Free Crumbling Walls (Jack and Emily #1) by Laura Strandt Page B

everywhere.
     
    She especially did not enjoy when this seemed to become the routine.
     
    The one very dim, very sad bright side to the whole situation that she grasped onto during this two week bout of insomnia was that she had been keeping ahead on her homework. She couldn’t stay focused during tests to save her life, but her homework had never been more thorough.
     
    Dex walked head-on into Emily's loosening grasp of composure the day before Christmas break began and once he got over the surrealness of her reaction, he caught Jack in the hall between classes, “Is Emily okay?”
     
    “I think so, why?”
     
    “Well, I had to ask her the same question three times in a row before she answered and then she got real snarly with me for asking it and I don't mean her just telling me no, but getting honest-to-God bitchy with me. It was just about some of her notes, nothing major.”
     
    Aiming a look of sympathy towards his friend, “She hasn’t been sleeping much lately."
     
    “Huh. Well, thought I’d better ask. I’ll just set her shit meter a little higher for now.”
    ”Shit meter?”
     
    “Yeah, how much shit I can take from her before I get annoyed. She’s usually got hers set astronomically high for me which is why I thought I’d better ask if something was wrong.”
     
    Stopping next to their lockers, “Something’s keeping her awake, but either she hasn’t figured it out or she has and can’t figure out what to do about it.”
     
    Grabbing the book for his last class, Dex slammed the locker, “Well, let me know if you find out anything else.”
     
    “Sure.”
     
    As Jack and Dex headed to Spanish class, Emily was trying to keep herself awake while she waited for history class to begin. Her head kept bobbing and for the first time ever, she seriously debated slipping back out of class and heading home.
     
    She immediately banished the thought, however, because the teacher came in just then and began to pass out the exam papers for the test she had studied a good four hours for the previous night. It looked completely foreign to her. It had to be in English but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what the questions were asking.
     
    Her brain felt cloudy and realizing anything she had learned the night before was gone, she took a few deep breaths. She figured she had two choices. Try to force some information from her empty mind or put her head down and take a nap. Neither one seemed doable at the moment so she chose a third option. Standing up, she gave her unfilled pages to the teacher and walked out the door.
     
    Everyone looked up at her in unison as she opened the classroom door and left.
     
    Mr. Castle told them to keep working as he hurried out behind her, “Emily?”
     
    Turning back around, she looked at him standing in the doorway, keeping one eye on his test-takers and the other on her, “Yeah?”
     
    “What are you doing?”
     
    “I’m leaving, sir.” At this point, she just wanted to lie down and didn’t care what she had to say, as long as she could just shut her eyes, “I can’t answer anything on that test so I might as well go home.”
     
    “You can’t just leave.”
     
    “It’s last period. You always let us go as soon as we’re done with the test as long as we’re quiet about it.”
     
    He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with one of his best students and, by now, a few teachers’ heads were also popping into the hall to see what had happened, “But you didn’t even try.”
     
    With an almost maniacal chuckle, “I looked at those questions and I can’t answer them.”
     
    Knowing he ought to be making her come back inside, he realized she had him. She could choose not to take the test, fail and leave, given he did let them go as soon as they were done. He also knew a call to her mother would go unanswered, so all he could do was shrug and wave her off, “I still wish you’d change your mind.”
     
    Already