felt her lips split beneath my knuckles. I felt the crack of her nose snapping under the weight of my punch. Hot blood splashed onto my hand, my wrist, the front of my shirt.

  “Get out of the way!” came a voice. I thought that it was Mr. Germander, but I couldn’t be certain. Not until his hands looped underneath my armpits and hauled me off of my prey. He plopped me off to the side.

  I screamed at him, too, just pure sound. My hand throbbed and ached. Tears streamed down my face.

  “What is going on?” Mr. Germander shouted.

  I was heaving too hard to answer.

  Someone said, “May called her crazy.”

  “She called her dad crazy,” someone else corrected.

  A third party said, “I think that she called both of them crazy.”

  “I don’t care,” decided Mr. Germander. “You, take that one to the nurse’s office.” He jabbed a finger toward May. “And you, with me.”

  I didn’t move.

  Mr. Germander grabbed me by the wrist and tried to tug me down the hallway.

  Sobbing, I screamed, “Get your hands off of me!” and then louder, dropping to the ground, “It hurts! He’s hurting me!”

  It didn’t.

  He wasn’t.

  Mr. Germander dropped my wrist in an instant though and backed up, hands in the air. Another teacher, Mrs. Kapow, had joined us in the hallway. I sat there sobbing, trying to figure out what I had just done and why, even as I felt no guilt in it.

  They cleared out the other students.

  When Mrs. Kapow came over, she spoke softly to me, like she was cooing at a frightened dog. “Come on, Miss Hoggwaller. Let’s get you up, alright?”

  I stood up, shooting Mr. Germander the nastiest look I could manage, and let Mrs. Kapow take me to the dean’s office.

  I had never been there before. It was the size of one of the classrooms, with a big desk and three chairs. One of them was occupied by Dean Harvester, and two of them were empty. I sat down in one of the empty ones and stared at my hand.

  My knuckles were bruising. I wiped the blood off on my shirt and wiggled my fingers. They were all pretty sore.

  Dean Harvester asked, “Would you like a chance to explain yourself, Miss Hoggwaller?”

  He was a tall man but he had a kindly face, and a big, almost squishy-looking nose.

  I sniffed. “She said that my dad sent me away because I was crazy.”

  There was a pause. He clicked a few buttons on the computer. Then he nodded and said calmly, “I know this is a hard time for you, Miss Hoggwaller, but we cannot allow violence of this sort in the academy.”

  “She started it,” I spat out. “What would you have done, if she said that about your dead dad?”

  “I would have brought it to the attention of the dean.” He leveled his gaze. “Which is what you should have done. Unfortunately, I am going to have to give you a week of suspension. If this happens again, Miss Hoggwaller, I will have to take harsher measures.”

  My eyes filled up with tears again as I sniffed.

  Dean Harvester said, “Go sit in the hallway. I’ll call your grandparents, and have someone come pick you up.”

  “I’ll walk,” I offered, not wanting Gramps or Grandma to know about this.

  Dean Harvester pointed toward the door to his office. “The hallway, Miss Hoggwaller. It’s in your best interest, right now, to stop arguing and simply listen when you’re spoken to.”

  A scowl on my face, I stood up, stormed into the hallway, and slammed the door to his office behind me. There was a bench pressed to the wall for exactly this occasion. I threw myself down on it and settled in to wait.

  It seemed to take forever for Grandma to show up. She didn’t even look at me on her way into the dean’s office. I could feel the disappointment coming off of her in waves, the black storm cloud hanging over her practically visible.

  Well, she wasn’t the only one caught up in a storm.

  It felt like there was thunder in my heart and lightning in my veins. My knuckles still hurt, too. I held them up to my mouth and sucked on them, trying to alleviate the sting. It didn’t work. They still throbbed dully. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Thump. That time, it was the door, not my knuckles. Grandma appeared in the school hallway once more, looking even more lost in her storm cloud than before. She let out a heavy breath and said, “Let’s go, Quinn.”

  I got up and followed her without arguing. I was lucky enough that classes were in session again, so no one was in the hallway as we went past. Down and out we went, into the parking lot, where Grandma’s little green car awaited.

  I slumped into the passenger seat of the car, still saying nothing.

  Grandma got into the driver’s side. She didn’t start the engine. She just sat there with both hands curled around the steering wheel, frowning tightly.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  And finally, losing patience, said, “Grandma?”

  “A fight?” She still didn’t look at me. Her storm cloud grew thicker. The disappointment was coming off of her in great big white-capped beach waves. “What were you thinking, Quinn?”

  “They deserved it,” I argued. “You should have heard what she—”

  “Lord above, don’t you start giving me lip like that,” Grandma told me. It was the angriest I had ever heard her. “First that fit of yours this morning—”

  “It wasn’t a fit! There was a mouse!”

