Vain (The Seven Deadly #1)

“I’ll try my best,” I sneered.

“Are you capable?” he asked again.

“Excuse me, but I attended the most elite prep school in my area and I graduated with honors, not that that’s any of your business. So, yes, I believe I am capable of handling third-grade math.”

“Fine. All I want you to do is circle the desks and make sure they’re grasping the lesson.”

“I’ll try, your majesty.” And that earned me an eye roll that simultaneously made me want to slap him and kiss him.

“Today we’ll continue with equations and variables.” I turned, expecting them all to groan and whine the way my classrooms back home would, but I looked at the little faces and saw nothing but excited anticipation.

They like learning.

I listened as Dingane taught them how to solve for “x” in a simple variable and tried so hard not to let myself get distracted by his hands as they moved fluidly over the chalkboard. When the lesson was over, he and I both awkwardly danced around the other in attempt to avoid being near each other as we circled the desks. I’d barely avoided him when I noticed a little girl twirling her pencil in her hand and blankly staring at her desk.

I bent and sat on my heels next to her. “What’s wrong?” I asked too harshly. I cleared my throat. “What’s wrong?” I asked as sweetly as I could.

“I do not understand,” she stated clearly, no emotion in her voice.

“Here,” I said leaning over her a little, “let’s try together then.”

She scooted nearer to her paper and readied her pencil. “Okay,” I continued, “the equation reads, solve for ‘r’ when three times ‘r’ is twenty-four. Let’s imagine ‘r’ is a number. What number multiplied by three will get you twenty-four?”

I could hear her saying her times tables under her breath and when she got to her answer, she blurted, “Eight!”

“Very good,” I told her. “I wanted this to be simple for you to understand. Do you understand what they were trying to get from you now?”

“Yes, Sophie,” she said, making my heart race at the mention of my name.

“O-Okay,” I stumbled out, swallowing hard. “Now that we know what they were trying to get from us, let’s apply Dingane’s method. Shall we?”

“Yes.”

“If we know that three multiplied by eight yields us twenty-four, then twenty-four divided by three gets us eight or twenty-four divided by eight gets us three, right?”

“Yes.”

“And if three multiplied by ‘r’ is twenty-four, then we can take three from this side of the equation and divide twenty-four by it and that will yield us ‘r.’ What would we do if there was a division sign on this side of the equation?” I asked, pointing to the left side of the equation.

“We would multiply the number by the answer to get our variable.”

“Oh my word, you’re a genius!” I told her, squeezing her hand.

She beamed at me. “I understand now.”

“I’m so happy!” I told her and I was. Happy. Truly. “What’s your name?”

“I am Namono.”

“It’s so nice to meet you, Namono.”

She surprised me by throwing her arms around my neck. A swelling sensation invaded my heart and I’d no idea what it was but it was a good hurt, a hurt that felt worthwhile. I smiled at myself before looking up. Dingane stood at the far corner of the classroom, peering my direction, but I couldn’t read his expression. My face flamed a bright red and I turned slightly into Namono to hide my reaction. Although I could no longer see him, his eyes still felt heavy on my head and shoulders. What I wouldn’t have given to read his thoughts in that moment.

The rest of the morning was full of math, math and more math. At lunch, I waited in line a few children down from Dingane. Namono held my hand while the other children bombarded me with questions.

“Where do you come from?” a little boy asked.

“California. Do you know where that is?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, squinting his eyes as if he could imagine it.

“That’s okay. I’ll show you when we return to the classroom.” He was satisfied with that answer.

“Do you have a mother and father?” another little boy asked.

“I do.” I looked up and noticed Dingane had tilted his head, listening in.

“What are they like?” he continued, while the others’ eyes were rapt with attention.

“They are nice,” I lied.

“Are you married?” a little girl chimed in.

“I am not,” I chuckled.

“Dingane is not married either,” she added for good measure.

I almost fell over in laughter when Dingane’s shoulders tensed.

“He isn’t?” I asked. “Why not?” Dingane stopped breathing altogether and I stifled the snort threatening to escape.

“He says he will never marry,” one little girl answered.

“Never marry. How interesting. Do you think it is because no girl will have him?” I teased.

He turned around then and shot me a look to kill, but I just shrugged my shoulders in question.

“No,” she answered, “he is handsome enough.” No kidding, kid. “I think it is because he doesn’t think he deserves to marry.”

