Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1)(61)

Pat shouts, “You ran into me, Abbey!”

Bullshit.

I say loudly without turning around, “If that’s what you think, then maybe don’t have a fireside chat in the middle of the hall.”

Pat shouts out a “fuck you” before a nearby teacher scolds him for his language. We’re too far away from one another to keep combating. Thankfully.

Willow keeps muttering “sorry” every five seconds, and by the time we make it to her locker, I feel relieved for her. She wipes her forehead with the back of her arm. A strand of her hair is still stuck to her damp cheek.

I motion to her face. “Can I…you have something…?”

She’s confused for a second and tentatively nods at me.

I pick the strand off and tuck it behind her ear.

She swallows once and stares at her feet and then her locker.

“Are you going to pass out on me?” I ask with concern, already trying to figure out the distance from her locker to the nurse’s.

I think I could carry her there, no problem.

Willow shakes her head. “I’m not good at this…I forgot to warn you.” Maybe she means that she’s not good at being the new girl in a school full of strangers. Or maybe even more general: being surrounded by a lot of people at one time.

“You’re doing alright.”

She glances at her skirt. “How’s the bow?”

My lips pull up a fraction. “Without a doubt, you have the best bow in the entire kingdom. If I were a princess, I’d even be jealous.” I pass her schedule back as she begins to smile. “Fifteen, thirty-seven, twenty-seven.”

I don’t ask if she wants me to open it. I figure spinning the lock will be a nice distraction for a second.

While she turns the dial, I’m about to ask about her last school. I assume it was public and smaller than Dalton.

Just as I open my mouth, I spot someone familiar in the corner of my eye. Carly Jefferson. She whispers to a group of three girls, about fifteen lockers down from Willow’s.

I’d like to think I’m more observant than paranoid. That this isn’t all in my head. But I have this feeling. You know the feeling—the one where everything stills around you. Just for a moment. Where every crack and flaw that frames a photo suddenly magnifies ten million times over.

It’s happening. Right now.

The hallway noises deaden in my mind. Leaving excruciating silence. Their furtive glances like sharp knives. Their smiles like snarls. Carly giggles and nudges her friend’s side. A couple guys join the huddle of girls. They lean against lockers and smirk. Taking a front row seat to a show.

Wrong.

Everything is wrong.

“Willo—” I start and grab her arm to stop her from opening the locker.

The dial has already clicked, and the blue metal swings back.

It should be empty. But it’s not.

Hundreds of tampons fall out, most in their wrapper. A handful have been torn open and soaked in what I hope is red dye.

She freezes.

I don’t even know what to do. I go as still, as quiet as her.

And the hallway erupts in laughter.

Here’s the truth: I’ve never been pranked at school. I’ve never been picked on by anyone but my brothers. I used to be well-liked. Even if I hated myself half the time.

I want to say something.

Do something.

Anything.

To stand up for the quieter person. For the first time in my life.





19 BACK THEN – September


Philadelphia, Pennsylvania





WILLOW MOORE

Age 17





My instinct is to run, but I have nowhere to actually go. I’ve already run away from Caribou, Maine. This is the place that I’ve run to.

My ribs tighten around my lungs with a hysteric thought and my new eulogy: Willow Moore, that fool who ran away to have her locker filled with tampons and be publicly humiliated in a new school.

It’s not true. I can’t let it be.

I ran away to build a relationship with my brother.

To become me without any apologies attached. None of these: “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m not as pretty or as popular as you hoped I’d be.”

Garrison makes the first move. He kicks the tampons at a couple girls and guys, grouped several lockers away. When he swings his head to me, pieces of his hair fall to his eyelashes, and he says, “Blaze.”

Blaze.

From Streets of Rage, an early nineties video game, she’s one of the strongest female characters in a slew of men. While I don’t have her judo skills or her physique, it’s easy to pretend I’m her when someone pretends with me. And by saying her name, I know Garrison is trying to bolster my confidence.

On our trek from the parking lot to the school this morning, Garrison asked if I’d ever played Streets of Rage. When I said I did, he told me, “So imagine you’re Blaze and I’m Axel and this hallway—the one we’re going to be walking down—is nothing we can’t handle.”

“Axel,” I whisper and brush the tampons out of my locker.

I remember the phone call from Rose Calloway—after I spilled tampons accidentally on the street. In front of the world.

I’m not going to be embarrassed. Remember what Rose said. I take a few deep breaths, my stomach twisting in knots.