Broken (11 page)

Outside, the skies are gun metal gray and tending toward inevitable downpour. People glide across the quad, burdened with books and hurrying for the doors. Bree isn’t in her normal spot, prettying up the place. Then, a ray of darkness spears into my vision. Alex Franks, tall, hood up, leather jacket zipped and collar popped, with his head down as he walks away from the Walk-Up window side of the building. The flutter of interest in my chest beats like crows wings.

Mom doesn’t miss it, either. She shifts her focus forward quick enough to shake hair loose from her bun. Suddenly the car is too small, the need to escape burns on my self preservation instincts.

“Well, he certainly looks…intimidating…”

“He’s actually very nice.”

Must be the way I say the word, because Mom’s eyes narrow and she watches Alex cross the street, then turn back and scan Mugz-n-Chugz before shrugging deeper into his coat and standing under the doorjamb of the side door. The black beneath his cowl turns a slow path across the quad, and a silly hope blooms, raw and vulnerable, wondering if he’s looking for me. Then, the darkness lands on my face.

And I
know
.

Mom connects Alex’s hidden stare to me, and I almost choke on my mouthful.

“He’s the boy who got you into trouble yesterday, isn’t he?”

“It wasn’t trouble,” I argue, unable to wrench my focus from him.

“You were at the med center, filthy, with a fresh brace when I picked you up. I call that trouble.”

Trouble sounds so negative when Mom says it that way.

My stomach closes like a trap, any hint of hunger dying a shriveling death in my gut. Even the enticing smell of coffee and caramel drifting in misty plumes from my cup has lost its appeal. I’m contemplating making an excuse to exit the car when Josh Mason’s rusty Camaro Z-28 guns past.

“Gotta go, Mom. That’s Josh Mason’s car and he’s almost always late.”

She pins me with one of her serious looks. “We’re going to continue this discussion later.”

Of course we are,
I groan inward. I pull the power cord from my phone and tuck it into my jacket pocket, regardless of the charge.

“Yep. See you tonight.”

“This afternoon.” Her voice has taken on a hard edge.

“Bree invited me over after school.” I brandish my braced right hand. “She’s gonna help me with homework.”

“Fine.” She eases back into her seat. “Make sure you call me when you get there.”

“God, Mom. I have a broken hand—I’m not a baby.”

“No,” she huffs when I climb out of the car. “You’re seventeen, still my daughter and I don’t like,” she jabs her half-full cup in Alex’s direction, “that guy.”

I don’t bother arguing ‘you don’t know him.’ She’ll just come back with ‘and I don’t want to.’ We had that argument once before, right after I brought Daniel home for the first time. Look how that turned out.

Biting cold nips at my face and neck when I shut the door and step away from Mom’s car. Storm weight is oppressive, humid, tainting the air. The school looms dark and brooding, waiting for the last of its victims.

A rattletrap Datsun putters behind me as I cross the street toward the school, and Alex. Reckless, maybe, but I’m drawn to him. More than I should be.

“Hey,” he says when my feet hit the walkway leading to the door.

“Hi.”

Surprise and a hint of a smile warm the insides of his hood. The same sense of happiness and disbelief soften his features. I’m his dream come to life, it’s written on every line of his face. The world narrows to us, thought dies. I have the crazy urge to cuddle to his chest and listen to his heart like I did with Daniel. His mismatched hazel eyes fill my vision, the black freckle in the left iris pulling me in, pushing me under. A vine of darkness unfurls in me, nudging and probing, insisting there’s something not right. Then he blinks and the moment’s gone.

“Hey.”

“You already said that.”

“Oh. Yeah…”

A flash of white shows on his wrist when he pulls a rolled-up paper from his backpack. Alex holds the paper out until I wrap hesitant fingers around it. I look from the white tube to him, one eyebrow lifting in a question.

“Didn’t you get my text?”

“My phone was dead.” It’s an automatic response, like a voicemail feature in my brain. Then what he asks hits me. “What do you mean,
your text
? How’d you get my number?”