  “And now this!” Grandma finally started the engine, but she still didn’t pull out of the parking lot. “A fight!”

  “She deserved it!”

  “People don’t deserve to get hurt, Quinn! No one does! Lordie, lordie, think how old you are! You should know that by now. I shouldn’t have to tell you that it’s not good to hurt someone else.”

  My eyes started to water again. “Why won’t you listen to me?”

  “I won’t have it,” She shook her head vehemently back and forth, jowls quivering. “I won’t have you acting out like this—not here, not under my roof. I don’t know what your father was alright with, but this—this whole little attitude of yours has to stop!”

  A wave of heat crashed through me. It was infuriating. Everyone acted like they knew best, like they were the ultimate authority on everything, including me. What I felt, what I thought, what I needed. I was so sick of it!

  “Just because he died, that doesn’t mean you’re my parent now,” I growled at her.

  Finally, Grandma turned to look at me. She had this wide-eyed fresh-slapped look on her face.

  I turned in my seat so that one shoulder was toward her, and crossed my arms over my chest. With a huff, I settled further into my seat and scowled out the window. “He’s still my dad. And they don’t get to say that he shipped me off because I’m nuts. If you don’t want me in your house, fine.”

  “Quinn—” Grandma started weakly.

  I kept going, on a roll now, “Then fine! I don’t want to be in your stupid old house anyway! But I’m not going to apologize for hitting her. I would have hit her more if I could’ve.”

  The car finally pulled out of the driveway. Grandma didn’t say anything until we pulled onto the road with our house—her house—their house—on it. Then she said, slowly and seriously, like she was worried that I might be too stupid to understand, “Quinn. You’re grounded.”

  “Okay, cool.” I curled my lip at her, mocking her. “Whatever.”

  Whatever, forever.

  Grounded

  Being grounded at my grandparents house was about as boring as you would expect. No TV, no radio, and no going outside. They were so old and backward that they didn’t think to take the computer from me though, so I was able to draw and work on my illustrations at night, after they went to bed.

  Grandma didn’t have much to say to me at all. Gramps came to my door once and said, “Your Grandma loves these dolls, Quinn. I don’t need you to love them too. But you have got to respect her feelings on the matter,” and then left without saying anything else.

  They were both quiet. Dinners were silent. No one seemed to want to look me in the eyes. My knuckles bruised, first dark black and purple, and then a sickly storm-cloud gray. By the time Monday rolled around and my week’s suspension was done and over with, my hands had turned to a mottled yellow.

  They only hurt if I poked them. Needless to say, I poked them a lot.

  Also, not a surprise was the fact that everyone was looking at me weird and whispering when I went by. I kind of expected that. They all thought I was a freak anyway, and this whole mess? Yeah, didn’t help that at all.

  What I wasn’t expecting was to be sent off to see Mr. Tart. It wasn’t my week for it. I guessed it must have been because of that fight, and trudged my way up the stairs and to his office. I was more sullen than scared this time around, when I dropped down into the chair on the other side of his desk.

  Even though he had definitely been told about what had happened, Mr. Tart was still just as cheerful as ever. “Good morning, Quinn! I know this is a little earlier than we normally see each other, but considering our last session was cut short, I thought it was good timing all the same!”

  “I’ve been working on backgrounds.” I didn’t bother to apologize for running out before. I turned the laptop so that he could see the screen, and pulled up the picture of the circus. The idea was that Ghost Girl and Old Lady would go together; though Old Lady wouldn’t know that Ghost Girl was there.

  The circus was bright and bold and colorful. The Big Top was blue, and covered in bright white stars. I wanted to make sure it looked like something that Harry would enjoy, and that the star motif was present in everything that was made. I thought about drawing Harry there doing something fun but… Considering how everyone I drew ended up dead, that was probably not the best idea.

  “It’s really great work.” Mr. Tart ginned way too widely. “What I wanted to suggest to you last time was another class—one on creative writing.”

  I frowned in thought. “That’s what Mr. Carp said too.

  “Great minds think alike,” Mr. Tart all but chirped. “We don’t want you to stop your Illustration class, but we think that someone with a mind like yours would get a lot of use out of learning more about the definitive structure of a story. The world that you’ve made, Quinn—it’s so vibrant and full of life!”

  Wrong. It was full of death.

  And dolls.

  “And adding something like Mr. Blumshire’s teachings to your toolbox, well, it’s just not the sort of thing that we would recommend you pass up.” Mr. Tart paused, seemingly because he just remembered that he needed to breathe in between his words. He sucked in a noisy breath, then launched straight back into his spiel, “He does private lessons in the afternoon, when his main classes are finished, so it wouldn't interfere with your current roster.”

