Estranged Siblings: Ep9
Andre was worried now. He wouldn’t be returning to class? He glanced at Brigitte, but her smile just widened, the tip of her tongue slipping out to lick her lips as her eyes panned down his body.
Disturbed by that, he stumbled forward and hastened to get out of the room.
The halls were emptying as students rushed to their first classes. A few teachers were still standing outside their doors and watched him pass.
Mr. Cochrane, his skinny, grey-haired geography teacher, wore a disturbed expression on his flushed face. Andre thought he looked angry or disgusted, but he couldn’t be sure. The man glanced at the office worker, then turned to shuffle back into his classroom.
At the end of the corridor leading to the front office, in the last doorway, was Mrs. Jager. She was Andre’s math teacher and the physical opposite of Mr. Cochrane. Where he was short, old, and frail, she stood five-foot-eleven in sensible flats with svelte curves and fit muscles. The proportions of her significant breasts suggested surgical assistance. As he passed, she was watching him with an intensity that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He immediately dropped his eyes.
“Ilsa!” Mrs. Phillips scolded quietly, snapping the tall blonde’s eyes to her. She nodded to Phillips and stepped inside her class.
The last hallway was empty of students as the first bell rang. The teacher stepped through the doors to the office, with the worker and Andre following. Principal Wallace nodded to them.
“Thank you, Mrs. Phillips. I’ll take it from here,” he said, and Andre heard his teacher make sputtering noises. The principal raised an eyebrow, and Mrs. Phillips spun angrily and left the outer office.
“Mr. Marin, please join me in my office,” Wallace said calmly as the worker returned to her desk with a glance at him.
Andre’s nerves were buzzing. “Did I do something wrong?”
Wallace paused as he looked back at Andre. “Not at all. I just need to speak to you about something.” He looked at the worker. “Have you been able to reach his guardian?”
Andre stopped and stared at the principal. “You’re calling Cassandra? You can’t disturb her at work!”
The principal looked at him. “Why? What does she do?”
Andre felt his chest tightening. He didn’t want to cause her any trouble. “She’s a teller in a bank. She has a mean boss. You shouldn’t call her. I’m eighteen. Legally an adult. You don’t need to call her.”
Wallace looked at him and came to a decision. “Fine, but you’ll need to speak with her, and I need her to call me as soon as she can.”
Andre nodded and felt the tightness ease. He followed the man into his office and took a seat as Wallace closed the door. The older man took a seat behind his desk and took a deep breath before he spoke.
“I take it from your expression you’re not aware of why you’ve been brought here,” the principal said.
Andre nodded.
The man looked Andre in the eyes. “I’m afraid there’s been a serious violation of your privacy.”
Andre wasn’t sure what that meant. He shook his head.
“An investigation is underway to determine who did it, but someone took a picture of you in the school showers. It was a very explicit picture. To make matters worse, the image was sent to every active account on the school network. I’ve had the network techs remove the message from every mailbox, but I’m afraid many of the students and faculty have already seen the image.” He paused as he watched for a reaction.
Andre didn’t know how to deal with this. People saw him naked? That’s why everyone was looking at him? All those people seeing his body… Brigette! The image of her licking her lips flashed into his mind.
The noise in his head suddenly spiked, and he was out of his chair and running. He got out into the hall and saw the exit a short distance away. Voices were calling out behind him, but they felt like hands clawing at his body, so he ran faster, bursting out the front door to sprint down the sidewalk away from the school and all the knowing eyes. His feet knew where he needed to be to feel safe, so he let them set his course and tried to drown out the screaming in his head.
He ran across the street in front of the school and caught motion out of the corner of his eye. He leaped upward to clear the speeding car’s bumper. His world exploded into stars as he slammed into the windshield, his body thrown upward to land on the road behind the skidding sports car. Mercifully, he was unconscious when he landed.
-=-
Cassandra rushed into the hospital and ran to the Admissions desk. The woman behind the desk looked up with a weary expression.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .
“I’m looking for Andre Marin. He-he was hit by a car!” she gasped, struggling to keep from crying.
“And you are?”
“His sister, Cassandra.”
The woman tapped a few keys on her keyboard. “He’s on the third floor–”
“Thank you,” she gasped, but she was already rushing to the elevators.
She rode it up to the third floor and stepped out into the hall. She saw the nurse’s station and hurried up to it. She was losing her battle to suppress her tears the closer she got.
