Time Bomb(56)

Rashid met Cas’s eyes with a steady gaze, “Those who are the most damaged don’t ever admit they need help. It takes strength to admit that you want something to change, and it takes even more courage and strength to try to change it.”

“But what if you’ve tried to change things and nothing is different?” Cas wrapped her good arm around herself.

“Then you try something else. Isn’t that why we’re all in this room together right now?” Rashid said. “We could have stayed where we were when the bombs went off and given up. Instead we’re still working to get out. We’re building a stretcher that we don’t know will work and making ropes that could give way beneath us. But we’re doing it anyway because fighting to live is hard. It’s supposed to be. Giving up is the easy part.”

“How do you know?” The hollowness inside Cas threated to overwhelm her. “Have you ever woken up in the morning and the idea of getting out of bed made you want to scream and never stop screaming? Have you ever had your parents pretend to reward you by taking you shopping for clothes they think will make you more popular because to them that’s going to make it all better, or had your father take you to a shrink who tells you that you want to be unhappy and that you are imagining all of your problems?”

“Maybe your shrink is right,” Diana said. “Could it be you’re making problems bigger than they are because you want people to pay attention to you. Sometimes the only way to get people to pay attention is to force them to—”

“You think I’m making problems bigger than they are?” Cas pressed a shaky hand to her stomach. “Maybe I wanted attention so bad that I let one girl slam me into a locker and then push me to the ground. Maybe I even wanted two of her friends to hold me down while she kicked me in the chest and the stomach and told the others to help her. Maybe it’s my fault I can’t remember what happened after that because she kicked me so hard, I hit the back of my head against the floor and blacked out.”

Cas remembered waking up in fear. Fear of the sadness in her mother’s eyes as she told Cas she was going to be okay and fear of the way her father screamed at anyone who would listen about how he wouldn’t take what happened to his daughter lying down. He wanted people arrested. He was going to sue, because his daughter was going to be scarred for life. People were going to pay.

Frankie walked over to her. He put his arm around her shoulder, and tears sprang to her eyes. “You lost a lot of blood, Cas,” Frankie said quietly to her. “You should sit down and rest.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” Cas shook off his arm. She didn’t want to be pathetic. She didn’t want to be the one who was so weak that people naturally assumed she needed their protection. “I’m tired of people telling me to take it easy or to let things go because I’m just creating drama to get attention.” She looked at Diana, standing not far from the window. Cas swiped at a tear and swallowed down the others burning her throat and asked, “Was it okay for a girl and her friends to hate me because I wasn’t part of their crowd and I didn’t dress like them? Or how about you tell me exactly how it was my fault that the most popular girl in school decided that I was the person anonymously posting pictures of her boyfriend and suggesting he should break up with her?”

Diana never looked away, and she didn’t speak. She just stood there—still as a stone, like everyone else in the room. Cas stood just as still, even though everything inside was racing.

For a second, the only sounds in the room were the muted shouting coming from the rescue workers outside, the chopping sound of a helicopter, and the siding-company commercial playing on the radio station.

“You were bullied.” Tad finally broke the silence.

“Bullied.” Bitter laughter bubbled through the tears. “God, I hate that word.”

“. . . path through the field house after a fifth device was uncovered and disarmed and removed. Officials . . . believe there is . . . another device, which is why they are . . . additional precautions to ensure . . . as . . . fire . . .”

Tad clicked off the radio. “The batteries are dying. We can turn it back on in a few minutes, once we’re ready to try out the stretcher and the ropes.”

Because then they’d need to know if it was necessary to risk their lives on a two-story drop. If there was another bomb in the building, Cas knew the answer would be yes. And then what would happen to her?

“Why don’t you like the word?” Frankie asked quietly.

“Why?” Cas blinked and looked at the guy who had helped her get this far. A high school god—someone who would never understand what it was like to look in the mirror and wish that you were completely different. “Bullied is too easy a word. My father uses that word all the time. So does my shrink.”

“I still don’t get what the problem is,” Frankie said. “It’s just a word.”

Cas winced as she shifted her injured arm and was glad for the pain, because it was better to focus on that than on the ache growing in her heart. “Have you ever been bullied?”

It was a dumb question, because he was the football captain. He was popular. If anything, he was probably the one who did the bullying.

But he surprised her by saying, “Yeah.”

“How?”

“How?”