It doesn’t help that he scrapes his teeth over my earlobe. “We both know who you’ll be thinking about.”
Jase pushes back from the wall, placing the fingers that have been inside of me into his mouth. And like I’m nothing more than a common Fuck & Flee, he just grins, turns on his heels, and saunters back out into the crowd.
CHAPTER 24
GET OUT ALIVE
DECEMBER, 3 ½ YEARS AGO
Some name-callingand occasional shoves are inevitable here, but that aside, the week has been quiet. That all changes, because, apparently, the Untouchables can’t properly welcome the weekend without giving me one last parting shot come Friday morning. Despite having an advanced class that keeps me away from the general populous for my first period, there’s no escaping them during P.E. next hour, which I just so happen to share with Trent and Sienna.
Coach Fisher is weirdly into calisthenics, and “retro running” is one of his favorites.What is that?you might ask. It’s just the fancy label for running backward, and in a gym full of bumbling, uncoordinated students, one can see the possible hazards involved in doing so. Guys and girls take turns running the length of the gymnasium, and Sienna seems increasingly eager to be near me when we line up on the court line. I’m not an idiot. She has that evil twinkle in her eyes and a shit-eating grin to match.
As the whistle blows for us to run, I manage to maneuver between a couple of people to put some distance between me and her. We get about two-thirds of the way down the court when Allegra Platt suddenly rams into me from the opposingside. I stumble for a moment, managing to catch my footing in time, but Sienna’s hideous cackle erupts into my eardrums the instant she and Allegra hook their feet right behind each of my ankles. I don’t even have time to process what’s happening, let alone react with a countermeasure, before my momentum sends me hurtling backward.
A cry lodges in my throat as my skull hammers down onto the wooden planks of the gym floor, sending a gray haze to blanket my vision. The impact is so hard that the sound echoes up into the rafters overhead. The room quiets for a beat, but laughter erupts soon after.
Anytime someone gets hurt at school, it’s always made into a spectacle. When Kelsey Hibbins rolled her ankle doing hurdles on the track last week, half the class huddled around her in concern, forcing Coach Fisher to push his way through the throng to even catch sight of the poor girl. A very naïve part of me half-expected for half a second that I’d get similar treatment, but I can’t hear anyone approaching me.
That is…until Coach Fisher blows his whistle. Snickers begin as a stampede of racing sneakers comes barreling up to me. Footsteps pound right by my head, but they don’t stop. Everybody’s running back to the other side of the gym.
“Hold up!” Coach Fisher’s whistle blasts sharply, and he demands everyone stop, but it’s too late. As I lay gripping my head, the toe of someone’s shoe suddenly kicks my fingers, the impact rocketing through my hand and into my already-beaten skull.
I can’t restrain the whimper that escapes my lips as I hear Sienna’s laughter fade with the footsteps.
“What the hell are you guys doing?”Coach Fisher roars, his voice sounding an awful lot closer. “I blew the whistle for you guys to stay where you were!”
“Sorry,” Sienna pouts in the distance. “We all thought you meant for us to run back.”
“And you all saw Sharpe lying there,” he barks back. “If any of you were decent, you would’vehelpedher.”
“IfBirdiewas decent, she’d get her useless ass off the floor,” Trent laughs. “She’s already a waste of space as it is. The least she could do is not hold the rest of us up.”
The blackness clouding my vision slowly starts to lift, but everything still appears blurry as I look up at Coach hovering over me. It isn’t until I feel the wetness streaking down my cheeks that I realize I’m crying.
“Ali? Can you hear me?”
Coach waves his hand in front of me, and I barely manage to mutter, “Yes.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.”
He nods in relief. “What happened?”
With how many girls obstructing his field of vision during the exercise, it’s no wonder why Sienna did it. Coach was on the other side of the gym, and I’m small—an easy target for bullshit like this—and it was an open opportunity to strike.
“I…I tripped.” That’s all.
I want to tattle on Sienna more than anything (well, other than to kick Jase in his jewels), but I know I can’t. Sienna already makes high school nothing short of Hell for me. If I got her in trouble, I can’t even begin to imagine what she’d do in retaliation. Plus, no one would back my side of the story anyway. Sienna would walk scot-free, and I’d be labeled asnitchon top of everything else.
Coach looks at me, disbelieving, but seems more eager to make sure I’m okay. “Don’t move. We’re gonna get the nurse.”
“No, I’m okay,” I insist, hearing Trent’s commentary only growing louder…along with the rest of the peanut gallery.
Against Fisher’s wishes, I wipe my eyes clean and climb up to my feet as quickly as possible. I bothwantandneedto show Sienna and the rest of the assholes here that they can’t keep me down. Specks of light infiltrate my vision as I amble over to the bleachers, sitting on the first available row. The pain raking through my head only gets worse with every passing second, and the overwhelming dizziness that slams into me has my hands bracing my upper half on the bleachers. It’s the only thing I can do to prevent tipping over.
“Birdie have a crash landing?” Sienna snickers from one of the upper rows.
