She huffed. “I did not.”
“But what other explanation can there be?” he asked innocently.
“You’re an idiot,” she snapped. She could hear her own blood in her ears.
“That explanation makes no sense.”
She growled, “Get out.” She could hear footsteps approaching from the hall. She hadn’t thought she would prefer the Umino woman to someone, but Sakamoto had proved her wrong.
“That’s your best retort? Come on, you can do better than that,” he said.
The door clicked open. Rin Umino surveyed the scene, one eyebrow raised.
Sakamoto sighed and stood, pushing himself up from the desk.
“Well?” Umino said.
“Where do you find these people?” he asked. “She can’t talk. It’s hopeless. Probably.” With the barest smirk at Camille he made for the door.
He’d been testing her? A stealth English evaluation?
Umino blocked his exit.
“Sorry, super important teenage plans, gotta go,” he told the principal.
She held out her hand, otherwise immobile.
He shrugged and took a key out of his pocket and handed it to her. He’d tried to steal that from her desk?
Umino stood aside and let Sakamoto pass. She shut the door behind him and settled herself in her chair, her stiff posture a sharp contrast to his lazy lounging only moments ago.
“You are not like Miss Graham,” she said, “in many ways. You have been the ward of Mr. Katsura for how many years now?”
Camille licked her lips. What was she really asking? “Six.”
“Six? And all of that in Japan? Very uncharacteristic of him. I’m not sure he’s ever spent that much consecutive time with...anyone.”
Camille didn’t remember what ‘consecutive’ meant, but now seemed a bad time to mention it. She could guess close enough.
“I will assume that having been in his care for so long, you have come to understand certain truths that the general populace is uninformed of. I will assume that because of this, you do not trust me, a human.”
Camille’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not why.”
“The oblivious ones are much more pliant,” she commented. “Miss Graham, for example, could have a bright future with us. All we ask is a little obedience, a little loyalty.”
“I’m with Gabriel,” Camille stated.
“At present, it seems that Gabriel wishes you to be with us,” she bit off his name. “So. Tell me the days of the week.” Her eyebrow arched in challenge.
What? Huh? Right now? Uh... “Monday, Tuesday...” Camille’s brain twisted. “Thursday...”
Her lip twisted in distaste. “Remedial English,” Umino decreed. “If you can’t handle conversational English by the end of the semester, you’re out. I don’t care who your guardian is, we have standards to uphold. Also, you will only speak English on this campus, from here on out.” She passed Camille a sheet of paper.
Camille gazed up at her in horror.
“Immersion is the best teacher,” she said dryly. “Perform, or I will send you to public, and all your darling mentor’s efforts will have been wasted. Public has no idea what to do with someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Surely it’s obvious,” Umino said. “We’re the only ones qualified to educate monsters.”
Camille stood abruptly, chair scraping.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she observed, unimpressed, “or I’ll put you in theatre too.”
Gabriel picked her up outside the school, the powder-blue junker idling loudly. Mostly powder-blue - one of the doors was white. He would have been easy to spot even if he wasn’t the only one waiting up front. A couple of cars were parked in the back of the school lot - she assumed it was teachers staying late.
She slid into the passenger seat, letting her bag hit the floor and the door slam shut in one fluid motion. She didn’t even want to look at him right now. This was all his doing.
“I’ve never picked a kid up from their first day of school before,” he said, in his oblivious way. “I think you’re supposed to tell me all about your day. Tell me you made lots of friends and a cute boy asked you out and your idiot English teacher gave you too much homework.”
At least now she could speak her own language. “I am not going back in there,” she stated flatly, back to Japanese at last.
He sighed, putting the car in gear. “No, see, that’s not how it works. Talk about how you traded food with other kids in the cafeteria.”
“What am I, seven? And who cares about cafeteria food?”
“Well I do. If they’re not feeding you properly, I’ll have to put in a complaint with the school board. Wait, do I need to join a PTA now or something? Does Havenwood have a PTA...?” he mused.
“You are ignoring me,” Camille fumed.
“I’m distracting you. There’s a difference.”
“Either way you’re not listening. I don’t want anything to do with the other students. They’re either completely oblivious, or they’re tools of the principal. Sheep and wolves.”
Gabriel’s expression sobered at her metaphor. The light ahead changed to yellow, then red. The car slowed and came to a stop at the intersection.
“She called me a monster,” Camille said.
Gabriel took a slow breath and ran his hands through his fine, jet-black hair, looking up at the stoplight. “Damn. Already?”
“She wants me gone.”
“Ohhhh no, kiddo. Not in the slightest. Very much the opposite. She knows what her family would do to her if she let us get away. She may not like us, but by no means does she want to be rid of us.” He paused for a moment, and then a grin spread slowly across his face. That was the smile that meant they were about to do something dangerous, something outside the box, and it almost made her grin as well. He was a very difficult person to stay angry with.
“You know what would drive her crazy?” he said, as the light changed and the car inched back into motion.
“No,” she said, trying to maintain a solemn expression.
His eyes flicked to her and back to the road; they were glittering. “If you did really well.”
“Be serious.”
“That is what she’d hate,” he said emphatically. “Rin Umino’s idea of power is thinking that she and her pet students are better than everyone else. I’m a little...ah...notorious...in their circles. That makes you notorious by association. If you really want to stick it to her...follow the rules and destroy them doing it.”
“We’re destroying them?”
“Metaphorically.”
“Less interested.”
“Come on, it can’t have been that bad.”
“She called me a monster. One of her ‘pets’ tried to interrogate me about the bracer. My notebook is soaking wet. They’re making me take extra English classes, they won’t let me speak Japanese,” she said, and then added. “And no one talked to me.” That last was a lie, she realized as soon as she said it. Jul had tried. Several times. She frowned in recollection.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “First day of school stuff. Then I say things like, tomorrow will be better, and that maybe you should try talking to other people if they’re not talking to you first, and we can fix your notebook with a hairdryer. Wait, do we have a hairdryer? Honestly, extra English sounds like the worst part.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I know your English teacher,” he said, distracted as they pulled into the parking lot of the cafe, noting two cars there.
“Who’s that?” Camille asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said, bringing the car to a quiet stop. He rolled down the windows and turned off the engine. “Can you hear them?”