Chapter 11
The bell for second hour to begin rang as the last few stragglers slid into their seats.
Today was going as I’d expected it to go.
Hard. Tiring. Filled with the usual to-do requests from my friends.
Monotonous. I was fighting to be invested in what was happening in the present.
The lecture was boring, painful even. Exactly like I was feeling after everything that went down yesterday.
If I never heard another word about Void or Asher or the Dark Banshee in my life again, I would be entirely…
Entirely…
I desperately wanted to say happy, relieved, or satisfied. But I couldn’t bring myself to it. In fact, I knew it would hurt. For at least a while. The pain would eventually become numbing, and I would ultimately be indifferent to his actions.
But right at this moment, I was nothing but upset.
How could he? The least he could’ve done was end this game before having another girl over. Or at least fought harder for me. He knew why I had to protest, why I was protesting. But I also guess—
“Oh! My! Gosh!” Selena suddenly squealed.
My eyes shot toward the girl who was now standing in front of her chair. The entire class was no longer focused on my lecture—though I’d been hardly focused on my own lecture—but on her. Her eyes remained locked onto her phone, and I sighed, pushing the glasses up my nose.
“Selena, you know the rules about phones.” I crossed my arms in front of my plaid, knee-length dress.
“I know, Miss Duval. But—”
“No ‘buts.’ It’s mine until the end of class now,” I said, wiggling my fingers.
Her shoulders slumped forward as she clomped around her desk, dragging her feet through the aisle toward me. I hated taking phones. Avoided it at all costs, to the point where as long as nobody used it during my lecture time, I didn’t care otherwise.
She took another deep breath, a sly grin spread across her face as she set the phone in my hand and “accidentally” tapped the screen.
A song began playing, the voice singing came from a person I’d desperately been trying to not think about. (3)
I stared at the screen in shock. Both captivated by the lyrics as well as weak at the knees by his haunting voice. And a little annoyed. My entire class silenced as the Vizgram video played over and over.
I furrowed my brows as I listened to it closer, a little confused. The short clip was just a few lines, talking about being caught, stuck on someone.
“Is this…?” I started but wasn’t sure how to finish my sentence.
“A new song?” Selena spoke, giving words to my question.
“Yes,” I breathed out. Glancing back down at the screen as the video repeated, there was Asher—back to gripping the microphone with those rings on his fingers that brought so much pleasure in so many dirty ways.
Shaking out of that horrendous train of thoughts, my mind played the lyrics over. Whoever he was singing about, he was saying he was possessed by. Captured by. A chokehold binding him tightly to.
“It’s a line from their new, unreleased song that has everyone freaking out,” she continued, through almost a haze as I stared at the red and black scene. “And have you read the caption?”
It took all my strength to tear my gaze away from Asher’s face. From those amber eyes that I longed to have look at me full of desire again. Swallowing stiffly, I read what the band’s page had captioned and lifted my brows.
“Is this their actual page on Vizgram or a fan page?” I asked, and Selena snorted.
Trevor spoke for her. “You really think that Selena would follow a measly fan page but not the official one?”
“Ha. Ha,” I teasingly said. “Really, though. They’re having a two-night concert here again?”
“It was just announced!” she replied giddily. “One family night and then the next is an adults-only concert. More will be revealed in time, but it looks like they really did enjoy being here enough to host more concerts at our same stadium!”
Gasps shot around the room as the rest of my students dove into their backpacks and pockets for their phones. “Hold it, guys!” I said, stopping everyone in their tracks and finally finding the effort to pause the video. “What’s the rule?”
“Sorry, Miss Duval,” they all murmured, and I closed my eyes. Heaving a sigh, I was already distracted from the lecture, and so was the entire class.
“All right, you all have exactly two minutes to look it up. Come get your phone, Selena. This is a one-time thing, only!” I opened my eyes.
Grins met me with jumbled thank-yous as everyone snatched out their phones to look up the very post that Selena had found. She cautiously walked up front, hesitating before grabbing her cell out of my hand and dashing back to her desk.
“Why are you doing this? It’s not like you even care about anything except classical music,” Trevor taunted, a sly grin across his face.
“I like this band too, you know. But what’s wrong with classical music?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“So, does that mean you’ll be going to the concert this time, too, since you apparently like their music?” Caralee piped in.
“Miss Duval? At a metal concert? Does she look like the type of teacher to go to any concert unless it’s an orchestra?” Dane replied with a scoff.
“Excuse me? What do you mean by that? I have hobbies outside of teaching too.” I threw my hands on my hips.
Benson grimaced. “Not to be rude, but like, look at you. Bright blue plaid dress and dainty heels. Plus, those glasses and your hair pulled into a neat bun. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘metal music fan,’” he quietly said, and the entire class laughed lightly.
“Not everyone here screams ‘metal music fan’ either, yet from what I’ve learned, all of you enjoy Void’s music too,” I quickly replied.
“Yeah, but we aren’t old,” Madison slid into the conversation.
“I’m only twenty-three, I’ll have you know.”
“That’s old,” Dane teased.
I clicked my tongue as the class laughed again. “You really don’t think I’ll go, do you?”
“No, Miss Duval, we don’t,” he continued.
“I’d bet you twenty bucks that you wouldn’t go to the Void concert. Either night!” Selena lifted a brow. These teenagers were brutal, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be playing right into their tactics, but it was hard not to.
Taking a deep breath, I smiled. “I won’t take your bet, because I literally can’t,” I began as my cell phone dinged, a notification popping up.
“Miss Duval!” the entire class said, and I grimaced.
