Page 694

--donation bonus week (day 3/5, post 4/5)--
Cisco had the hallway all to himself while he waited, so whenever someone exited one of the nearby classrooms, he could easily see who it was. Fellow students, mostly. Bathroom breaks and so forth.

At length, he grew bored of the news and began browsing other things on his phone, but when he noticed someone else walking down the hall, he had to look up from his articles and image galleries about various breeds of puppies.

It was a grown man that he saw turning the corner and then stopping when he noticed Cisco standing there. Cisco didn’t recognize him, but the man held his gaze longer than seemed normal for a total stranger. Then the man left back the way he came.

He glanced at Dennex. ‘Did you see that?’

‘I did.’

‘Who was he?’

‘No idea,’ said Dennex. ‘Why don’t you come stand over here?’ He nodded toward the other side of the classroom door, where a fire alarm was embedded in the wall.

Cisco understood and did as the reaper asked.

A few minutes later, the stranger returned, this time with a teacher.

Mrs. Rio walked straight up to him. “Why are you not in class, Mr. Elroy?”

Cisco ignored the question and squinted at the person behind her. He could see a guest’s badge hanging around the man’s neck, so he probably wasn’t a member of the school’s faculty. “Mrs. Rio, who is that?”

“Don’t try to change the subject. Why are you not in class?”

He eyed her flatly and shrugged. “Because I’m a bad student.”

‘Really?’ said Dennex. ‘That’s how you’re going to play this?’

But the reaper didn’t know very much about Cisco’s school life, or about Mrs. Rio here. Normally, young teachers were pretty nice to their students, but this woman was a rather well-known hardass in spite of that. Cisco had been stuck with her during his first year, which he hadn’t minded so much, until after he’d started gaining a reputation as a bully. Her dislike for him became quite apparent, then.