A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(103)

There was still one thing she didn’t understand. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

“Hey, shortstop, don’t kill the messenger.”

“Why are you friends with them, Cruz? They treat you like you’re one of them, but you don’t even seem to care.”

“I don’t.”

The dynamics of the school as a whole versus the enigma that was Cruz De los Santos puzzled her to no end. “Then I don’t get it. You’re nice to them. You hang out with them.”

He lifted a shoulder. “It’s more of an understanding. They don’t mess with me. I don’t mess with them.”

That was helpful. “What do you mean?”

He filled his lungs as though he didn’t want to talk about it, but she raised a brow. A single, unrelenting brow, just like her mom taught her. It totally worked.

“Okay,” he said, sitting up a little straighter. “When we were in second grade, there was this kid who was pretty much known as the school bully.”

“Why is there always a bully?” she asked.

“Right? So, he was messing with everyone, picking on different people every day. You get the idea.”

“I do, unfortunately.”

“Then one day, he decided it was my turn.”

She stilled as a sickening feeling washed over her. She tamped it down, not wanting to risk interrupting him. To risk not getting the whole story. “He went after you?”

“He tried to. I guess I didn’t know how to play the game right. He pushed me down and tried to take my backpack.”

The image gave her a stomachache. “Cruz, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I just got up, took this girl’s crutch as she walked by, and beat the shit out of him.”

She blinked in astonishment. “Wow. You were only, what, seven?”

“Something like that. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be my friend, and it’s been that way ever since.”

“It’s because you’re not afraid of anything. And you don’t care what anyone thinks of you.” She looked down to study her shoes, adding, “You’re kind of amazing.”

He seemed surprised. He studied her a long moment until she asked, “What happened to the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The one with the crutch?”

“Oh, she fell.”

A bubble of laughter escaped despite her best efforts. He was dead serious. And utterly charming.

“You beat up Liam Eaton yesterday, didn’t you? Lynelle’s BFF?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Only a little. He deserved worse, but he’s shitting himself now, I guarantee it.”

“He’s scared of you?”

He lowered his head. “Everyone’s scared of me. They’re only my friends because they think it keeps them safe. It’s not like I go around beating the crap out of people every day.”

She ran her fingertips along the scabs on his knuckles. “I’m not scared of you.”

Without looking at her, he said, “You will never have to be.”

Before she could say anything else, like a marriage proposal, her mom stormed out of the office and into the hall. “No way,” she said, livid.

The principal followed her. “What am I supposed to do, Sunshine?”

She took one look at Auri and Cruz and got that look on her face. The one that said someone was about to be very unhappy.

“Fine, Jacobs. Go ahead and bow down to the elite in this town. To the pricks and the ass-kissers.”

“And the superintendent. You know, my boss?”

They were drawing a crowd. Students stopped and either laughed behind cupped hands or gaped. Either way, it was a good show.

“I get it, but if nothing is going to happen to those privileged little fucks—”

Auri gasped. Her mom just didn’t do that. Not in public, anyway.

Her mom looked past him toward the secretary, a.k.a. Lynelle’s mother, before she continued, “Then nothing will happen to Cruz.”

“Now, Sunny—”

Cruz’s dad and the interpreter came out. The interpreter looked flustered just trying to keep up with the conversation.

“Don’t even,” she warned Principal Jacobs.

Auri had never, in all of her fourteen-going-on-fifteen years of existence, seen her mom that mad. She gaped at her wide-eyed while Cruz looked on approvingly.

“Nothing happens to these kids.” She pointed to both Cruz and Auri. She turned to Cruz’s dad. “Mr. De los Santos, it was a pleasure to meet you.”

He took her hand and nodded a thank-you.

She turned to Cruz. “And you . . .” She bent down and kissed his cheek. “You are a rock star.”

“Come on, Sunny,” the principal said. “Don’t encourage him.”

“And you . . .” She knelt down in front of Auri and took her hand. “You give ’em hell, bug bite. And remember, it’s okay to stab a bitch in the face with a pencil.”

She heard a unified gasp.

“Sometimes you have to use what’s in your environment.”

“Um, Sunny,” Jacobs said. “I’m not sure—”

“If you have no other choice, resort to hair pulling. It isn’t pretty, but it’s effective.”