I wasn’t going to sit down. She probably didn’t think I would, either, but maybe she figured it was worth a try.

“You’ve got all the power, and nobody would listen to us anyway. Because we’re just kids. Who cares about us?” I ducked through my bag strap. It was too heavy, but that was because of what was in it. Graves made a restless movement, his hair and coat rustling.

Bletch inhaled and opened her mouth again to tell me to sit down or shut up. If I gave a damn, it might have even stopped me—that’s what they count on, the hard teachers. They count on the weight of authority to get to you before a protest can even get halfway out of your mouth.

Fury ignited behind my breastbone, a hot glow like coals blooming into something sharp and dangerous. It was the same old crap—someone thinking they can push you around because you’re young, because you’re helpless. You had to just sit there and take it because you were under a certain number, because you weren’t a real person yet; you could be picked up and dropped like a toy, left behind or thrown away—

“I don’t think so,” I continued, right over the top of her. “I think every goddamn kid you ever bullied is going to haunt you one day. And I hope you choke on it!” I didn’t realize I was yelling until I had to fill my lungs with a gasping sound that would have been funny if not for what happened next.

Bletch’s eyes bugged out of her head. She buckled, grabbing at her desk with one claw, the other clutching vainly at her throat, and made a hoarse, inhuman cawing noise.

The first one to start screaming was a pretty little brunette in the front row. I thought her name was Heather; she was wearing, of all things, a cheerleader’s uniform. Why she bothered with umpteen feet of snow on the ground was beyond me. But right now her face was distorted with shock, and she let out a shriek that might have done a train justice. The sound made a few kids jump, and another one—a brunet boy with a thick neck and a jock’s varsity jacket—let out a high-pitched squeal that harmonized oddly.

I finished gasping for air and stared at the teacher, who folded down like a piece of wet laundry let loose from the line. She thudded to her knees, and her face turned a weird plummy color. The bugging of her eyes began to seem natural and inevitable, but a faint alarm sounded in the back of my head. Other kids were screaming now too.

My gaze snapped away to the whiteboard. It was chattering madly against the wall, held on only by brackets. The instant I looked at it, there was a hollow cracking sound, and it fell, slamming onto the floor and actually breaking, a gigantic rip zigzagging horizontally across it.

A sensation like steam escaping through a valve slid through me, a sense of exquisite release.

Bletchley gasped and fell on her side, but regular color started to return to her face. She was breathing now. Someone retched in the back row, and my head snapped aside as if I’d been slapped, my cheek stinging. The air was thick with crawling electricity, suddenly hot as summer and humid like a thunderstorm was approaching.

Graves sat utterly still in the middle of kids who were getting up out of their chairs or screaming. His eyes were green flame, and his earring winked, a single silver star. His mouth was slightly open, as if he’d just had a hell of a good idea and was giving it such deep consideration the rest of his face had declared a vacation.

I turned around, my legs shaking like I’d just finished a hard five-mile run, and made it to the door. A new noise cut through the bedlam—the chimes for class ending, ringing in the middle of the hour. Now that was weird.

I let out a jagged sound that might have been a laugh, and fled.

I was four blocks away and still moving at a pretty good clip when his hand tangled in my coat, getting a good handful of my hair too, and he yanked me backward. I’d’ve gone down in a heap if he hadn’t shoved me upright, but as it was I overcorrected and we both fell over into a small mountain of dirty scudge-snow shoved aside from the street. I wasn’t wearing my gloves or a scarf. Snow burned my hands as I tried to struggle to my feet. My bag got tangled up, and Graves cussed me a blue streak, finishing up with, “—the hell did you do that for?”

“Boy,” he continued, bouncing up off the frozen-solid drift like he was one of those weighted-at-the-bottom dolls, “you sure know how to throw a party. I’ve been bitten, beat up, tied to a bed, James Bonded out, and now you finish off by choking a goddamn teacher!”

I didn’t try to say I hadn’t been touching her. There was no point. I’d been ill-wishing her—hexing, Gran called it, and to those with the touch it wasn’t small potatoes. I was pretty good at untangling hexes and curses, but not so good at throwing them at people, mostly because Gran wouldn’t hear of it. Cain’t hex, cain’t heal, she would always mutter, especially when the men from the county were out assessing property tax. But hexin’s a strong medicine, Dru. You mind me now.

To Gran, “strong medicine” could be good or bad, just like the laxatives she was forever talking about. Good for makin’ the mail move smooth, but too much and you shit yer brains out. Mind me now, Dru.

I’d once set out to ask her how exactly such an operation as the moving of the brain out through the digestive system was accomplished, but I’d lost my nerve.

Graves reached down, grabbed the front of my coat, and yanked hard enough to rip fabric, succeeding in hauling me to my feet again. “You’d better tell me what’s going on. Or I swear to God, I’ll—” He peered down at me. “Jesus Christ. You’re leaking.”

If by “leaking” he meant “sobbing like a girl,” I guess so. I wiped at my nose with my sleeve, snorted out a bray of a laugh, and went back to sobbing. Tears slicked my face, and I shoved him away. “Fuck off! I don’t need you complicating things! I’m dead, goddammit! Don’t you get it? I’m fucking dead!”

He shook dirty snow out of his hair. “You’re not dead. You’re too goddamn annoying to be dead. Now come on. They called 911 for Bletch—I don’t think you want to be here when that starts happening.”

Jesus, why won’t you just leave me alone? I was about to yell again, but sirens started in the distance. It was like a slap of cold water across the face, and I realized I was indeed crying completely and messily, and I was covered in dirty snow, I was pretty sure my socks didn’t match, I was a song of different aches and pains, and I hadn’t washed my hair in two days. I felt greasy and cruddy, my back felt like it was on fire, and the heavy weight in my bag was definitely not my smartest move.

I was being utterly idiotic. The realization woke me up out of whatever stupor I’d been wandering in for days now.

I hitched in a shuddering breath, trying to get some kind of calm back, failed miserably, and didn’t protest when Graves grabbed my arm and started off down the sidewalk.

“Why can’t I have a normal girlfriend?” he asked the air over his head. “I finally meet someone I like and she turns out to be crazy. Oh, well.”

“Girlfriend?” I half-choked, almost spraying snot out of my nose. Good one, Dru. You didn’t brush your teeth today, either. Sloppy, very sloppy. I was going to break out in a huge way after all this. It was going to be Zit City on the Anderson face. But right now my cheeks were so flaming hot it didn’t matter.

He gave me a sideways glance, and I really saw the guy he was going to be in a few years lurking under his baby face and the wild hair. His cheekbones were going to come out and he was going to be one of those pretty half-Asians. He already had good skin, even if it was reddened by the cold. “Well, jeez, you know.”