“I took advantage of your phone while you were changing into my shirt.” The bemused look is gone, replaced by a smug, teasing expression, made smoky and a tad morbid by new dark shades under his eyes. “Which looks really good on you, by the way.”

“How would you know?” I sneak a peek down at myself. Yep. My jacket is zipped all the way.

“I saw you putting it on yesterday.”

Heat floods my face, another automatic response around him. Did he see me wiping blood from my cleavage? No. I have to convince myself he didn’t see me half-naked, or my confidence around him will die a shrinking, sudden end. If he was getting my number from my phone, I reason, he wouldn’t have had time to watch.

Still, I steal a peek at him to gauge the knowledge hidden in his eyes.

The sky chooses now to open and hemorrhage water like a slit vein. People scurry, rats running for dry ground. Alex drags me beneath the doorjamb, thumping me against him, drowning me in the smell of guy, cologne and leather. Silly goony smiles cover both our faces—I see his and feel mine. Thunder chews across the top of the school. Alex turns his face to the sky, a lightning bolt illuminating the pale line down the side of his neck.

“Better get inside,” he says.

I nod, grateful for distance, and follow as he pushes open the side door.

The storm’s chaotic energy stirs the people milling in the hall, cussing each other in clipped voices. Catty glances are claw-sharp, glaring at me walking so close to the new guy. A load of new gossip fills the hall, focusing on me and Alex, his shirt and where his hands were underneath it. All eyes seem trained on us, peeling, scathing. Alex, used to gossip snapping at his heels, lifts his head and drinks it in. I bow mine, allowing my blonde hair to hang tent-like around my face.

Josh Mason appears in the churn and thrash, his carrot hair dangerously close to my locker. Shifting slight between me and Josh, Alex splays on hand wide, and protective in front of me. His posture hints at “mine” and “stay away.”

And he has no right.

Shaking my head, I sidestep the shielding hand.

“Hey, Rusty,” I tease. “Waiting for someone?”

I expect him to say something like ‘missed you at the curb this morning.’ Instead, he shoots Alex a venomous glare, failing miserably to carry off intimidating with his pale, freckled face.

“Checking to make sure you were okay,” he says. “You looked pretty shell-shocked climbing in his car yesterday.”

Where’s the sniping? The flirting? Where’s his annoying arrogance?

“Didn’t know you cared,” I say, and try to edge past him.

Josh slides directly in my path, tall, familiar and unwanted. An old anger rattles loose from my heart, banging around like buckshot in the hollow of my chest when he compounds blocking my path by grabbing my shoulders. We’d been here before and he didn’t get what he wanted then. Nothing will change now that Daniel’s gone. Beside me, piano-wire tension jerks Alex up to his full height of over six feet. His hand, still open, hangs close and ready to pry Josh off me.

“I
do
care.” Josh’s grip tightens. “Always have, even when you were with Dan.”

He went there. Josh brought Daniel and their muddy relationship up.

“Funny thing,” I snap, irritated and wanting this little confrontation over, “when he used to be your best friend.”

Josh’s hands fall from my shoulders. His expression darkens, a facial mimic of the black shade of his shirt. “Age old story—the girl falls for the wrong guy.”

“He was the right guy in every way you never will be.”

With that, I shoulder past him, thankful for Alex’s ability to slice bladelike between Josh and me. Alex Franks might have dark secrets buried inside, be the stuff of gossip and too many popular girls’ interests, but I’d rather have him by me than Josh. A ping in my gut says a wounded Alex is not quite right, but a huge alarm screams in my head that a jealous Josh is not safe to be around. Alex remains a buffer for me right to our lockers. He points to my recalcitrant lock and arches an eyebrow, and when I nod he adopts Daniel’s habit of opening my locker, quirks included.

How can he work my combination like he’s done it a thousand times? How can Alex know when to push the lock in, and to nudge the door so it will pop open?

“Thanks,” I say, suppressing the tremor rambling through my insides.

His profile peeks from his hood when he nods. “Anytime.”

