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The guy who doesn’t deserve to be with someone as good and pure-hearted as Toby.
The whole way home, I fight back tears, but won’t dare let a single one out. When I’m home and my parents ask what’s wrong, I don’t answer them. My bedroom door closes behind me. I shut my eyes and drop my ass to the floor, sitting with my back against the door as I hug my knees to my chest. My costume is sticky and stained. My eyes are wet with tears I refuse to cry. I doubt even drawing demon dudes tonight can save me. All I see every time I blink is the look of fear that lived in Toby’s pretty eyes …
His fear of me.
17 | VANN
I step out of the principal’s office and let the door shut softly at my back. The office lady—Becky, I think her name is—gives me a worried look. When I catch her looking, she averts her eyes right away, as if scared of me.
I guess that’s my theme lately: everyone being scared of me.
And as for adding fuel to the fire, I’m haunted by Toby’s words from this morning when I called him to ask if I should swing by his house to pick him up. “It’s okay,” he said. “I was thinking I’d walk to school. I miss walking in the mornings. Fresh air and … all that.” While he spoke, I was staring at the Dread Knight costume, which sat in a neat, organized pile in the corner of my bedroom, as if the knight himself turned into dust and all that remained was his armor—still stained red in spots.
Like blood after a battle.
I’m not liking this aftermath.
Especially not after this trip to the principal’s office that so politely interrupted first period English, where Principal Whitman more or less heard all about the commotion at the Strong ranch. Somehow, my actions there got twisted with my confrontation with Hoyt in the locker room—witnessed by our entire gym class—and now I have officially earned my second strike.
One more, and that adds me to yet another school’s blacklist.
And my morning was already off to such a crappy start. First thing when I got to school, I waited for Toby at the office door. When he rounded the corner and spotted me, he seemed taken aback with surprise. And of course he’s more adorable today than he’s ever looked before, wearing a red plaid button shirt opened over a tank top and loose jeans. His hair was a cute, spiky mess, and his eyes seemed so blue, they appeared to emit their own light. I straightened up at once at the sight of him, ran a hand down my shirt in an (unsuccessful) effort to smooth the dark, wrinkled material out, then greeted him with a simple, “Hey.”
“H-Hi, Vann,” he stammered back, his voice squeaky.
Then we said nothing for an awkward second.
It was a horrible second. The worst second I’ve ever known.
Then: “Well, I’d better … go in and, um …” Toby fidgeted. “And get to work on whatever Becky’s got. Spreadsheets, probably.”
I hated how it felt. I hated it so deeply.
I replied with a simple, deflated: “Okay.”
Toby moved past me, then stopped suddenly in the doorway as if something important just occurred to him that he wanted to tell me about. After a moment, however, Toby seemed to change his mind and proceeded into the office. With a sigh, I tramped on to class where I dropped heavily into the first desk I found with a bitter grunt, then sulked.
Until I got the note to see the principal for a quick chat.
That brings us up to the present.
And boy, the rest of my day does not get better. Third period is even weirder. Toby sits next to me like nothing’s different at all, though there is quite clearly nothing to say. When it’s gym class and we’re changing, I get to enjoy the distinct pleasure of Hoyt, Julio, and Benji walking by us with stoic, expressionless faces. Hoyt is the only one who looks our way, and when he does, he only meets Toby’s eyes. Toby regards him for only half a second with a neutral, guarded look before returning to putting on his gym clothes. The odd exchange of glances between them doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
And then there’s lunch. “I was thinking we could sit with, um, Kelsey and the others today,” Toby suggests brightly as we wait in line for our food. “Oh, I don’t know,” he answers when I ask him why. “I guess I just miss them a bit? The theatre crowd?”
When I sit among them, it’s clear that the table conversation comes to a total end. Kelsey starts talking about her dads and a super odd phone call they got from Tanner Strong, which only makes the energy at the table twice as weird. Feeling like the one and only reason for the change in mood, I excuse myself with some half-assed lie about needing to get to fifth early. I’m fairly certain the conversation picks up the moment I’m gone, and that’s what gives me the hint to sit elsewhere the rest of the week.
