All Chapters of Puck Me, One More Time: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Liam's POV"Hey, no." I said it firmly, cutting through whatever he was about to say next. "Don't say that." I shifted slightly to face him properly, lowering my voice so it stayed between us. "You know what…maybe I can talk to him. I mean, I am your tutor. That gives me something to stand on."Ken looked at me. "You want to talk to my dad.""If it helps, then yes. I sure will."He let out a short breath that was not quite a laugh. "Liam. You do not know my dad.""I know your grades." I said it evenly. "And I know that you have been putting in the work lately. So, there would be a lot of room for improvement if you would be given another chance." I held his eyes. "U think that is not nothing and so, it is actually something we can take to him."He was quiet for a moment. Not dismissive — just sitting with it the way Ken sat with things he was not ready to say yes to but had not decided to say no to either."The sessions we have had…" I started again."I know what the sessions have bee

Liam's POV"Ms. Scott, I…" I finally opened my mouth but nothing meaningful enough came out immediately. The word she had just used was still sitting in the room like something solid that nobody had moved yet, and every time I reached for a response it slipped away before I could get a proper hold on it.I tried to pull myself together. And to find the specific words that would cut through whatever narrative had been built in this office before I arrived."I am the best student at this school." I said it and even as it came out I could feel the stammer underneath it, threatening to break the sentence apart. "You are…" I stopped, took a breath and tried again. "You are really going to expel me?"Ms. Scott did not even blink."Perfect grades are not an excuse." She said it plainly, like she had already considered that argument and set it aside before I walked through the door. "You fought with your classmates and you stripped naked during gym class at the swimming pool."The injustice o

Ken's POV"I saw that, Ken."I turned around before I had fully decided to, as the voice landed before my brain caught up with it, and there she was. Steph was standing a few feet behind me with her arms loosely folded and that specific expression she wore when she had been watching something play out and was satisfied with what she had seen."And I know you are a liar." She added, tilting her head slightly, almost making faces at me. "Your dad is not going to save Liam."So she had been there long enough to catch the call. I guess she has been standing somewhere behind me in the corridor while I was on the phone with my father, close enough to piece together the whole conversation without me ever registering her presence. Whether she had followed me from Ms. Scott's office or had already been positioned nearby did not matter as what mattered was that she knew the call had failed and she was standing here with that knowledge sitting on her face like something she had been waiting to us

Liam's POVI could not wait for the school bell to stop ringing. The moment it did I grabbed my bag and walked out of that classroom without looking at anyone because I did not have anything left in me for conversations or eye contact or the general performance of being ‘okay.’The hallway was full and loud the way it always was at the end of the school day and I moved through it like someone who was not really…although present enough to navigate the bodies and the noise but somewhere else entirely in every way that mattered.My mind kept circling the same set of questions without landing on any of them cleanly. ‘How was I going to tell my mum?’ ‘What exactly were the words for that conversation?’ She had worked three jobs to keep me in this school. She had built her entire hope for our situation around the idea that my grades were the way out. And now I was going to walk through that door and tell her that the school was expelling me based on a story told by people who had decided I w

Liam's POVI stepped out of the bathroom and into my room, with a towel around my shoulders, drying the water off my hair slowly while the quiet of the house settled around me. Sunday evenings in this house had always had their own particular stillness… my mum moving around downstairs, the faint sounds of the kitchen, the kind of peace that existed in small spaces when nothing else was demanding anything from you.I had been promising myself since Friday that I was not going to let what had happened take my happiness completely. And that I was going to get up, move forward, keep my head in the direction that mattered. I had told myself that more times in the last few days than I could count and I was going to keep telling myself until it started to feel true.It was not quite true yet, but I was only trying.The expulsion was sitting in the back of my head like something I kept walking around rather than through. I had not told my mum yet. I had opened my mouth to do it twice and both