Willow excerpt

“Willow Crowe?
Someone snorted, then the giggles started. I gritted my teeth, and sighed inwardly.
“Willow?”
Sliding as far as possible down to the edge of the seat, I tried to pretend I was in Hawaii.
“Here.” I mumbled.
A voice behind me started ‘caw, caw’ing as Mr. Heller continued on down the roll.
I hate school.
A few more ‘caw’s behind me from various voices, and Mr. Heller looked up from his desk. The caws stopped. For now.
I heard snickering just behind me to the right. Paul Sommers, of course—who else? Paul and I have an understanding. We hate each other.
I flashed him the bird from under my desk, and he whistled quietly. I could see him making his own obscene gestures out of the corner of my eye, and heard a few snorts from other parts of the room.
Heller looked up again and cleared his throat loudly. He stared straight at me. Funny how I never said a word, but I get the dirty looks anyway. Dirty old man. I stared back at the greasy wisps of grey hair combed over the shiny bald whiteness of his head. He’s probably at least a hundred and always smells like Ben-gay.
He stood up and started droning on about algebra and writing on the whiteboard with a squeaky marker. I put my forehead down on my desk and tried not to drool out of pure, mind-numbing boredom.
I’m pretty sure it was Paul who kicked the back of my chair.
“Hey Willow, your mom got a date this weekend? I’m available if she wants to make fifty bucks.”
Loud guffaws erupted all over class, and Heller cleared his throat again. My face flushed, and my heart started pounding in my chest. Tears started to squeeze off my throat, and I swallowed hard to keep my voice steady.
“Gee, I don’t know, Paul, why don’t you go find your dad and ask him?”
I heard gasps and nervous chuckles, and somebody said, ‘touche Paul’ and then I felt a bruising, pinching grip on the back of my neck.
“You stupid—!” Paul’s voice shook as he called me every cuss word ever invented, and his grip tightened until my tears were tears of true physical pain. He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back.
“I’m gonna kill you!” he hissed, “right here and now!” I felt a spray of spit land on my eyelids.
One by one, the hairs wrapped up in his fist started popping out of my scalp. I swore.
Suddenly, Heller was standing over my desk.
“You,” he pointed at me, “and you”, he pointed at Paul, “get out of my classroom, and don’t come back until you get permission from the Principal!” His drooping jowls wobbled in rage..
Paul let go of me. A wad of hair floated down toward the floor and stuck itself to Heller’s polyester pants leg.
Rubbing the back of my head, I slung my backpack on and headed quickly for the door. Paul was right up behind me. His breath was heavy with the smell of garlic and tobacco. Gagging as my stomach turned over, I wondered briefly how Chloe, his poor brainwashed girlfriend, could take this every day.
“I’m gonna slit your throat!”
I bolted for the nearest restroom, which was probably fifty feet away, but the squeaks of his sneakers on the linoleum floor were right up behind me. My left shoulder wrenched painfully as he lunged and grabbed my backpack. We both went down, and the left side of my body slammed against the floor, while the left side of my face slammed against something else. I fought the scream in the back of my throat, but a whimper escaped anyway.
“You think that hurt, freak?” he said from between clenched teeth, “ I’ll give you something to cry about! Then I’ll break your neck!”
I could feel his hands grasping for a hold on me, and was able to slip out of the pack strap just enough to roll away a little. He caught my hair again, this time over my left ear, right at the scalp. I gritted my teeth. My face was inches from his, and the cloud of garlic breath was overwhelming.
“Let go of me!” I started spitting cuss words of my own, trying not to breathe through my nose.
He grabbed my throat with his free hand and started squeezing. My eyes began to water as my trachea began to narrow. I clawed at his wrist and tried to bend down far enough to sink my teeth into his hand.
“Go ahead! Do it!” He started in on the cuss words again.
Just before my throat closed completely, I thrashed out wildly with my knees. They connected, and suddenly I was free. I scrambled up and ran, leaving my pack, and Paul squirming and cussing on the floor. The hallways were still empty, and thankfully, the girl’s restroom was too.
Securing myself in one of the stalls, I sat, leaned against the partition, and had a good, long coughing fit. Somewhere in between all the coughing, the sobs started.