Chapter Thirty-Five

*Not edited* Not proofread*

Chapter 35– As smart as you are ugly:

The people on the school premises are predominantly female, all dressed in winter coats, most of them wearing woolly hats and matching gloves. The majority stand in separate groups, chatting away, while a few lone people stand off to the side and mind their business; mainly the men.

I stare at the building through the windscreen, having yet to leave the warmth and solitude of my car despite being sat here for fifteen minutes. The radio plays at a low volume, the music only serving to block out the loud chatter as people pass by my car on the sidewalk.

I shoot a quick glance at the time on my phone screen that lays on the middle console and note that I should probably be getting out to join everyone else. The sooner I have Benny in my presence the sooner I can get rid of him.

Throwing the cigarette butt onto the floor through my open window, I release a heavy sigh and exit my parked vehicle, not looking forward to subjecting myself to the horrors of the crowded playground full of unfamiliar people. The air is still bitter, even more so now that the wind has picked up, but I don't make a big deal out of it like the other people do as I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jacket.

Once I'm past the gates and on the playground, I stand away from everyone else, deliberately ignoring the stares from the curious parents as they frown my way. I fold my arms across the front of my body and focus on the school doors, waiting to see Benny's ugly little face amongst the bunch of little people that start making their way to their appointed owners.

Once I spot his small little figure coming out of the door, I step closer so he's able to see me when he gets to the front of the line. He tugs on the woman's skirt who stands next to him and she looks down at the blonde boy in curiosity. I watch as he points towards me with the brightest smile on his face as I make eye contact with the woman I assume is his teacher, and she smiles gently at me before she signals Benny to wait.

Why the fuck won't she give me the kid? I think to myself as I begin to approach her just as she's sending off the last of her students.

"Hello, Odee," Benny greets with childish excitement.

I barely glance down at him as I wave my hand in his direction and say, "Yes, hello, brat."

The woman who stands a few inches taller than me and is slim in size says her final goodbyes to a fat mini human and its owner before finally acknowledging me with a cheerful hello. I don't greet her back, put off by her overpowering scent of flowers.

"Are you here to pick up little Benny?" She asks me, her voice high-pitched and nasally. I can't tell what's more annoying; her voice or her smile.

I nod my head, offering a small 'mhm' from the back of my throat.

"Name?"

"Kody Lawrence," I tell her, reluctant to give her my name but figuring there must be a plausible reason for it.

"Great, Mrs. Johansson said to expect you. You're Mr. Lawrence's sister, aren't you?" She tries to make conversation with me like I'd seen her do with other people.

I offer a nod, uninterested in the small talk, and glance down at my phone. Jace has been picking Benny up a lot since Lilah's incident so I'm not surprised she knows him. "Right, come on little spawn, I got shit to do," I usher him with me as I turn to walk away, hearing his small little footsteps attempt to keep up with my longer strides.

"Want to see what I drew today at school, Odee?" I hear him ask from beside me as we exit the gates and walk the short distance down the sidewalk where my car is parked. "It's of a flower."

"Keep it to yourself, Van Gough, I'm not the slightest bit interested," I reply as I open the passenger side door. "In."

Benny is looking down at the floor when I address him, waiting for him to climb into the front seat. I've only just now had the time to really look at him properly, not having been interested enough to do so before, so maybe that's why I missed the long scratch under his eye I've only just noticed in this moment.

"Um, no no," I protest as I pull him back by the tip of his ear as he goes to get into the car, not as rough as I would usually be. Benny stumbles a little, staring up at me in question once his footing is steady. "What the fuck is that?" I grab his chin with my fingers and angle his face so I can get a better look.

"Odee," he mumbles exasperatedly.

"Don't 'Odee' me, little abomination. Answer my question," I let him go, arms crossed as I stare down at his tiny frame. Obviously he's small compared to me, however, I noticed he's considerably smaller than the rest of his classmates, too.

Benny avoids eye contact as he shrugs his shoulders, his eyes meeting the floor for the second time. I grab his chin again, and when I pull his face up, I notice the tears in his wondering eyes. "Name?"

"What?" He whimpers out, lips trembling. I'm not sure where the sudden one-eighty turn came from, but I assume it's the fact that I brought up whatever had happened today to make him come out looking like this.