I fumble with my backpack and one hand, tempted to at least hang it from my immobilizer. My heart clenches, squeezing ache through my core, forcing images of Daniel into my mind. Daniel opened my locker everyday, the same quirks. The last month of June he used to open the locker without me asking. By the time I force thoughts of Daniel away and have my morning books loaded into the bag, Alex is already done, books in one arm. He stands watching, waiting expectantly.

“Theater’s across the school. You’re going to be late,” I chide him.

“Aren’t you going to look at the paper?”

I blink, then memory kicks in and my cheeks heat again. He handed me a paper when he mentioned me in his shirt. I was so flustered I stuffed it in my backpack without thinking. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

The paper crinkles when I unroll it. The header has Fifth Hour Dune Ecology typed directly under Alex Franks and Emma Gentry. Ink letters jumble and ooze under my gaze. Words like “death” and “vehicular accidents” stand out, accompanied by statistics.

My look must be as blank as the circles under his eyes are dark.

“The report Mr. LaRue wanted,” he says, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Oh,” is all I can manage. He wrote the report for me?

“I had the time last night, and figured you might not.”

“That’s so sweet.”

“Yeah, well don’t tell anyone.” He smiles and turns toward the Theater and Fine Arts hall. “Seriously. Don’t mention it. I don’t want my rep ruined already.”

A bark of a laugh escapes me. The burst feels so much better than the tense, awkward sensation usually twisting my heart and nerves around him. I heave an exaggerated sigh and smile at him before he walks away. Arms crossed, hugging the bag strap to me, my gaze follows after him until he turns the corner. Then my senses catch back up with the faded clock anchored to the wall. Only a few minutes left to get to Trig.

I squash the instinct to run to class, and chase down Alex. Tardy happens.

His leather jacket is warm, his flesh firm, and the electric tingle is missing when I touch him. The zing I feel racing my insides is shocking enough. Somehow, he manages to cleave the entire school from existence when he turns and steps closer. I look up but feel like I’m drowning.

“What’s up, Emma?”

“Why are you so nice to me?” Why did I ask that?

He knows the badass rumors floating around the school. He claims to use them to his benefit. So why
is
Alex so kind? Why does he look at me like I’m a gift he never expected to receive?

A short breath sucks between his teeth. Alex’s eyes widen, and I get the feeling he’s seeing me on a different level when he stares. His pupils dilate, the left a fraction smaller than the right, like a cat with heterochromia. His eyebrows sink, and scrunch closer together, and his gaze changes, as though he’s looking inside himself for the answers. A fist clenches at his side, then relaxes.

“I wish I knew,” he says, hanging his head in some kind of defeat. “I have to…”

He seems as shocked by that truth as I am.

For a moment he’s the wounded, scraped hollow boy I saw by the car, a sad jack-o’-lantern covered in deer blood and regret. Ghosts past behind his pupils, then his face closes off, and he grunts, “Gonna be late for class,” and stalks off.

I push my hair back with my immobilized right hand, and then stop dead with my hand before my eyes. Yesterday’s deer blood darkens and crusts the ribbing of his sleeve over my cast, exactly the opposite side of the white broken heart on my wrist.

It’s official.

A nightmare beginning to my Thursday is just the start.

Chapter Eleven

If I didn’t know the girl the rumors tore apart throughout my morning, I might find humor in her being: clueless and conniving, a slut and whore (there is a difference), a gold digger and luckiest girl in school, emotionally dead and a cutter.

But, I
am
that girl.

And I would be dead tired if I were all those things—way too much work.

What would those whispering, gossiping girls think of Alex’s many scars? He’s been cut five ways from Sunday, and I bet they’d find it sexy on him. Have they been close enough to him to feel the electricity in his skin? Something is left of right with Alex, and I don’t care—they’d probably run. Would they have ignored his distress and avoided the filth, the blood and the deer? Would his daddy’s money matter if they knew what a psycho his father is?

Ally Rhodes gives me stink eye the entire third period, and I know it’s not because I’m excused from the basketball tourney due to my broken hand. She’s staked claim to Alex Franks, and the whispers going around the school have slipped like poison into her ear. I’m no longer an inconvenience, I’m now clearly competition.

If she could’ve felt the heat in his gaze this morning, she’d know how much.