Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1)(62)

It’s harder than it sounds.

Garrison says, “Now I wish I had a crowbar.” It’s the go-to weapon in Streets of Rage.

My eyes widen behind my glasses.

“Kidding.” He glares at the cluster of people, just now coming down from their laughing fit. “Sort of.”

I quickly stuff my backpack into my now empty locker, slamming it shut. Just as I turn, I realize that Garrison has left my side. He’s taken a few lengthy strides towards the group, all laughter faded.

I try to grip my backpack strap, only to meet air.

I stand stiffly, more in the middle of the hall. My uniform is as uncomfortable as I feel. I check the state of the bow, like a teacher will yell any second about its off-kilter state.

It looks okay though.

What doesn’t look so great: the scene in front of me.

“That’s not cool,” Garrison tells the shorter girl with dirty blonde hair. I wonder if she’ll have to take out her nose piercing before first period. This thought is trying to trounce the bolder, bigger one that screams, these are his friends.

He approaches them like he knows them. Like he’s talked to them often. Like he’s so familiar with who they are.

The shorter girl pushes out her chest and pulls back her shoulders to gain some height. “You know what’s not cool? Betraying your best friends.” Her eyes redden, and she takes an angrier step forward. The other girl clasps her shoulder. “You should be in there with John! You deserve jail time more than any one of them, and you know it!”

Her friend says, “Carly—”

“Leave me alone.” She swats her hand off her shoulder and then points at Garrison again. I can’t see his features, just the back of his head. He’s unmoving. Even his fingers hang loosely, not curling into a fist. “You’re a piece of shit, Abbey. You’re a piece of shit—and you know it.”

Garrison nears Carly a little more, and she goes still at his closeness. He hangs his head and whispers something to her. In seconds, she breaks down and bursts into tears.

“It’s not fair!” she cries, sinking to the floor. I can only guess that she was close to John, maybe even in a relationship with him.

And I expect Garrison to swivel back towards me.

Am I being presumptuous? To assume that he’d come back?

Because he never does.

I watch him walk past his old friends. Away from me. I watch him disappear alone around a corner. I watch him vanish all together without another word. Without a goodbye.

The bell rings, and I’m left standing immobile in the middle of the hall. People pass around me like nothing occurred.

And I have two choices.

I can go to first period and forget about Garrison. I can act as though this intro to class never happened. Act like everyone else. Forget about him, Willow Moore.

Or I can go find him. I can step over my hurt feelings. The ones that say, he left me, and just make sure he’s okay.

He approached them for me. To stand up for me.

That means something.

I make my decision.

I trace his footsteps down the hallway. I veer around the corner where I expect another hallway or a cluster of vending machines. Instead, I’m met with two bathrooms. Girls and boys.

“Oh God,” I mutter.

I’m staring at the boy symbol. Just go in. This will be my first foray into this great unknown that is the boys’ bathroom. I wish I didn’t give a shit. I wish I could just push inside without a second thought or care.

It’s just the boys’ bathroom.

It’s trivial, right?

Just go in.

I do this time.

I push the royal blue door with my shoulder. I’m met with one long row of sinks, two stalls, and three urinals. Not too shocking.

Garrison is sitting on the sink counter, a lit cigarette between his fingers. His head is hung, hair in his eyes, but as soon as I enter, he looks up. His bones seem to cement, joints unoiled. Frozen.

Maybe this wasn’t a smart idea.

“I…” I gesture to the door I came from, as though that explains everything. It actually explains absolutely nothing.

Smoke wafts around his body, and it takes him a second to shift the hand that holds his cigarette. He casually sucks on it, quiet.

I like quiet.

I’m familiar with quiet more than I am loud. I walk further inside and rest my back on a locked, out-of-order stall.

He blows smoke up at the air vent. Then his aquamarine eyes study his cigarette, embers eating the paper. “Did you hear the bell?” He finally speaks.

“Yeah.”

He nods a couple times, almost in realization, and then he takes another drag.

“Thanks for trying to help me,” I say softly.

“I probably made it worse.”

I cross my arms, feeling naked without my backpack. “They’re your friends?”

“Were,” he corrects. “They pretty much want nothing to do with me after…the thing.” The thing. He takes a deeper drag of his cigarette. I know he must mean when his friends broke into Loren’s house with gargoyle masks.

“What’d you say to Carly?”

He stares off past me, his gaze haunted. “I told her that she’s right.”

“What?” A weight bears down on me. And the room.

He puts out his cigarette in the sink basin. “I’m a piece of shit.” He says it with such finality, as though he’s accepted it for a long time.