Breakable (Contours of the Heart, #2)(21)

I tugged it all off as soon as I got home and threw it all in the burn pile out back after taking a scalding shower.

I borrowed five bucks from Dad and asked Grandpa to take me back to the Thrifty Sense, where I unearthed a pair of like-new Vans in my size. They were marked seven dollars.

‘I know where ya live,’ Grandpa said, passing me the additional two bucks.

I stopped changing clothes for PE, which earned me demerits every day until Coach Peterson realized that penalizing me wasn’t having any effect.

But I had three classes with Wynn – PE, world geography, and auto shop.

‘Wash up!’ Mr Silva called, his thunderous voice booming over the noise of operational motors, machine tools, country music and conversations about cars and car parts, girls and girl parts.

Most of the stuff guys said was harmless. Even if the entire town full of moms threatened to wash our mouths with the abrasive Lava soap we used to get the clingy streaks of oil and grease off our hands and arms, it was usually just talk.

Sometimes those words didn’t feel like just phrases or expressions, though. They felt like memories and nightmares, when I was doing my best to avoid both. My hands closed into greasy fists as I stood in line for the sinks, captive to the exchange going on behind me, in which Boyce Wynn played a major part.

‘Dude, her tits are like two juicy watermelons.’ His drawl crept up the back of my neck and I imagined the hand gestures I knew he was making.

‘Yeah, I’d do her,’ his friend said, and they both laughed. ‘She doesn’t put out, though.’

‘Yet, Thompson. Yet. I’d teach her to put out.’

Staring straight ahead, my vision hazed at the edges.

‘Riiiight. You wish, *. She wouldn’t give your white-trash ass the time of day.’

‘Who needs the time of day? Time of night, man. Under cover of darkness, she’ll be begging for more.’

His friend laughed. ‘Dude, seriously, she’d be all, like, “Nope.” Plus she’s not that hot.’

‘Naw, man, are you crazy? I’d rape that so fast –’

Before I knew what I’d done, I had spun round, my tightened fist planting itself right at the edge of Boyce Wynn’s mouth. His head jerked back a little with the impact and his eyes went wide with shock. By instinct, I knew better than to stop there, but suddenly there was a circle of guys chanting, ‘Fight! Fight!’ and my limbs froze while his whole body rolled forward, preparing to pound me into the cement floor.

Before either of us could move, Silva gripped us both by the upper arms, separating and immobilizing us. ‘What the hell are y’all dumbasses doing? Trying to get yourselves expelled?’

I didn’t take my eyes from Wynn, and he stared back with murder in his eyes. A trickle of blood glistened at the lower corner of his lip.

‘What’d you do, Wynn?’ Silva growled, shaking him. Our shop teacher was two hundred and fifty pounds of pissed off.

Wynn’s eyes narrowed, still glaring at me, and he seemed to come to some sort of vindictive conclusion. He shrugged his free shoulder, as if indifferent. ‘Nothin’, Mr Silva. Everything’s cool.’

Silva whipped his gaze to me, and Wynn slowly raised his free hand to smear the bead of blood from his face with a knuckle. The churning adrenalin sent a tremor through me.

‘And you – Maxfield? That your story, too? What happened here?’

I shook my head once and echoed Wynn. ‘Nothing. Everything’s cool.’

Silva ground his teeth and rolled his eyes up to the corrugated ceiling, as though God might peel it back and tell him what to do with us.

Jerking our arms once more, harder, he almost popped them from their sockets. ‘There will be no fighting. In. My. Shop. Is that understood, men?’ He spat the word men as though we were anything but.

We nodded, but he didn’t drop either of our arms. ‘Do I need to talk to Bud about you causin’ trouble?’ he asked Wynn, who shook his head, eyes widening. Whoever Bud was, his name inspired fear in the guy who inspired fear in most of the student body.

The bell rang, and our audience scrambled belatedly to the oversized aluminium sinks. Silva released us but didn’t budge, crossing muscular arms over his beefy chest and staring holes into the backs of our heads while we scrubbed up. I grabbed my backpack from its cubby and made for the side door as Wynn exited the front with two friends.

My escape was temporary. That much I knew.

In an effort to torture her students, my world geography teacher announced a team project as soon as we returned from winter break – during which everyone who had remained in town for Christmas had enjoyed an unprecedented half foot of snow covering the beach, palm trees, resort hotels and fishing boats.

In Alexandria, winter began before Christmas and continued into March – surprise bouts of rain, sleet and occasionally snow – piles of it ploughed into corners in parking lots, shifting from white to grey if left to melt rather than bulldozed into trucks and hauled away. By February, everyone was sick of scraping frost from windshields, sick of shovelling sidewalks and driveways, sick of waking to the rumble of gravel trucks or snow ploughs, sick of the constant wet cold.

Here, snow was a dusting, if that. Any measurable quantity of it inspired awe. Six inches was deemed a miracle. People walked around oohing and aahing, shaking their heads. Parents sent kids out to build snowmen and make snow angels with socks on their hands, because no one owned gloves or mittens.