Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Zane
The principal’s office reeks of bleach and bullshit. It’s all scrubbed walls and dirty truths.
I’m slouched in the chair outside his door, leg bouncing hard enough to rattle the floor, trying to shake the fury clawing at my skin. The anger sticks. It always does. Doesn’t matter how many times I try to peel it off.
My knuckles are split again.
Red.
Throbbing.
A mess of old scars torn back open. My jaw aches from how tight I’ve been clenching it, every muscle straining to keep the scream buried.
And fuck, I’ll never learn.
Always fight or flight. But I never run, so I swing. Every goddamn time, because that’s all I’ve ever been taught.
My whole life’s been one long fucking brawl. Me against the world, fists up, breath short, waiting to be hit so I can hit back harder. It’s instinct, more like muscle memory now. They come for me, and I burn the whole thing down.
Part of me wishes I didn’t always end up bleeding and broken in someone else’s hallway. But wishing only gets you so far. And no one ever taught me how to walk away.
The door groans open, dragging silence into the room.
Mr. Granger fills the frame, face screwed up so tight it seems painful.
As if he’s been chewing on bitterness his whole life and still hasn’t learned to swallow it.
His eyes cut through me, dismissive—the same expression people give to roadkill they wish someone had cleared before they had to drive past.
His expression says everything.
I’m the mistake he wishes had been erased before landing in this school. The stain he’ll never scrub out of it’s shiny floors, no matter how much bleach he drowns the halls in.
“Inside,” he snaps, voice flat and clipped, already done with me before I’ve even moved.
I push up from the chair, every muscle dragging, weighted with the kind of heaviness that never leaves.
My shoulders square out of habit. My body moves like it’s been trained for this routine. Dragged into offices, lined up for lectures, another adult waiting to carve their disappointment into my skin.
I don’t meet his eyes. I refuse.
His gaze is a trap, hungry for weakness. He won’t get a damn thing from me.
Instead, my focus stays locked on the wall past his shoulder, where the paint’s chipped, a thin crack snaking upward, as if even this place can’t hold itself together. That crack becomes my anchor, something solid to keep me from drowning in the weight of his stare.
The door clicks shut behind me, a clean, final sound. A lock without a key.
My teeth grind until I taste the copper of old blood.
“Sit.”
The word lands sharp. A command, not a request. The kind of order they’ve been shoving at me my whole damn life.
All I can think about is how much I want to ignore him. How much I want to stand there and watch him squirm when I don’t fold into his rules.
I don’t.
Not straight away.
I stay on my feet, letting the silence stretch.
The weight presses down, fills the room, drags against my skin. He waits for me to fold, but I won’t… not yet.
I’ve seen how this plays out. Lived through it too many times to count.
The script never changes. Troubled kid. The one with the fucked-up past stamped across his record.
The one with fists for hands and anger for a spine.
The walking cautionary tale everyone warns their sons not to become and their daughters to avoid.
Every glance, every sigh, every note scribbled in that fucking folder with my name on it says enough. They’ve already written me off. Waiting for me to prove them right again.
Eventually, I drop into the chair. Not because I’ve surrendered, but because my legs are heavy with a lifetime of this bullshit. I’m tired of this game, the labels, of pretending I’m not exactly what they’ve made me out to be.
I sit there with my arms folded tight across my chest, the kind of posture that says fuck you without a sound. Because if I’m going to give them what they expect, I’ll do it on my own terms.
Granger folds his hands on the desk. His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose and he pushes them back up with one finger, as if the gesture alone makes him important.
He stares.
Not the casual kind you forget after a second.
The kind that drags, peeling me apart without ever touching me.
It’s quiet, calculating. His elbows sink into the desk, fingers laced, chin tilted forward to show he’s in control.
As if he’s more than a bureaucrat who signs suspension slips the way most people sign checks.
A man who plays God before breakfast, scribbling out futures with the flick of his pen.
I don’t give him anything.
Not a blink, a breath or even the satisfaction of a flinch. My eyes glaze over, locking on a spot past his shoulder until he’s nothing but a blur I refuse to focus on.
If he wants me to squirm, he’ll have to keep waiting.
Because the only thing worse than being their failure is giving them the show they came for.
