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She rolls her eyes and moves in. “Seriously, get out of the way.”
I step off to the side and watch her pull out her key ring full of carefully hidden little tools from her misspent youth. Digging my broken nail file out of the lock, she inserts a small tension wrench. Holding it with one hand, she finds another little thingy and slides that into the doorknob.
I’m glad I asked her to meet me here. She’s taught me how to do this three times, but I still struggle. I should’ve just gone home to clean up, but Rivalry Week starts tonight. I need to be here.
Her eyes flash to my hand. “You’re bleeding.”
I look down, seeing blood spread over the long bone of my index finger.
I graze my chin again and hold my hand up, seeing a few thin crimson lines. Yeah, that wasn’t mud I felt before. It’s going to be hard to hide that.
She works the lock, and I can tell she’s biting her tongue. She knows I fell off my bike, while I was training illegally and without permission tonight, and that my face is bleeding, because I took off my helmet while I was racing.
“What happens if you get injured and you’re all alone out there?” she asks.
I check my phone, seeing two missed calls from my dad. I tuck it back into my pocket. “You’ve faced people with guns. Alone,” I point out. “This is nothing.”
“And what happened with the first person to make me feel like I was never going to be alone again?” she asks, meaning my cousin, Hawke. “I straddled him.”
I pinch my eyebrows together. “Ugh.”
“In your old car…” she taunts, and I hear a click.
“Christ.” I growl under my breath. “Move.”
I shove her out of the way and pull out her key chain, tossing it back at her and opening the door.
Hawke is a year older than me, so he’s been alive every single moment of my life. I knew him before he noticed girls at all. Before he had muscles.
I don’t care to hear about him doing things that will give me unwelcome mental images. But as my friend, she wants to talk to me about her boyfriend sometimes, and it’s ew-y.
I enter the empty school, the hallway dark and quiet, and she follows me in, slamming the door. The music and cheers pounding from the stadium seep in, but only as a distant thrum as light from the moon and the football field spill through the overhead windows.
I start walking, Aro’s unusually calm voice falling in behind me. “And I don’t look at facing people with guns as something that was smart,” she reminds me. “I did what I had to do, you know?”
I throw her a soft smile.I know.
She came from Weston, the dark and dilapidated mill town across the river where all the area’s young criminals live, because police don’t go there. It sits less than ten miles away, but it’s another world from Shelburne Falls. Their newest building is from the turn of the century—the one before last, I mean—and you’d be lucky to find two working street lamps in a row.
But even if she grew up with the advantages I’ve had, she still wouldn’t appreciate people telling her she can’t have what she wants.
“And I have to do this,” I explain.
I have to train, even if it’s on my own. This town thinks they know who I am, because they know who my parents are, but no one really wants me to be me. They don’t see me. They see a Trent.
We walk, and I pull off my jacket and boots, leaving a mud trail down the hallway.
I gesture to room fifty-eight as we pass. “That’s the room where my mom cried and told my dad in front of the whole class how much she missed him…”
Aro’s heard all the stories from when me and my cousins’ parents went to school here.
We keep going. “And that’s the lunchroom where Uncle Madoc asked her to prom,” I chirp, walking by the windows of the newly renovated cafeteria.
We arrive at the gym, and I wave my hand to the door on the right. “And that’s the locker room where my dad punched him afterward.”
And then I stop, turning and jerking my chin at the locker with the number 1622 on it, sitting in full view of everyone who passes by. “And that’s the locker where the cell phone was found.”
It sits, along with two others, in a display case with trophies, championship banners, old photos, swim ribbons, newspaper clippings of successful alumni (including, not only my parents, but Madoc, the Mayor, and Aunt Juliet, the novelist), and some vintage clothing items. The exhibit spans nearly twelve feet down the long wall.
