Bonham (Pushing Daisies Book 3) by Heather Young-Nichols (read people like a book txt) 📕

He turned the light switches on and continued down the slippery-looking steps. I followed closely behind him.

I’d never been down there, and after hearing Mr. Maynard talk about dilapidated rooms with mold, I expected a long, dark corridor out of a horror movie with eerie sounds and shadows looming higher with every step.

The real thing was less dreary than my imagination, but it could make a person feel claustrophobic or uneasy with its low ceiling covered with mold, poor ventilation, stale smell, and rusty pipes that ran along the ceiling and white brick walls.

Mr. Maynard stopped in front of the first discolored door and turned to face us, but then his gaze fell on Blake. “Mr. Jones? What’s wrong?”

I looked at him over my shoulder. He was unusually still on the last step of the staircase, his hand gripping the banister. Even with the distance separating us, I could see how pale he looked. His eyes were wide and terrified as they darted all over the long passageway.

“Mr. Jones? Are you all right?”

“I can’t do this,” Blake said breathlessly, and before Mr. Maynard could even say anything, he rushed up the stairs and got out.

“You’ll choke if you eat that fast,” my mom said with a chuckle as she poured coffee in her cup. She wore her business suit, ready to go to work.

I swallowed a big bite of my toast with peanut butter, savoring its rich taste, which was to die for. I loved peanut butter so much I wanted to own a gigantic warehouse with an unlimited supply so I could eat it every day for the rest of my life.

“I can’t help myself. You know I can’t resist this sweet, sweet peanut butter.” I took another bite. Mmm, so good.

As I chewed, I scrolled on my phone through the comments on “The Chains of Fears.” I already had loads of positive reactions. Many people complimented my distinctive voice and the way I was able to pour my soul out and make them feel my pain and helplessness. This gave me a huge boost.

“My new song is getting positive reactions,” I told Mom.

She leaned against the kitchen island as she took a sip of her coffee. “I told you people would like it. It’s such an emotional song. Although, it’s very sad and a bit on the dark side.”

“Yeah. It is.”

She placed her finger on her chin. “‘You shackled me to yourself and led me to tears. You’re nothing but the chains of fears,’” she said softly, reciting lines from the chorus. “Is this coming from your personal experience?”

I cast my eyes down and bit into the toast to buy some time. The blush on my cheeks didn’t help.

“No,” I said between swallows. “It’s just random.”

“I see.”

I returned my attention to my phone, but I didn’t see anything, my mind drifting to the previous day. Since Blake had skipped our detention, I was forced to work alone, which was ten times better than sharing that rundown space with him, but it meant I was all alone with my thoughts. Whenever I thought I was done with him, I witnessed something that touched the hidden corners of my heart, and a new cycle of want, doubt, and pain would start.

I wasn’t supposed to feel sorry for him. I wasn’t supposed to care about his problems, let alone feel the need to help him in any way, but I couldn’t help the way I felt.

As I filled the box with the dusty equipment, I mulled over his unusual behavior in Mr. Maynard’s office and on those stairs, and I came to the conclusion that he must be afraid of basements. His fear was evident when Mr. Maynard mentioned the basement, as well as when we got there and he was rooted to the last stair, as if the basement was lava and he was terrified of taking even one more step.

His inexplicable fear only added to the mystery of him and gave me more proof that he wasn’t as invulnerable as he’d seemed when I met him. As much as I despised him, I wanted to push through his layers of poison and anger and see what made him tick. I wanted to see the real him.

“Owen spoke to your principal yesterday.”

“He did?”

“Yes. He guaranteed the school was working on a new program that imposes stricter punishments for problematic kids.”

I rolled my eyes. It was typical of Principal Anders to try to save face after the tabloids had labeled our school as “The Lair of Bullies.”

“He even confirmed that all personnel will go through extensive training to learn to deal with bullies more effectively.”

“Wow. It’s a real utopia in there. I’ll give up cheeseburgers forever if that actually happens.”

“Only time will tell, but in the meantime, make sure you stay out of trouble, okay? If anyone harasses you, report them.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Sure.”

She sipped her coffee and glanced at her watch. “I need to hurry because we have an important meeting today.”

I giggled. “You always have some important meeting.” I took a huge swallow of the toast.

“That’s how it is when you have a drunk local singer who doesn’t know when to shut it on a podcast. So now I have to do damage control.”

I was overcome by a fit of chuckles. I knew very well what my mom was dealing with in her PR firm. The dirty things she knew about some of her clients were enough to fill tabloids for the whole year.

“Right. Before I go, I want to ask you—have you received any admission decisions?”

A piece of bread stuck in my throat, and I started coughing. This was not the topic I wanted to discuss early in the morning.

I’d received a few responses, but how could I tell her I didn’t care about any of those colleges she and Dad had made me apply to? There were only two responses that truly mattered to me, and those would come from