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“Do you really believe that?”
“No.” We both looked at each other, expressions bleak, and then burst out laughing.
As our laughter died down, I realized that I could hear shouting—not close by but farther down the hall. Raquel lived not far from the central archway that connected the girls’ dorms to the classroom areas; to me, it sounded like the noise was coming from there. “Hey, do you hear—”
“Yeah.” Raquel pushed herself up on her elbows, listening. “I think it’s a fight.”
“A fight?”
“Trust somebody who used to go to the meanest public school in Boston. I know a fight when I hear one.”
“Come on.” I grabbed my book bag and started out the door, but Raquel grabbed at the sleeve of my sweater.
“What are you doing? We don’t want to get in the middle of anything.” Her eyes were wide. “Don’t ask for trouble.”
She made sense, but I couldn’t listen. If there was a fight, I had to make sure—absolutely sure—that Lucas wasn’t mixed up in it. “Stay here if you want. I’m going.”
Raquel let me leave.
I hurried toward the sounds of yelling and even screaming. That was Courtney’s voice, savage with glee, shouting, “Take him out!”
“Guys, yo, guys!” Those were Vic’s words echoing in the corridor. “Knock it off!”
Heart sinking, I turned the corner just in time to see Erich punch Lucas in the face.
Lucas went sprawling backward, falling on his ass in front of the whole school. The Evernight types started laughing, and Courtney even applauded. Lucas’s lips were smeared with blood, stark against his pale skin. When he realized that he was looking up at me, he shut his eyes tightly. Maybe the embarrassment hurt more than the blow.
“Don’t insult me again,” Erich commanded. He held up his hands, studying them as if satisfied with his handiwork. His knuckles were smeared with Lucas’s dark blood. “Or next time, I’ll shut you up permanently.”
Lucas sat up, staring at Erich intently. A weird silence fell over the crowd, as if everything had become a lot more serious—as if the fight weren’t over but had only begun. It wasn’t dread I sensed, though; it was anticipation. Eagerness. The desire for punishment. “Next time this is going to turn out a whole lot different.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Erich jeered. “Next time, it’s really going to hurt.” He stalked away, the conquering hero in the eyes of Courtney and the others who followed him. Everyone else sort of hurried away before any teachers could arrive. Only Vic and I stayed.
Vic knelt by Lucas’s side. “You look like crap, by the way.”
“Thanks for breaking it to me gently.” Lucas took a deep breath, then groaned. Vic helped steady him and offered a wadded-up tissue for the blood trickling from Lucas’s nose.
I didn’t know what to say. All I could think was how terrible Lucas looked. Erich had clearly gotten the better of him. Ever since the incident in the pizza parlor, I’d been thinking of Lucas as a much rougher guy, somebody who got into fights all the time for the hell of it. Well, now he’d just gotten into another fight. Did that prove I’d been correct? Or did the fact that he’d gotten the stuffing knocked out of him prove that Lucas wasn’t such a tough guy after all?
Finally I asked, “Are you all right?”
“Sure, fine.” Lucas didn’t look up. “You only need one or two molars, really. The rest are spares.”
“You lost teeth?” Vic blanched.
“One of them is kind of loose, but I think it’s sticking around.” Lucas paused, then said to me, “I told you it would be like this eventually.”
He had told me that, someday, he would be a pariah at Evernight. Sure enough, the day had arrived. But why was he pretending that he had left me alone for my own good? I was the one who had walked away from him.
“As long as you’re okay,” I said. I left him again, while he was still sprawled on the floor. Maybe this time he would notice which one of us was doing the walking.
Confusion and sadness settled over me, making my shoulders sag and my throat tighten. I bit my lip, hard enough for me to taste blood. It braced me up, but I still couldn’t go back to Raquel’s dorm room; I wasn’t ready to deal with her questions. So I headed up to the library to hide out for the next half hour or so until political science. Surely I could find something to read, maybe some books on astronomy or even just a fashion magazine. If I hid behind a book for a while, maybe I’d feel better.
azar was kind, smart, and he had a sly sense of humor. Everyone liked him, probably because he seemed to like most people in return. Even Raquel, who detested virtually all the in crowd, said hello to him in the hallway, and he always said hello back. He wasn’t snobbish or cold. And he really was devastatingly good-looking.
He was everything a girl could ask for, basically. But he wasn’t Lucas.
Back at my old school, the teachers always decorated for Halloween. Orange plastic pumpkins were set in the windows, waiting to be filled with Tootsie Rolls and Butterfingers, and construction paper witches flew across every wall. Last year, the principal hung candy-corn lights around her office door, which also had a sign that said, in green shaky letters, Boo! I always thought it was cheesy and fake, and it never occurred to me that I might someday miss it.