“I-I was called by the principal of my brother’s school. He said Andre had been hit by a car and was being taken here. His name is Andre Marin. I’m his sister Cassandra,” she was babbling, but the nurse behind the counter gave her a sympathetic smile. She looked at her screen.
“Yes, Ah! Doctor Krastin. Your patient’s sister is here. Andre Marin,” she said to a man in scrubs. He walked over to Cassandra and guided her a short way from the nurse’s station.
“First, Andre appears to be okay. We sent him for x-rays, but nothing looks broken. He was very lucky. He’ll be badly bruised and will need at least a week to recuperate. He struck his head against the windshield and the road, but I don’t see any signs of injury to his skull or brain. Not even signs of a concussion. He was unconscious when he was brought in but woke shortly after he arrived. We’re going to keep him in the hospital overnight, but I believe he’ll be able to go home tomorrow if he has a good night’s sleep.” The doctor smiled gently at her as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Can I see him?” she asked in a little girl’s voice.
“He’s in room three-oh-nine, but he’s been given strong pain medication, so he’s asleep. You can see him, but please don’t wake him. He needs time to heal.” He looked past her and nodded. “Before you do, you should speak with Principal Wallace, who’s been waiting for your arrival.”
Cassandra turned and saw the man standing by the entrance of a small waiting room. He’d been the one who told her Andre was in the hospital. She’d hung up on him right after he’d said which one.
She nodded to the doctor and walked over to the room as Wallace stepped back inside and gestured to one of the seats. Cautiously, she sat as he closed the door and sat across from her. He took a deep breath.
“I’d like to say I’m terribly sorry about Andre’s unfortunate accident. The car which was speeding in front of the school was being driven by a student who, I’m told, will probably have his license suspended.”
“Why was Andre running from the school?” Cassandra asked.
The man nodded and wet his lips nervously. “I’m afraid there was a serious violation of Andre’s privacy at the school yesterday. We’re investigating the source, but someone took a photo of Andre in the gym showers–” Cassandra sucked in a sharp breath, and the man paused as he looked at her cautiously. “To make matters worse, they somehow sent the image to every active school mail account. Many of the students and faculty viewed this image before we could purge it from the mail system.”
Cassandra was frozen with horror.
“I called Andre down to my office first thing this morning to inform him of this… and I’m afraid he reacted badly. He ran from my office, exited the school, and ran out into the street directly in front of the racing sports car. Has he ever shown any suicidal tendencies before–”
“HE WASN’T TRYING TO DO THAT!” Cassandra roared as she leaped to her feet to glare down at the man.
Wallace leaned back in his chair, looking up at the raging blonde. Her eyes were wide, she was baring her teeth, and her fingers were curved into claws like she wanted nothing more than to tear into him. He realized he was genuinely frightened.
She was also breathing hard, and he struggled to keep his eyes from the sight of her blouse tightening over her abundant chest. Still, she was seriously pissed. He’d have to be very careful.
“I-I’m sorry if I misspoke… but on its face, his actions after he received the news–”
“You listen closely to me. You have NO FUCKING IDEA how STRONG that man is. What he’s endured in his life and how he’s bounced back. What happened outside the school today was an accident! Don’t for a minute think it was otherwise. I know how important his privacy is to him, and I know how horrified he’d be knowing strangers had seen… what they saw. He’d have wanted to go home, where he feels safe. That had to be where he was going. He got hit because he was distracted by this horrible violation. You find the bastard who took that picture. I want criminal charges placed on him.”
Cassandra snorted at the nodding man, then stormed out of the room. She stopped out in the hall and saw people watching her nervously. She knew she probably looked like a raving lunatic, but that man in there pushed buttons he should have left alone. She knew Andre would never do what the principal said. He loved her! He wouldn’t do that to her.
She burst into tears and struggled to see through bleary eyes to read the room numbers to find Andre’s room. She finally spotted three-oh-nine and went inside, clamping down on her sobs. He didn’t need to hear that. There were four beds, and she found Andre in the last one. She ignored the eyes of the older men in the other three beds as she rushed to his side. He was sleeping, an innocent expression on his face. The right side of his face was slightly swollen and bruised. She held her fist against her mouth to hold back her cries. He’d gone through so much cruelty in his life, none of which he deserved.
Cassandra could feel the eyes of the other patients, so she stood and pulled the curtain around Andre’s bed to give them privacy. Then she moved a chair next to his bed and sat to watch him sleep. She gently took his hand in hers, and on impulse, she kissed it.