Greg Garcy leers at me from his mug shot: bastard doesn’t know I’ve nailed him yet. I clutch his WANTED flyer in my hand and race down the hall, but I can’t look away from his crushed, sneering nose and bleary eyes.
You can’t run from me.
The bell rings. Damn. I’m so going to be late for chem.
I spent my free period in the parking lot listening to the police scanner on my phone and lost track of time. It was worth it. Garcy is wanted for a string of serial rapes upstate. He’s attacked dozens of women, and he was allowed to get away with it for years. Until now. The hot pulse of adrenaline zips through me as I dash through the halls. I got him. I really got him. I need to run a plate, but—
I slam into someone. The Garcy flyer, my bag, pens, and various notebooks scatter across the hallway. There’s a brief tangle of sharp elbows, and I yelp when the corner of my chem textbook lands on my toe. Of course this is the day I didn’t wear my steel-toed boots.
“Balls! Fuck! Ow! Shit!” I yell.
“Flora Calhoun, you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
I squint through the red haze of stubbed-toe agony.
Ava McQueen gathers up my papers, pens, and the lone tampon I dropped. One corner of her plum-painted mouth tugs up in a troublemaker’s smile, and a fizzy feeling climbs the back of my neck. It’s been seven months and four days since the last time I kissed her, but I still remember exactly how her lips felt against mine.
“H-hey, Ava.” I drop down to help her.
“How you been? Haven’t seen you around much.”
Yeah. We haven’t talked a whole lot since you started avoiding me. “Um, good. You know, same old bullshit.”
She picks Garcy’s WANTED flyer up off the ground and stands. “Clearly.”
I blush, which is basically the most annoying thing in the world when you’re a redhead. Ava always makes me feel like I’ve just missed the last step in the staircase.
Ava is a year older than me, but we took the same elective on the history of political activism during my freshman year. One day, she shut down this Young Conservatives idiot who called the Black Panthers a terrorist organization. Everyone clapped, Mr. Young Con crapped his khakis, and I fell in love. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she plays bass guitar, or that she’s bananas hot. I mean, with her curls done up in adorable space buns, and the lipstick, and that funny little smile she’s still giving me?
Which is super confusing, since she hasn’t smiled at me like that in a long time.
Seven months and four days.
Can’t be thinking about that. I focus on shoving my stuff back into my bag. “Oh, uh. You know me. Can’t keep myself out of trouble.”
She does know. I’ve always suspected that’s why she stopped talking to me—stopped kissing me—in the first place.
Ava stares at the flyer in her hand. When she glances up at me, the teasing smile has vanished, and something dark flickers in her expression. She looks down again, trying to hide it.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s what fear looks like.
I take a half step forward, any weirdness between us forgotten. “Ava? Are you okay?”
She fingers the edge of the paper. “You ever do something stupid? I mean, like, really, really stupid? Can’t-take-it-back stupid?”
“Almost every day.” My face heats again. Why did I say that?
“You know”—Ava’s eyes flick from Garcy’s face to mine—“I believe that.”
That stings, but I ignore it. “Ava, if you’re in trouble, I can help you.”
She opens her mouth, but her eyes catch on something over my shoulder. She stills.
I glance behind me. Nothing but the usual throng of people trying to get to their lockers. No one looks this way.
Ava folds the Garcy flyer in half, then quarters. “No worries. I have it under control.”
I take another step toward her. “Seriously, I do this kind of stuff all the time. I know we haven’t, um, talked much lately, but I can—”
Ava’s smile is cold, nothing like before. Shit. I shouldn’t have brought up the her-and-me stuff.
“I got it. Just being dumb, right? Nothing I can’t handle. You take care of yourself, Flora.” She tucks the flyer back into my bag. For a second, she’s close enough that I smell her warm, woodsy perfume, but she walks away before I can get another word out.
I’m being dumb, right? She just remembered that she doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s all.
So why is my chest suddenly tight with dread?
I shake off my confusion and chase after her, but by the time I round the corner, she’s already gone.
I tap my pen on the worksheet in front of me.
Balance the equation: C5H8O2 + NaH + HCl → C5H12O2 + NaCl
I usually like the tidiness of balancing equations, but today I can’t focus.
Was Ava worried, or am I manufacturing an excuse to talk to her? Or maybe she was scared, but she didn’t want to talk to me about it?
“Dude, please. You have to listen.” Two tables away, Damian Rivera scribbles on a slip of paper and slides it across the desk to his best friend, Penn Williams. My pen pauses halfway through rewriting the equation.
Penn knocks the note to the floor without looking up. The space beneath his desk is littered with scraps of paper. I lean forward in my seat. Is that a bruise on his cheek? It’s a faint yellowy-purple, like he tried to cover it with makeup.
That’s not sketchy at all.
“Please,” Damian hisses. “Let me explain.”
Penn’s chair scrapes against the linoleum as he stands. He grabs the bathroom pass off its hook and stalks out of the room. Is it me, or is he limping a little?
Mrs. Varner calls out, “Ten more minutes, people, then we’ll discuss.”
I’m only on question two. Between Garcy and Ava, I have enough intrigue in my life for one day. I drag my attention back to the double displacement reaction on my paper.
Balance the equation…
Penn never returns to class.
When the bell finally rings, Damian races out the door. Rushing to hunt down his friend, maybe?
Those abandoned scraps of paper are still on the floor.
I shouldn’t. The last thing I need is to get sucked into the breakup of Penn and Damian’s bromance.
I bend down and scoop the notes up. The first one says: I’m sorry, I had to do it. Please talk to me. The second: You have to understand. And the third: You don’t know what she’ll do to me.
Huh. I pocket the scraps of paper and leave the classroom.
“I have so much to tell you.” Cassidy Yang, my best and only friend, waits for me in the hall. She’s kind of impossible to miss in her oversize safety-orange sweater. Straw-like blond hair peeks out from under her gray beanie. She bleached her hair months ago, and now the black is making a comeback. When I try stuff like that, I look like an idiot. When Cass does, she looks like she’s in some magazine spread on street style.
“What’s up?” I ask, my mind still half stuck on Ava’s terrified face.
Cass and I make our way down the hall. She’s practically vibrating with enthusiasm. One kid winces as he passes, like he’s blinded by her sweater.
“They did it!” she says. “They finally approved the funds for rock ensemble.”