  “Okay—” I started, a little bit hesitant. This was the second time a teacher tried to push me towards creative writing, and I was pretty sure that it was like, an ounce away from being mandatory when so many people were trying to goad you into doing that.

  “Mr. Blumshire is the tip of the top. The cream of the crop. He’s got more accolades than most of us at this school put together…” He lowered his voice. “Just between you and me!” Mr. Tart continued. He seemed to think that was a seriously great thing, and while it was, certainly, a high achievement, it had me feeling more leery than impressed.

  I made a face. “What’s he doing at this school then?”

  Like, I just couldn’t imagine what someone like that would be doing somewhere like this. Yes, the academy was a really big deal—for this town. But this town was tiny. It wasn’t like people were flocking to this school from all over Texas.

  If someone had that many awards, you would have thought that they would be at some big Ivy League school, right? That they would have been trying to get in somewhere great, show off for the big dogs, and really make sure that their name was set up to never be forgotten?

  But Mr. Tart just looked a little bit amused by my question, as though it was obvious why someone like Mr. Blumshire would have been at this school.

  News flash for him. It wasn’t obvious.

  “He’s an alumni of the academy, and he wanted to come back and help teach others to be as successful in the world as he was,” said Mr. Tart. He sounded seriously pleased with himself, as though that was some kind of a big boon on him personally, and not just on the school.

  “Oh,” I tried to sound like I cared. “I mean, it’s pretty cool that he would come back like that, I guess.”

  “It is indeed,” said Mr. Tart’s smile seemed to get even bigger, tugging up at the ends until it was almost comical in appearance. “It was a big deal when Mr. Blumshire decided to come back and teach here. We’re all very honored to have him helping further the creative career of even more students.”

  “Shouldn’t he be teaching kids that are actually in creative-writing classes?” I still wasn’t totally sold on the idea. It was just a lot—taking on something else, and my mood lately had been pretty down in the gutters.

  “He will teach whoever needs his services the most, Miss Hoggwaller,” said Mr. Tart. “And just because you are in one sect of the arts, that doesn’t mean that another sect won’t prove useful to you. Think of it this way. One cannot study the stars professionally if they don’t have a strong basis on both math and physics.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I told him, a thoughtful look crossing my face. “I mean, you are still making a story when you’re illustrating.”

  “You are, you are,” said Mr. Tart with an excited nod of his head. It made him look like a bobblehead doll, the sort that cheesy soccer moms would stick on their front dash because they thought it made them more popular with the kids. “And you’re of the sort that would like to craft her own stories.”

  “I am,” I agreed. “That’s not a bad thing.”

  Something about the look in Mr. Tart’s eyes softened, just a little. “No, Miss Hoggwaller, it’s most certainly not a bad thing to want to breathe your own works into the world. We believe, Mr. Carp and I, that is, and Mr. Blumshire too, now that we’ve spoken to him—we believe that learning more about the art of crafting a story could be very useful to you. What do you think?”

  The question caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting him to actually care what I thought. Even at an academy like this one, the teachers normally just told you what was going to happen. Like when they kept drawing more stars onto Ghost Girl before, and when Mr. Carp told me that the story was too kind and soft for a villain.

  I thought about it.

  Mr. Tart went on, “Normally, we wouldn’t ask you to make a decision right this moment, but Mr. Blumshire’s classes are a special case. They fill up very quickly, you understand, and he can be a bit picky when it comes to taking on personal students.”

  “Doesn’t he have to teach everyone?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He folded his hands. “And he does. He has a very successful class. But you would be more of a private student, and it would be—less of a normal class and more of an extracurricular. Something that you did once the normal work day was over with.”

  “Like band?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right. Exactly like band. And because this exists outside of his normal classes, Mr. Blumshire has every right to say no when it comes to taking on an extra student for personal lessons,” He started to wiggle his fingers nervously. “But he was very impressed with the story you had come up with, especially when we told him that you didn’t have any professional training.”

  My lips pursed. “Did you show him my art?”

  “Only some of it.” More finger wiggling.

  That rubbed me the wrong way, but I knew that the teachers could do whatever they wanted with the turned-in work pieces. And I mean, clearly this Mr. Blumshire guy was impressed with me, or else he wouldn’t be making this offer, right?

  Right.

  Mr. Tart must have seen the way my expression shifted into something more considering of the opportunity, because his own face lit up and he asked rather eagerly, “Is that a yes to trying out his classes?”

  I gave a hesitant nod. “Sure.”

  Part of me just wanted to agree to make sure I didn’t get in trouble again this week. I was kind of over being grounded and over getting the silent treatment from my grandparents. There was no way that this wouldn’t make them happy with me, right? I could market it as me trying to get my grades up and do better in school, or like I was trying to prove that I wasn’t going to get into any more fights or…I didn’t know. Something like that.