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But Layne wasn’t anything like Taylor. She wouldn’t do that.
Would she?
He should have gone to the gym.
He still had time. He even had to walk down the freshman/sophomore wing to get there, so if he passed Layne in the hall, he could brush her off and make it seem like he was the one ditching her.
The halls in this half of the school were empty. He could hear some sort of squeaking or scuffling up around the next corner, and he hoped two kids weren’t trying to get it on right in the middle of the hallway.
No, but he found Layne. And three boys. Half her hair had come loose from the braid, and her face was red and tear streaked. The shortest of the boys stood by her side, also red-faced, but with fury, not tears.
The other two kids had their backpacks and they were dump-ing the contents in the middle of the aisle. Binders split open and papers went everywhere.
One laughed. Red hair, freckles, face and hands still soft.
“Oops,” he said. “Hate when that happens.”
The boy beside Layne rushed forward to shove him, saying something unintelligible.
The other kid grabbed him by the shoulder and flung him away, sending him to the ground to skid on the papers. Some tore.
They hadn’t even noticed Gabriel yet.
“Knock it off!” cried Layne. “I’m going to get ”
“You’re going to shut up,” said the other kid. “We’re sick of you and that retard.”
Then he shoved her to the ground.
Gabriel didn’t even remember moving. He just had the kid by the front of the shirt and he’d slammed him up against the lockers. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The boy wilted. His mouth worked for a moment, no sound coming out.
Gabriel slammed him again, a little harder, a little rougher.
“Talk.”
He didn’t, just hung there shaking.
The other bully bolted down the hallway. Didn’t matter
Gabriel would find him later.
He looked back at the one he had pinned and clapped him on the side of the head. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make the kid flinch. “Want me to knock some sense into you?”
The boy shook his head quickly. “No we were just we were it’s they’re ”
“Shut it,” said Gabriel. “I catch you screwing with them again and you won’t be around to talk about it. Get it?”
The kid nodded, his head bobbing hard.
Gabriel let him go. He slipped and skidded and almost fell in the stream of papers, but he found his footing and bolted after his friend.
Layne and the younger boy were staring after them. The boy had a grin on his face now. He poked Layne in the arm and made a bunch of complicated hand gestures, then pointed to Gabriel.
Sign language.
Now Gabriel understood the unintelligible scream of rage when things were being strewn about the hallway. He remembered the bully’s comment about someone being a retard.
