Page 69

When his fingers go to his zipper, my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in.

“I’ll bite it off! I swear I will!”

“Try and see what happens to you.”

Shit! Shit! Shit! This asshole is serious.

I immediately begin to thrash beneath Simon’s grip, twisting my shoulders and trying to knock his hands away. Still, every time I manage to lift myself an inch off the floor, he forces me right back down.

“Troy, get your phone out,” Dean says hurriedly as he helps Simon keep me still.

My panic spikes further at the mention of a phone.

Is he trying to film me?

The answer hits me like a Mack truck.

Of course he is. Dean doesn’t just want to humiliate me. He wants recorded evidence. Something he can pass around to his buddies afterward.

No. Not just his buddies. Peyton too.

“What’s going on over there?”

The voice comes from down the hall, far enough away that I can’t immediately place it. But Dean and Simon sure as hell do. Within seconds, they take their hands off me.

I don’t waste the opportunity. I scramble to my feet and stumble back a few steps, putting as much distance between us as I can.

“Everything is okay, Mr. Collins,” Troy calls out, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Max here tripped and we were just helping her up.”

I can’t help but stare at him in disbelief. The fucker even manages to look like an innocent choir boy while saying it. I guess that’s what happens when your dad is some hotshot lawyer with his own practice in Portland. You learn how to sell bullshit with a straight face.

By the time Mr. Collins reaches us, the three of them are standing together on one side of the hallway while I’m several feet away on the other.

“Your friend tripped, you say?” he asks skeptically, studying each of us in turn.

“I’m not their friend.” The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them.

That’s not what I should be saying. I should be telling him exactly what these three assholes were trying to do to me before he showed up.

Instead, ‘I’m not their friend’ is the hill my traumatized brain has decided to die on, apparently.

“Hmm.” Mr. Collins pauses, taking another long look at the three boys before his attention is back on me.

The second his attention leaves them, Dean lifts a finger to his lips, the faintest smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.

The warning couldn’t be clearer.

Keep my mouth shut or else.

“Well, seeing as everyone looks to be in one piece, how about all of you start heading to your next class, yes?” Mr. Collins says, the order aimed more at the three boys than at me.

Thankfully, they don’t stick around and do just as Mr. Collins orders. I, however, stay frozen in place, watching them disappear. Only when they turn a corner do I release the breath I was holding.

“Now, are you going to tell me what really happened or not?” Mr. Collins asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

Say it! Say it now, Max! Tell him what those assholes were doing.

But the words never come out. What would be the point? It’s three against one. And not just any three.