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“Jessa Mayes,” he repeated. “Don’t ever let those little shits talk to you that way, yeah? Next time they try, you make a fist, like this.” He showed me, clenching his fist until his split knuckles looked like they might burst. “And you hit ’em, right here, in the nose, as hard as you can. You do it hard enough, they’ll go down. Then you run away. You do that once, they’re not gonna bother youagain.”
I shook my head. “I’m not supposed to hit people. My brother says sticks andstones—”
“Yeah?” He flicked the ash off his cigarette and spat on the sand below. “Well, your brother’s a pussy who doesn’t knowshit.”
I gaped athim.
No one talked about Jesse like that. The other kids all thought he walked on water because he could playguitar.
“I can’t make a fifth-grader eat crap.” My face was getting hot and I looked down at the sand. “Maybe you can. Ican’t.”
When I glanced up again, he was taking something off his jacket. He held it out to me. “Take it,” hesaid.
I took it from his outstretched hand and examined it. It was a little silver pin shaped like a motorcycle. It saidSinners MCon a banner that wrapped around the tires. There was a woman on the motorcycle but she wasn’t riding it, exactly. She was facing the wrong way and reclined back, her back arched, shoving her boobsout.
I waseight.
I had no idea whatSinners MCmeant, so it never occurred to me to wonder why he had a pin that belonged to an outlaw motorcycleclub.
“You wear that,” he said, glancing over my shoulder, “no one’s gonna mess with you.” He was looking in the direction of the school, his eyes narrowing as he dragged on hiscigarette.
“Smoking on school groundsagainMr.Mason?”
I turned to find a teacher stalking toward us, one of those shit-eating bullies in tow, red-faced, looking anywhere but at us. “What will your parents have to say aboutthis?”
“Can’t wait to find out,” he muttered. His blue eyes met mine as he tossed his cigarette aside. Then he smiled at meagain.
I smiledback.
He leapt to the ground, jumping over the quicksand and landing in thegrass.
“See you around,princess.”
I watched him shove his hands in the pockets of his jeans and walk away. But it wasn’t true; I didn’t see him around. He never even came back to school after thatday.
Not for two wholeyears.
Those bullies never bothered me again, though. None of them did. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of some pin. It was because ofhim.
Because he’d made two fifth-graders eat shit for being mean to me, and no one wanted to eatshit.
The next year, when a new girl in my class asked me about my motorcycle pin, she didn’t believe me when I told her where I’d gotten it. As if I’d made up the whole thing about the badass boy in the leather jacket who saved me from a couple of bullies—then mysteriously vanished from school, never to return—just to impressher.
But I knew he wasreal.
I had his pin, and I had his picture. In the seventh grade class photo in the school yearbook he was standing right next to my brother, staring down the lens of the camera like he was ready to take on the world… and make it eatshit.
His name was BrodyMason.
He was the love of mylife.
If only I’d figured that out a lot sooner than Idid.
CHAPTERONE
Jessa
Iwas late.For my brother’swedding.