“All right, that’s enough!” Dingane said, parting through the line of children before us like he was Moses and they were the Red Sea. “I have to talk to Miss Price. Excuse us.”

He grabbed my arm.

“He likes Sophie,” the little boy who had asked where I was from proclaimed, making me want to squeal in happiness at Dingane’s obvious want to squirm.

I looked up at him as he led me away, but he refused to acknowledge me.

“He does? I do not think so,” Namono added.

“Yes, he stared at her in class all morning.”

My mouth gaped open at Dingane and he closed his eyes tightly before focusing them on me.

“I did not stare at you,” he whispered.

“When I said I thought her the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, I asked if he agreed and he nodded his head yes,” the little boy added for confirmation.

Dingane led me to the front of the line. “Two, Katie,” he asked and she handed over two plates of rice and beans. I took one and he forced me to a table by the door.

We sat down and I just stared at him as he began to eat.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I told him, digging in myself.

“I was not staring at you,” he told his plate.

I leaned over. “Did you hear that, Dingane’s lunch? He was not staring at you.”

He looked up at me crossly. “I was not staring at you.”

“I never said you were.”

“I was merely explaining that Henry was exaggerating. I did not stare at you.”

“Okay,” I stated, implying in my tone that he had done just that.

“I didn’t. I-I wasn’t.”

“I believe you,” I told him.

“I may have looked at you a few times to make sure you were doing your job.”

“Oh, I see then.”

“But I certainly wasn’t staring.”

“We’ve established that you were not staring.”

He breathed deeply a few times, his eyes burning into mine. “Good.”

He’d definitely been staring. The butterflies in my stomach fluttered and flew.

When lunch was over, I circled the children’s desks while Dingane taught penmanship, which was both in English and what I’d learned was Bantu. He then taught geography, where I got a chance to show Henry and all the children where California was, science, and we ended the day with an hour of reading then discussing what they’d read.

All in all, I was impressed with the day’s activities and knew those kids were actually learning valuable lessons they could take and create lives with. After school was out, all the kids congregated in the courtyard under the baobab tree and played football with a ball that had almost completely deflated. My heart hurt a little when I saw that. I saw a flock of girls building little dolls out of straw. They had obviously zero interest in playing soccer and that made me laugh.

Dingane caught my attention and pointed away from the children. “Kate, Joseph and Ruth will watch them before dinner. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Our day has only begun,” he explained.

“Who are the others I saw this morning around Masego?” I asked as Dingane took me outside the fenced property.

“You’ve met Kate. Joseph does maintenance and guards at night occasionally when it’s needed. Ruth heads the kitchen and she and Mercy, who only works part-time, care for the laundry, which is quite a task. Ruth is married to Solomon, who does maintenance and helps guard as well. They have two kids, Sharon and Isaac. They have their own home just off property.”

Dingane stopped and cupped his hand over his eyes to see farther toward a grove of trees. “No, we’ll have to get my jeep,” he told me.

I followed him to his jeep and hopped in. “What are we doing?”

“We got a call yesterday that there were men loitering around that grove of trees,” he said pointing off into the distance, “near our swimming hole. We’re going to see if the rumors are true, to check for tracks.”

“Why would they be there?”

“If they’re Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers, they could be scoping us out, or they could have been men just looking for shade and water.”

“How can you tell?”

“The LRA wear boots that most here cannot afford. It’s a good indicator.”

We stumbled along uneven terrain and I had to keep myself from sliding into Dingane’s hip several times. Finally, we came to a stop just inside the canopy of trees. Dingane reached over my lap and my blood began to boil before running ice cold when the gun he’d pulled from his glove compartment came into view.

“What are you doing?”

“These men, if they’re still here, could be armed, Sophie. I can’t take any chances.” He checked to see if the gun was loaded and an audible clicking sound resounded around my head when it clicked back into place.

I gulped and got out, not too subtly siding closely to Dingane as we started to examine the outer perimeter.

“There,” he said quietly five minutes later. Adrenaline shot through me at an astronomical rate and I grabbed his arm, pressing myself into his side.

“Wh-where?”

He pointed to a small cluster of plant life near the ground and a mud outline of a large boot print shone between.

“Jesus! What does this mean?” I asked him, my nails accidentally digging into his arm. He looked down at my hand but didn’t say a word. I lightened my hold.

“It means they were most likely LRA.” He sighed. “The men will have to take shifts over the next few days to watch for them. Hopefully they were just passing through and have no business with us.”