No Wedding Blessing For The Bully

Summary

The Thursday before midterms, I stood outside the faculty office with a slip of paper clutched in my sweating palm.

The heavy, foil-stamped wedding invitation for my great-niece was burning a hole in my pocket, but as I opened my mouth, the words caught in my throat. How do you explain the labyrinthine branches of an eccentric, old-money family tree to a man who already hates you?

Mr. Davis, my homeroom teacher, didn't even relax his jaw as he snatched the absence request from my hand. He pressed his red pen so hard into the "Reason for Absence" line that the ink bled through.