Free The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) by Jean Nicole Rivers

were slanted and appeared drunk, while others hung halfway off the shelf with their pages flailed out as if they were threatening to jump.
    Jump! Lacey Wright shouted somewhere in the corridors of Blaire’s mind.
    On one of the walls was some type of board where Blaire imagined a teacher had once hung A+ papers to boast of her children’s learning, but nothing hung there now. Through the windows, the trees swayed and dipped as if to get a peek at the new teacher, because they too were curious as to what she could do with the old place.
    Blaire plugged her phone into the small speaker dock that she brought on the trip and began singing softly with the music as she swept away the remnants of life at St. Sebastian as it used to be. Next, she filled a bucket with hot water and soap, and began to scrub everything in sight. Eventually, the gray walls and floors began to reveal themselves as white underneath. With the hours ticking away, Blaire became lost in the music, in the surreal ecstasy of being on the other side of the earth, away from everything familiar. St. Sebastian gave her a chance to be someone whom she always wanted to be, because no one knew her here, and no one had ever seen her face.
    Blaire stared into the whiteness of the wall and with every stroke of her soapy sponge, unsolicited memories of her parents broke through the mental chains of suppression that Blaire had created to keep things in place. They reached their cadaverous hands up through the soil of her subconscious, dragging themselves out of a mind grave. The whiteness of the walls leaked out into Blaire’s reality, surrounding her and she fell into it.
    So bright was the sun that almost every object seemed to glow as it marked everything with a warm, dreamy glare. White circles dotted her favorite pink dress. She and her mother sang along to the music that wafted from the car radio, which was playing “Dream a Little Dream.” There was not one worry that could puncture the ignorant bliss of childhood in this moment. Blaire felt a hemorrhage in her body that shook her back into the reality of the classroom at St. Sebastian.
    Never before had she experienced a clear memory of that day, never a single clear memory of the day that changed everything. Not one until now.
    Blaire took a moment to catch her breath, then plunged the sponge down into the soapy water, where she noticed a pair of beat -up white tennis shoes moving uncomfortably, inches from the mop bucket. Blaire looked up to see a striking young child standing over her. The girl was about twelve years old and wore a wrinkled green t -shirt that featured a large purple smiley face and distressed blue jeans, which in Borslav signaled a truly troubled lifestyle instead of the fashion statement that it signaled in the States.
    “Hello,” Blaire said as she got up to turn down the volume on her music player, which was fighting fleeting stints of static.
    “I’m Natalka,” the freckle -faced girl said with her hands set halfway in her pockets.
    “I’m Ms. Baker. I am going to be your teacher this year,” Blaire said, as she held out her hand for a friendly shake. Natalka’s face brightened, and Blaire took an instant liking to her. Natalka had twisted and pinned her hair with several bobby pins in a way that told anyone who looked at it that she took pride in her appearance and was desperately trying to hold on to some leftovers of individuality, even if her hairstyle was strange and juvenile. The worn pins in her hair were a mismatch of natural, brown, and black colors. Obviously, she snaffled the pins from wherever she could find them, but Blaire was sure that the one in the front must have belonged to the girl. It was black with pink rhinestones, one of which was missing from its socket, though that small flaw did little to diminish the pride that came with wearing the crown jewel in her hodgepodge of pins.
    “I like your hair.”
    “Thank you! We’ve never had a teacher here