“I guess I forgot to mute my phone.” I quickly hustled to my desk as Selena scoffed.
“You have Picsnap?” she asked in disbelief.
“What?” I gasped in shock before reaching for my phone.
“And it’s from someone you’ve got in your phone as ‘A’,” she added, pointing to the big, white screen. Glancing toward the projected image, my jaw fell open. Somehow, I clicked off the frozen screen, and my phone was connected. So, everyone saw the notification.
From Asher.
Wait, why would it be from Asher?
“Who’s A?” Benson asked, and I quickly relocked the projector screen once the notification was gone.
“Nobody,” I mumbled, and picked up my phone to silence it.
“Here’s the new deal, Miss Duval,” Selena said, rising from her seat with a mischievous grin and returning the topic to the former. “You go to the Void concert, and we won’t tell the principal that you were using your phone in class. Picsnap, no less.”
I shook my head. “Those rules don’t apply to me as your teacher.”
“That’s lame.” Selena pouted, sitting back down in a slump.
“However,” I started, and watched everyone’s interest pique, sitting upright a little higher in their desks. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. “I happen to like Void’s music and listen to it regularly now.”
Some of it anyway. I’d only recently discovered them, so I was only a couple songs in.
“And?” Dane prompted, leaning forward.
“I’ll go to the concert.” I paused, leaning back against my desk with my hands. “Both of them.”
“No cap?” Selena exclaimed as the entire class erupted in cheers.
“Yes, no cap,” I answered with a smile. Things had been more fun with my students lately. I’d spent more time learning about their interests and the latest drama going on, which had allowed me to connect with them better. This would be another good way to connect with them.
“But how will we know that you held up your promise?” Madison asked. Murmured agreements bounced around my class.
“I’ll take some pictures.”
“No, that’s not good enough. You could have someone edit them. We want a video.” Caralee smiled wickedly.
“A video of you singing a song of theirs. One of our choosing. At the concert. That’ll prove that you actually know this band and were there,” Dane added, crossing his arms triumphantly.
The entire class stood up, cheering and echoing their agreements.
The noise was a little overwhelming, and I quickly tried to shush them before anyone came in wondering what was going on.
“Fine. Fine!” I said, quieting the class.
“Wait,” Benson said, and furrowed his brows. “But you could practice whatever song we choose before the concert and then make it seem like you know their music.”
I slowly nodded, seeing what he meant. He wasn’t wrong, and I had halfway hoped to use that tactic because it would get me around the fact that I’d spent more time with Asher himself than actually learning any of their songs.
But I was determined to prove them wrong.
If not for their sake, then for my own. I needed to know that I still maintained some semblance of control over my own decisions when it came to The Dark Banshee.
“All right, how about this.” I pushed off the desk and slipped some wayward strands of my hair behind my ear.
“Let’s take a vote. You’ll write down one song that you’d like me to sing at the concert and put it in an envelope.
I’ll seal it, then at the concert after the opening act, before Void comes on stage, I’ll have my friend record the song reveal. ”
“So, what you’re saying is you’ll open it, on camera, and count up which song has the most votes,” Selena confirmed, and I nodded.
“Any questions?” I asked, and they all shook their heads. “All right. Jamie, will you grab some of those half sheets in the back of the class and pass them out?” The young boy nodded, standing up from the last row and walking towards my scrap pile I kept in a blue basket.
While my class began writing down the name of whatever song they wanted me to sing, I dug through my desk to find an envelope.
Part of me wondered how I was going to pull this off.
Better yet, how did I let myself get dragged into this?
Was this going too far in an attempt to relate to my students?
Or did I do this because secretly I wanted an excuse to see Asher?
Or was I trying to keep myself from feeling extremely guilty over everything that had already happened?
My mind wandered, returning to that mysterious snap from him. Wait, if I needed to learn songs rapidly, who better to learn them from than the man who wrote and sang them himself?
Groaning, I realized that the warning from Tera to not be with him alone would have to be ignored. I needed to suck up my pride and ask the very man I’d rejected multiple times for a favor.
Or, once again, was all this a way to justify seeing him again without guilt, since I could easily learn the lyrics by just listening to Void’s music on repeat until concert day?
Returning to my class, I walked to the last student and grabbed the now sealed envelope. Sliding my pen from my bun, I wrote on it “Void Concert” and held it up for everyone to see.
“Are you sure you want me to do this? How do you know I won’t sound horrendous?” A half-hearted attempt to get out of this one last time.
Chuckles met my ears. “Nice try, Miss Duval. We look forward to the video playlist of our English teacher, who only ever turns on classical music, attending a metal concert,” Dane teased, a wicked grin on his face.
“Oh, and you have to do the top two songs!” Selena suddenly added.
I furrowed my brows. “Why?”
“Because you have two concerts to attend.” Her lips titled up at one corner, and I groaned internally.
This was not going to go well, and I’d walked myself right into it.
The moment that my third-period class let out for lunch, I snatched up my phone. I’d yet to open Asher’s snap, but I had something more pressing to tell him.
I have a favor to ask…
I typed as a text and then hit send.
It was only a matter of moments before the bubbles appeared, and I was waiting for his response.
What’s that?
I furrowed my brows. That’s all? He wasn’t protesting? I was so confused but grateful and typed my reply.
Before I ask, I need to preface my question with the disclaimer that my students may have baited me into this.
Bubbles appeared in response and then disappeared with no connected message.
Wait what? No, where was his response?
Should I check his Picsnap?
Why was I suddenly asking all of these questions?
Then my phone started ringing, and once again, Asher was asking to video call me.