"Name of the little shit who did that to your face," I clarify, pressing my thumb over the soreness around the angry red line that had definitely bled at some point today.

Benny shakes his head, going mute as he purses his lips together in a show of disobedience. I press my tongue against my teeth, asking him once more in spite of the fact I hate repeating myself.

"I falled," he denies my accusation weakly. I raise an eyebrow, letting him know I don't believe it one bit. He sighs in defeat. "It was just an adcident, Odee, they didn't mean it—."

"They? More than one person did this?" I ask, more angry than I am shocked. He drops his head, nodding softly. I study his demeanour for a few moments more, tilting my head in concentration. "Roll your sleeves up."

"Huh?"

"Stop making me repeat myself, brat. Roll your sleeves up."

He's a defiant little fucker when he wants to be, that much is clear, but after a back and forth argument which I, of course, end up winning, he eventually pulls the sleeves of his jumper up to reveal the scratches and red marks on his arms.

My jaw clenches so hard I swear I hear my teeth crack, my fists balling and nails digging into the palms of my hand. "Get in the car, Benny, and lock the door. I'll be back in a minute, okay?" I'm surprised at the calmness of my voice despite my blood boiling in rage.

"Where you going?" He asks as I pick his weightless body up and drop him onto the creamy leather seat. I close the door, ignoring his question, and head back in the direction we'd just came from.

I have no clue where the fuck I'm going at first, but eventually find a sign that leads me to reception. The glass doors open automatically and I storm up to the front desk, not caring if the lady that is perched there is the one that deserves my anger or not.

"Where the fuck is that bitch that teaches Benny Johansson?" I demand, my hand hitting the plastic screen that separates us to gain her attention. The plump woman at the desk jumps at the suddenness of the loud noise my palm makes as it hits the plastic and she stutters in shock. "I asked you a fucking question!"

"What is going on here?" A deep masculine voice appears from the back of the room before she can answer, and as my eyes seek out the owner of it, I'm met with a man walking towards the frightened woman in front of me inside the office.

"None of your fucking business unless you know where that pathetic excuse of a teacher is," I snap at him, watching as he disappears for a second while he opens the door to my left and enters the hall with me.

The man's tall, he is, but not overly so. He has dark brown hair and matching brown eyes, looking to be in his early forties if I were to take a guess. He wears grey trousers, a white shirt tucked in to the waistband; no tie and black loafers.

I stare at him with a locked jaw, his demeanour one of authority, and I assume he must be the principal by the way he seems to want to take hold of the situation. "I'm Mr. Heath, the headteacher. I can see there must be some sort of issue, but I don't think it'll get solved by storming in here like a raging bull," he tries to lighten the mood with a false sense of calmness. "How about we start by telling me your name."

"My name isn't important," I counter, annoyed by the way he tries to diffuse the situation. "What's important is that you get that useless bitch out here so she can explain to me the marks on Benny's arms and the scratch mark on his fucking face that no one seemed to do anything about."

The principal nods lightly, almost understandingly. "Are you his sister?"

"Fortunately no," I answer honestly. "But that's not the fucking point," I begin to get impatient, hating that he keeps changing the focal point of the conversation.

"Okay," he nods again. "So, you're saying Benny has marks on him?" He repeats my claim back to me and I do nothing but stare at him boredly, the anger still present in my expression. "Are you sure he got them while he was here?"

My jaw ticks. "I know what fresh cuts look like, and I know that Benny might be fucking irritating but he's not a fucking liar. If he told me he got them here, then he got them fucking here."

"I don't think the language is helping the situation, miss. So how about we try to calm down?" Before I can speak and tell him to fuck off, he carries on. "Unfortunately Benny's teacher has already left so I won't be able to talk to her until Monday," he tells me, clearly lying. "I'll give Benny's parents a call and arrange a meeting with them and Ms. Lodge. Does that sound like a good idea?" He smiles a closed lip smile, concealing the contrast his shiny white teeth have against his dark skin.

My mind works overtime, my vision close to becoming blurry as the voices in my head cause an uproar. I feel my heart beating a hole in my chest and have a hard time evening out my breathing. It takes everything in my entire being to muster up a silent nod as I bite down so hard on my tongue I draw blood; the metallic taste a familiar one in my mouth.

