Chapter Four

Usually, this early in the morning, everyone that cluttered the halls were dragging to get to class, but today it was different. There was something abuzz in the school, and not just the smell that kept attacking Adelina's senses. It appeared no one else could sense that vile, disturbing odor.

No, the school was inflamed with new gossip, and it was loud chatter in Adelina's sensitive ears. She zeroed in on one voice, pausing as it recited what everyone was talking about:

"Yeah, no, I heard he was a model before he came here. Yeah, I know, Natalie told me the same thing. He's beautiful, teaches the new history class that Mrs. Burton taught before she got canned. He's like a mix of Brad Pitt and that one guy from The Covenant. Yeah, I know, right? Totally amazing." The girl Adelina was listening to droned on and on, eventually losing Adelina's attention entirely.

She knew that Mrs. Burton, the forty-seven year old teacher this new man replaced, had been fired over the summer when they cleaned out her computer and found she had started writing her fourth erotic book on a school computer. But Adelina was interested as to why the entire school seemed to be obsessed with this new teacher, even the guys were getting in on it, grumbling about how he looked far more like a college football star than a teacher and how they was going to ask what gym he used.

Adelina simply shook her head at this display. Doesn't take much to entertain these people, does it? She thought to herself as she turned down the hallway. She had the class where the teacher in question resided for first hour. She moved her shirt over her nose, the smell got stronger and stronger as she passed the long hall of lockers. With each step she took, it got stronger, and she fought the urge to throw up. She ran into the classroom and expected not to smell the odor any more behind a closed door as she slammed it tightly behind her in haste, but it seemed to fill every crack and crevasse of the room, clinging to her skin even.

The blonde man at the desk in the front turned towards her, and she widened her eyes.

No way. She thought, her mind was racing. The man from the night before stood right in front of her, and his classroom reeked of the scent. It surged from his body, though it wasn't him...it was something in him that made that horrendous stink. He looked pleased with her entrance, and she wanted to scream as more people came into the classroom, and no one noticed how he smelled.

She raced to her seat at the back of the room, cracking open the window. Please, please, please work. She pleaded to the fresh air as it filtered in. It made the room tolerable from where she sat, and she tried to shrink into the back of the class, blend in with her scenery, but it eluded her. She felt his eyes every time he glanced at her, though it appeared not as often as he would have liked.

She pulled out the trashy, dime-store vampire romance novel and tried to lose herself in it. The characters with their overly simple lives, and their overly simple names, all of it just was so predictable and it wouldn't take her away from the classroom like any other book would've.

He appeared to inhale just a bit more whenever he was near her side of the room, and as he made idle, appearing as if begrudging, chit-chat with the students who smiled and waved and asked questions, he would take just a few more moments in his response when he was near her.

No...this is dumb...I'm just reading too many of these books, she set the book back into her bag and pulled out a sketchbook from her backpack. Maybe drawing something, anything would pull her in. She raced her pencil furiously across the surface, grimacing when the man she drew had grown fangs before she'd realized what she'd been doing. She ripped the paper from her sketchbook and tossed it into the garbage.

She attempted to listen to this man after the bell rang, reading his script across the board over and over. Mr. Johnson... she thought, looking up at him. Something made her uneasy, and she felt the hair on her arms prickle up a few times during the long, long fifty-three minutes she was stuck in the closed space. She squelched the feeling, gripping onto her arm a few times.

But "Mr. Johnson" appeared amused with her, his sweet perfume was intoxicating him with her very presence. He noticed certain movements, and he knew he was making her uncomfortable. It gave him a sense of satisfaction, happiness he put her on edge and as the bell rang, he set down the mediocre text book and looked at her as she slowly packed her belongings, waiting until the students were all away before hesitantly walking to the front of the room.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" she asked, really thinking: What in the hell are you?