He exhales, long and loaded, the kind of breath that carries judgment in the weight. This isn’t air leaving his lungs… it’s disappointment. A sound that tells me he’s written the ending before I’ve even opened my mouth.
“Zane.”
My name falls out of him like it’s too heavy to hold.
“Wanna tell me what happened?”
I don’t. I won’t.
I sit in that chair, still as stone, arms clamped tight across my chest, my body nothing but a barricade.
Because the second I open my mouth, it’s over.
They’ll twist every word, spin the story, use the truth against me until even that starts to feel false.
So I stay silent. Let the weight settle. Let him choke on the silence.
He picks up the manila folder with my name on the cover, corners bent and edges frayed from being dragged out too many times. Thicker than it has any right to be. A history of everything I’ve ever done wrong.
Every late bell. Every detention. Every time I breathed in a way they didn’t approve of. Documented. Stamped. Filed away until I’m nothing more than paper cuts and ink.
He flips through it slow, like he’s savoring each page.
But I know he isn’t reading. He doesn’t need to. The story’s memorized by now.
His finger lands on the newest entry. He doesn’t even blink when he says it.
“Today: Violence.”
The word hangs in the room, heavy as stone.
He clicks his pen against the folder.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound digs into my skull until I want to snap that fucking pen in half. Then he stills it with a sharp press, as if to underline the point.
“Do you want to tell me why you hit him?”
A single shake of my head. The answer’s no, but I don’t waste the breath on words.
His mouth tightens. “You’re not helping yourself.”
Good.
Didn’t walk into this office to save myself.
“Zane.”
He says my name again, his patience now wearing thin. He leans forward, eyes hard, tone snapping against my ears.
“This is your third suspension. In three weeks.”
His gaze pins me to the chair, while his voice carries the final blow.
“You’re on your last leg, Mister. You so much as breathe the wrong way and I’ve got every right to suspend you. Permanently.”
The word "permanently" drags across the desk, thick and final, like a coffin lid slamming shut.
I nod once. Nothing more.
He lets the silence hang long enough to see if I’ll flinch, break or fill the air with some pathetic plea to keep myself from drowning.
I don’t.
Fuck these pathetic people and their judgements.
I sit still as stone, my pulse hammering in my ears. My knee bounces under the desk, but not a single crack shows on my face. If he wants weakness, he can go find someone else.
He finally drags the suspension slip across the desk. The pen scratches loud against the paper.
“Three days,” he says, voice clipped, cold. “Effective immediately. You’re not allowed back on campus until Monday.” He pauses, jaw tight, eyes narrowing with one last swing of authority. “And if you come near that boy again—”
“I won’t.” It slips out low, scraped from the back of my throat, barely more than a growl.
Granger rises, then opens the door with that finality that tells me I’m nothing more than paperwork now. A signature and a problem shuffled out of his office.
I sling my bag over my shoulder, the strap digging into my palm, and step into the hallway.
Every footstep pounds against the tiles, echoing too loud, reminding me what I am. Trouble. Noise. A warning carved into the echo.
By the time I shove the front doors open, I know I’m fucked. The sunlight is too bright. It makes everything feel rawer, every nerve ending exposed.
That fucker Liam deserved it.
He opened his mouth and ran it around the wrong girl. Thought he was clever. Thought he was untouchable. His words crawled under my skin. Calling her a fucking broken toy with that arrogance. The kind of shit that turns people into property instead of human.
The fuckers never get it.
We didn’t ask for this life. We didn’t choose to be shoved into these cages and labeled defective. And I’ll be damned if I sit quietly while some asshole treats Skylar as if she’s nothing more than something to use and throw away.
So I swung.
And now the world wants me to fucking pay for it.
I keep walking. Past the gates. Down the road. No destination, just forward motion. The buzz in my bones won’t quit, the heat in my fists still burning holes under my skin.
Third suspension.
That was the nail in the coffin last time.
The Jeffersons hadn’t been perfect, but they weren’t bad. Not saints, but decent. Hot meals on the table. A garage that smelled of oil and gasoline, where I learned how to pull apart an engine without the world crashing down around me. The kind of quiet that didn’t cut too deep.
For a second, I almost believed I could stay.
Then I fucked it up.
One fight. One detention slip and they didn’t hesitate. Handed me the trash bag full of my things and sent me packing. Just a shrug and a “we tried.”