After leaving the premises without so much as a fuck you, I head back to the car and unlock it, sliding into the drivers seat with ease. Benny looks at me as I close the door behind me, but doesn't say a word— the smartest thing he's ever done.

We sit in my unmoving vehicle in silence for a good while, aside from the two minutes I take to answer Jace's phone call where he tells me I'll need to take Benny home with me because he's busy and no one else is able to watch the youngest Johansson. I barely pay his words any mind, distracted by my concentration on the school gates as I wait for Ms. Lodge to walk through them.

And she does so twenty minutes later.

"Stay here, brat," I order to the silent boy in my passenger seat as I re-exit my car for the third time since being in a close proximity to the school. I close the door quietly behind me and approach the lanky woman slowly and calmly, aware of Benny's gaze through my windscreen.

"Going somewhere?" I ask once I'm directly behind her, putting my hand against the drivers window and stopping her from opening her door as I slam it closed. "Don't think so."

She's quick to turn around, her height not far off from mine. She looks slightly lost for words, her eyes wide in what I assume is surprise mixed with confusion.

"Miss Lawrence," she smiles nervously, subtly clutching her bag to her front as I ever so slightly take a step back. "Everything okay?"

My eyes slowly scan the length of her face in boredom, my expression unimpressed. "It won't be if you don't tell me why I've got a kid in my front seat that's not in the same unharmed condition he was given to you in."

She has the audacity to tilt her head like she's confused and my hands twitch to help her tilt it the rest of the way until her neck snaps. "Excuse me?"

"Playing dumb will get you nowhere, you stupid bitch. It'll just piss me off more than I already am, and you really don't fucking want that," I threaten, and unlike with Ricky, my threat will one-hundred percent be carried out.

She shifts on her feet and adjusts her posture, but it does nothing in her favour. She pretends to look like she's only just now catching on to what I'm saying as she pulls a crappy false expression of realisation. "Oh, you mean the scratches he got while playing with the other kids?"

If I wasn't so vexed at the mere thought of someone touching so much as a hair on that little brats head I would have fucking scoffed at her transparency... and then crushed her trachea in my hand. Playing? Fucking playing?

"If you were as smart as you are ugly this conversation would be a lot more pleasant for you," I tell her cruelly. "But you're clearly as stupid as the kids you teach, so let me dumb it down for you." I take a step forward and enjoy the way her back hits the door and her feet fall of the sidewalk and onto the road between the pavement and her car as she tries to keep the distance I close, but to no avail. "I'm going to be picking Benny up after school for the remainder of the term from now on. If I see any, and I mean any, fucking mark on his body, you and little Ava will end up in the same fucking whole in the ground, do you understand that?"

"H—how do you—?" Her eyes widen at the mention of her own daughters name.

"Do you understand what I'm saying or not?"

"I'll call the police," she argues lamely, her tone not coming out as threatening as she thinks. "You cannot come to my school—."

Bored with the situation, I give in to the commands of the voices and grab her by her skinny, little throat, pulling her closer to me so I can feel her ragged breath blow against my cheeks. "The only reason I'm not going to snap your neck right here is because Benny's watching. I don't give a fuck about the camera's, the witnesses, the police... If I want to rip out your tongue," I soften my voice as my thumb trails along her lower lip, pulling at it to expose her bottom set of her teeth, my eyes watching the movement, "I fucking will." I meet her stare with my own so she knows how serious I am.

Once I let her go I can tell she's too scared to say anything, as I expected, so I lean forward and open her door for her, gesturing my head to the drivers side of the car. "You might want to hurry along. Ava should be coming out of school soon and it's about a fifteen minute drive from here if I'm not wrong." At her disturbed look, I shrug. "You should really be more careful with what you share on the internet. It can be dangerous if the wrong people were to get ahold of it."

And fuck me if that doesn't turn out to be true.

___

Author's Note

Another side of crazy Kody... But can we really fault her?

.... nahhhh.

Hope you enjoyed this short filler chapter. Hopefully not that I've just finished my assignment, I can focus on these updates for a while until the next essay I have to write.

Let me know what you thought of this chapter (:

How are you newer readers finding the book? Feel free to drop some comments, would love to know your thoughts!