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“Jesus, Nick!” Gabriel gave him a shove. “Go. ”
All the students nearby went absolutely still. He could almost hear the collective gasp, like he was going to whip out a weapon. He wished he knew what stories were floating around. He could imagine, especially with the weekend to let people get really creative.
Gabriel slung the backpack on his shoulder and turned away from his brother. “Fine, then I’ll go. I’ll see you at lunch.”
People cleared a path.
In first period, the teacher looked surprised to see him and maybe a little afraid, too. Students left the seats surrounding him empty. No one spoke to him, but the focus of their attention fed his nerves like a shot of caffeine. It almost drove him to act, to live up to this violent criminal reputation he’d earned for himself. But he kept hearing Becca’s father’s voice in the kitchen.
People will die. Everyone in this room.
He slouched in his seat and pretended to be invisible.
People already had died or come close. The pentagrams pointed to Elementals, but he couldn’t reason it out in his head.
Layne’s farm had burned down then Quinn’s house. Were they being targeted somehow? But that didn’t make sense, either. The Elementals in town knew where the Merricks lived they’d marked the house with paint when Becca’s dad first came to town. If they wanted to attack the Merrick brothers, they could just burn their house down.
And what about all the innocent people whose houses had been destroyed?
He watched the clock tick toward second period. Then third.
When he’d see Layne.
He still had her note in his backpack, a little damp from his walk in the rain, but still legible.
Are you afraid of me?
A little.
She wasn’t in the math classroom when he got there, but he yanked his homework from his binder and flung it into the basket on his way past Ms. Anderson’s desk.
The teacher glanced up when he passed, and she was the first one who didn’t look like she expected him to douse her desk in kerosene and flick a match.
“Mr. Merrick?”
He stopped, his fingers tight on the strap of his book bag. He didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want anything to interfere with the cord of tension holding him together.
“Yeah,” he said.
She picked up the homework he’d tossed into the basket and glanced at it, then back at his face. “I understand you had a challenging weekend.”
Challenging. Hilarious. He met her eyes, knowing his own were full of don’t-fuck-with-me. “I’ve had better.”
“Are you okay?”
The question caught him off guard, especially since her expression seemed genuinely concerned. She was the first person to ask how he was doing since the instant he’d been arrested.
His familiar defenses were clicking into place, ready to snap, to flip her off, to blame her for everything, because if she hadn’t caught him cheating, he’d be on the basketball team. He never would have needed Layne’s help, and he never would have gotten into that argument with her father. He never would have gone to that first fire.
And that little girl would be dead. Along with everyone else he’d pulled from a burning building.
He took a breath, feeling his shoulders drop. “Yeah.”
Then, before she could say anything else, he pushed past her desk to drop into his seat.
Taylor Morrissey wasn’t in front of him today, flashing her boobs and flipping her hair. Gabriel looked around she was across the room, sitting at one of the spare desks, glaring at him like he was a serial killer.
He wanted to mock her, but he just didn’t have the energy.
