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“Okay, I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
Hanging up the phone, I shove it back into my bag. Staring up at the ceiling, I think of the most logical way of getting up.
“Okay, Amelia. You have three broken and two bruised ribs healing—you got through it the first time, you can do it again.” I psych myself up.
Bending my legs at the knees, I pull off my heels and shove them into my bag. Before I can change my mind, I quickly roll from my right side onto my stomach, careful to avoid making my left side touch anything.
With my arm through the strap of my shoulder bag so I can avoid having to bend down and get it later, I place my arms near my head in push-up position and use my knees at the same time. Getting my feet underneath me, I stand up carefully and lean against the lockers.
“Great, you’re up. Now you have to find the damn exit from this maze-school,” I say to myself.
I’m trying to get my bearings when my eyes lock with a pair of familiar chocolate-brown ones. Shit. How long has he been here? Aiden’s brown-haired friend who remembered my skyscraper line is standing beside an open locker, staring at me. The dirty blond-haired member of the walking trees is beside him, eyes wide and unblinking. Swallowing my pride and refusing to show weakness, I break my gaze and walk in the opposite direction.
“The exit’s the other way.” A hesitant voice calls from behind me—it’s the dirty blond.
Damn broken internal compass.
“How much did you see?” I ask as I make my way toward them.
“Well, pretty much everything since Aiden turned and left you,” he answers hesitantly.
Great, so all of it.
“And it didn’t occur to either of you to help the girl lying on the floor in pain?”
That snaps them out of their stupor. The brown-eyed one quickly closes his locker, and they rush toward me.
“I don’t need your help now!” I exclaim, wincing from the pain and causing them to freeze in their tracks.
“Are you sure you don’t need our help?” asks the brown-haired one with a smirk.
Cocky bastard, way to kick a girl while she’s down. It didn’t help that they both look like male models, and now I look like I was dragged through a restaurant’s dumpster. I’m about to tell him where to go, but my breathing starts to get worse, and I realize I still didn’t even know how to get to the parking lot to meet my mom.
I take a deep breath. “Can you point the way to the parking lot, please?”
“We’ll help you there,” says the blond.
“Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“Nah,” he says. “We’re in this class with you. It’s the most boring thing ever, and this is much more interesting.”
“Glad my misery can break up the dull monotony of your day,” I say dryly.
“Damn, I didn’t mean it like that,” he says sheepishly, moving to my left to put my arm over his shoulder as the brunet does the same on my right side.
“Ow!” I exclaim to blondie as the pain pulses through my side. “That’s the side that hurts, just leave it.”
“Shit, sorry,” he says as we make our way down the hall painfully slowly, blondie in front and my right arm around the brown-haired model, who is helping me walk.
“Screw this,” the guy my arm is slung over mutters. He stops walking and scoops me up bridal style into his tanned, muscled arms, and starts walking again.
“Noah, get her bag and open the doors for us,” he says, clearly tired of our slow descent.
Grateful for not being on my feet anymore, I hold my tongue uncharacteristically, too tired and in too much pain to argue. We get to a pair of heavy-looking doors that lead outside to the parking lot. Noah holds them open as we walk through, and I shield my eyes from the s
udden blinding sunlight as I look for my mom.
“You can put me down now; my mother should be here soon.” He sets me on my feet but keeps an arm around me, making no move to leave. “You don’t have to wait with me.”
