At the last second before I made it to the classroom, her eyes brushed over me. She pulled away from the guy and whispered, “Nick!”, and the redness was already starting to pool in her cheeks. I could hear her trying to say something to me, but I didn’t care what it was. By then, I was so out of there. I went into the room and slammed the door in her face. The teacher, Mr. Baumgartner, started screaming at me immediately. Something about “This is not your personal office, Mister. What is your name?”, but I just shoved myself into a seat, the first seat I could find, and clenched my fists.

The door opened a second later, as the teacher was screaming, “Answer me!” Taryn walked in, her eyes wide. She was wearing cutoffs that made her legs look phenomenal, but the second I thought that I hated myself for thinking anything good about her. Her gaze shifted between me and the teacher, and she started to walk toward me, cautiously. Baumgartner’s eyes flashed to her, like he was trying to figure out what part she played in all this, but he didn’t say anything. I stood up, grabbed my schedule, and faked like I was coming toward her, then quickly skirted around another row of desks and out the door.

The crowds in the hallway were thinning. The bell was about to ring. Taryn’s Nose Ring Dude was still hanging out there, waiting for her with a stupid expression on his face, and I scowled as I passed, wanting to do a whole lot worse. I mean, what the hell? He wasn’t anything like her type. And he was just plain nasty-looking. There were a thousand things wrong with him, but I forced myself to remember that it didn’t matter what she did with him. We were over. That was the way it needed to be. She needed to get on with her life so that she could have one. A nice, long one, probably filled with many more dudes who weren’t me.

Baumgartner shrieked behind me, the noise echoing down the hall—“Stop right there! You! Listen to me! Mister!”—but I didn’t care. People were gawking at me, stepping aside to let me pass like I had some infectious disease, but it didn’t matter what they thought. In the future, the near future, I was dead. Nothing I did now mattered. Not teachers, or students, or cross-country, or even Taryn.

Only one obstacle dared to stay in my way. I heard him before I saw him. “What did you do now, Cross?” the voice said, sparkling with amusement.

Sphincter.

And I thought the morning couldn’t get any worse.

He didn’t have time to wipe the smile off his face. I blew into his broad shoulder with more force than I knew possible, knocking him back, so he stumbled a little before he recovered. I didn’t see who he was with, only caught a glimpse of a red mane. The air was perfumed with competing scents, a stew of flowers and chemicals that clawed at my nostrils, making it even harder to breathe. Sphincter laughed and turned to the red sea of hair. “Crazy Cross,” he said with the same affectionate tinge in his voice I’d come to know and hate.

I lost it.

I turned to him, my hands balling into fists. My first punch hit him squarely in the jaw, throwing him back against the locker. The second jab, from my other arm, drove him upward, so that his chin was thrust up, and the blood, which had begun to course down his face, pooled in the crease of his lips, which were pulled into a tight grimace. He tried to say something but spat crimson droplets into the air, like a fountain. I pressed my forearm against his throat. “Stop laughing. You’re rotting from the inside,” I snarled, in a voice foreign even to me. “You hear me?”

His eyes had widened for a second, but now they narrowed. His mouth parted, revealing a black window in his once perfect set of pearly whites.

“Nick, stop it!” someone called down the hall. Taryn. I turned to see her running toward me, two teachers and a security guard on her heels.

I released him. “Freak,” he sputtered, clamping his hand over his bloody nose. “You broke my nose. My tooth.”

“You’re rotting. Go to the doctor. He’ll tell you,” I muttered as the security guard grabbed me from behind. The bell screamed overhead as I turned to follow.

Sphincter’s arm candy, the other students in the hall, Taryn … Everyone was looking at me in the same way as the guard led me away. Like I was, just as Sphincter had said, Crazy Cross. It wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. Strangely, it was a relief to stop pretending and finally own up to what I really was.

“Suspended on the first day of school,” Nan said under her breath as we pulled up the driveway. We were both sitting in the back of Bill Runyon’s Land Rover, being chauffeured like celebrities. She’d had to call around to get someone to drive her, and Bill was the lucky winner. I could tell the second she came to pick me up that she was pissed, because she didn’t bother to say hello to the ladies in the principal’s office and her face looked like she’d sucked on lemons. Bill was cordial when I’d first gotten into the car, but eventually he fell under Nan’s spell and just drove, though I caught him inspecting me a few times in the rearview mirror. After fifteen minutes of icy silence, I was kind of relieved when words finally erupted from her mouth.

I didn’t answer. I was busy staring at my knuckles. They were red and ached. Maybe my hand was broken.

“For an entire week, no less,” she said when Bill threw the car into park in front of the house. She pulled open the door and thanked Bill.

As I got out of the car, Bill whispered to me, “You know, kid. Take it easy. You’re going to be the death of her.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I mumbled, slamming the door with unnatural force. I rolled my eyes and they caught on the sky. The clouds were perfectly round and white in the shockingly blue sky, like stepping stones to heaven. I pulled open the front door and trudged into the house. The floorboard at the doorway to my mom’s room creaked. I knew she was standing there, waiting to give me crap. I climbed the stairs quickly, but she’d already begun her assault: “Suspension? Nick! You will mess up your life!”

“You already took care of that,” I muttered, slamming the door behind me. It was about a thousand degrees in my room. I opened a window and stripped off my T-shirt and jeans, then lay in bed in my boxers, clenching and unclenching my fist, massaging my knuckles. Okay, maybe my hand wasn’t broken. But that still didn’t stop the rest of me from feeling like crap.

About ten minutes later, someone knocked on the door. “Go away,” I muttered, figuring it was Nan bringing me crackers or a cool washcloth or whatever it was she felt I needed at this time. I tried to convince myself I didn’t need anything from anyone, that all I wanted was to be left alone. But the thought of being alone felt like stumbling down a long dark hole with no idea what was at the bottom.

The door opened a crack. Leave it to Nan to never listen to my pleas for privacy. I looked up, about to yell at her, and instead of Nan’s wizened face, I saw platinum blond curls. “Can I come in?” Taryn asked softly.

“What? No.” I stumbled over my words, then realized I was practically naked and did a visual check for my jeans. All the way on the other side of the room. Great. Luckily my T-shirt was within arm’s distance, mingling with some dirty socks and underwear on the floor. I grabbed the shirt and threw it over my head. “Why—why are you here? You should be in school.”

She opened the door wider. Her hair looked as if she’d ridden all the way here in Sphincter’s convertible, and who knew? Considering his weakness, maybe she had. But her eyes looked heavy and her skin had a sickly green tinge to it. She cleared her throat and it looked like she was swallowing marbles. “I cut out. I need to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain to me. You and I are … nothing,” I said, almost choking on the word. “You should be in school.”