Novel

Eight in Glory Excerpt

Chapter 1

“Javier Lopez,” I hear on the PA system. “Report to the principal’s office immediately.”

The class turns to the back of the classroom. All of them stare at me. What the hell! I haven’t even done anything this week. What do they want me for?

“Jay,” says my math teacher/soccer coach. “There something I don’t know about?”

“You tell me,” I answer him as I get out of my seat and begin walking to the door. “They always rat me out to you first.”

“Well, get going,” he replies. “Expect to run bleachers today in practice.”

Great. Not only did the secretary embarrass me by making the announcement over the PA, but now I’m getting punished for I don’t even know what. I leave the classroom and head right to the staircase. I walk downstairs to the first floor, passing up teachers asking for hall passes.

“I’m Javier Lopez,” I say to all of them, and they all let me walk on by.

When I reach the central office, the secretary leads me down the row of rooms, the vice principals’ offices and the counselors’ offices, until we reach the end of the small hallway. The door to the principal’s office is closed, and the secretary knocks before opening it. She pushes the door open and signals for me to walk in. I do and notice a woman sitting in one of the two seats across from the principal. She turns around and smiles at me.

She’s a thin lady with a bob-styled red hair. She wears a black business jacket, and her face is not as caked with makeup as the girls that walk around the school. I step forward, and the secretary closes the door behind me.

“Have a seat, Jay,” Mr. Kelley, the principal, says. “What trouble have you caused this week?”

“None that I want to tell you about,” I answer him as I sit down in the chair next to the red-haired woman.

A strong fragrance from the woman hits me as I sit down. It doesn’t smell bad. She just has too much on. I don’t even know how to describe the fragrance other than sweet and too feminine. The scent is a sweet, flower-like smell.

“I think I’ve been lenient with you this year,” says Mr. Kelley. “But no matter what I do, you end up right back in my office.”

“Yep,” I answer him while nodding.

He isn’t amused by my response. I wasn’t trying to be funny. He’s the one that keeps telling me to stop arguing so much. I simply agreed with him. Some stupid crap just always happens, and I end up right back here. I think the teachers are just tired of me. Last week, I ended up here because I was sitting in English class not doing anything. We were supposed to be working on some research paper. I was sent to the office for “failure to do what I asked” as the teacher put it. She exaggerated. She just asked, “Jay, what are you doing?” And I said, “Nothing.”

I think she was more upset at the class laughing at my remark then at me not doing what I was supposed to be doing. But in all fairness, I was ahead of the class. I had spent that morning before class in the library working on the research. She was the one who recommended I did that because I was going to be out for one class period due to a soccer game. I was ahead on my research paper, but that wasn’t enough for her. I told Mr. Kelley that.