Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

Life felt like hell, because we expected it to feel like heaven.
The quote I read years ago went something like that, but I
never understood it. When you’re in the thick all your life,
living in ways you eventually figure out no one else is, you
learn to sleep well in heat and eat fire. Until one day it’s all
you need.
It was heaven I didn’t trust. High hopes and false
expectations…
No, I needed the trouble.
I pinched the cigarette butt between my three fingers,
feeling my phone vibrate for the second time in my back
pocket as I brought my hand up to my mouth and took another
drag. The faint sizzle of the paper burned to the end, the hot
smoke being pulled into my lungs, and I blew it out again as I
leaned against the column next to the bulletin board.
The school was still mostly empty, at least forty-five
minutes to the bell.
And the third floor was my favorite place. The bustle of
the cafeteria and gymnasium were far below, and there were
very few classrooms up here, so it was quiet enough that you
could hear every footstep. Every door. Every pen drop… You
knew when you weren’t alone.
And she wasn’t alone. I wondered if she’d noticed that yet.
I turned my head and peered around the edge of the
column, seeing the blur of her through the glass, across the
open air, which allowed for the courtyard below, and through
another set of windows. She’d gotten a little too big for her
britches, but that was common with new teachers, especially
the young ones. They thought college prepared them for this,
and even if it did, it didn’t prepare them for Thunder Bay.
Things worked a little differently here, and she wasn’t the
boss, because I couldn’t be handled. It was time to educate her
that teachers fell in line, not the other way around.
She moved in the room, making her copies at the machine,
and I licked my lips, my mouth going dry. Come on. Go
somewhere quiet, or I’m taking you right there.