Chapter 4

Islammed Chris's car door before he finished saying goodbye the next day. We lived a few minutes from my high school, and I could walk, but Chris insisted on driving me even though his first class at the community college didn't start until ten.

Chris had always dreamed of moving to New York City to become a lawyer, but once it came time to fill out college applications, he changed his mind. My mom tried to persuade him to apply to the schools farther away, but he didn't budge. He said he wanted to stay in town because he liked it here, but I was still trying to figure out what he liked. We lived in a small shithole where it was winter the majority of the year, the buildings were all crumbling, and the sky existed in bleak shades of gray and white.

He ended up dropping the whole lawyer thing altogether. According to Chris, he had a moment of awakening when he realized all lawyers were con artists, but I thought his opinion had less to do with the actual profession and more to do with a particular lawyer who shared our DNA. Chris thought I was the dramatic one, but I wasn't the one who'd abandoned my dream to stick it to my dad.

My parents' story wasn't even a tragic one. Their marriage was simply part of the vast percentage that ended in divorce, and honestly, it went a lot better than it could have. I was in fifth grade when they sat Chris and me down in the living room on a Tuesday night and told us it wasn't working out. They took turns speaking and smiled at each other like a pair of polite acquaintances.

My dad moved to the West Coast, so we didn't see him often, but he always called, and his child support payments were like clockwork. Every year, my mom sent him and his girlfriend a Christmas card with something nice, like a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates. She always asked Chris and me to sign the card, and while I signed my name without hesitation, Chris always had somewhere he needed to be. I suppose we all reacted differently, but I thought Chris's reaction was easier to understand than mine. My mom seemed to find my overall stillness unnerving. And even though I knew she was my mom, I often wondered how she could know so much without knowing anything at all.

I pulled the hood of my coat tight beneath my chin as I shuffled toward the school building. Chris always let me out on the street near the side of the school where all the teachers parked, and I'd walk the length of the parking lot. It was too crowded and hectic for him to pull all the way in, and the short walk allowed me a little more time to delay the inevitable. Despite my overall hatred for everything school related, though, I felt a small tremor of excitement to go to gym.

I wasn't quite sure what I'd expected from Hunter. Maybe I thought I'd catch a glimpse of his arms and see white and red scars lining his too. Or maybe I thought he'd whisper that the rope snapped or the gun didn't fire, as if he somehow knew I needed to know. What I didn't expect was for him to not even glance in my direction.

As gym dragged on, I would have been convinced I'd distorted those moments of eye contact if I didn't get the distinct impression he was trying not to look at me. On more than one occasion, I was right in his line of vision, but he took great effort to avert his eyes upward or to the side, his teeth gritting in impatient concentration.

I tried to ignore him too, but after a while, I couldn't pull my gaze away. He didn't interact with a single person the entire class, but he did participate in the drills. I'd never been interested in sports, but watching him was captivating, so I alternated between that and my fingernails. My eyes trailed him during the layup drills as he made each basket with ease. He was pretty tall, even a few inches taller than Scott, and despite the crummy Vans he wore, it was obvious he could have been an athlete if he wanted to be.

As we moved to full-court play, it was as if he became someone else altogether. His eyes followed the ball with an authoritative, brooding expression, but he never put himself in play. By some miracle, he was always in the wrong spot. After a while, he left the game altogether. Instead of participating, he leaned against the folded-up bleachers and pressed against them with the bottom of his foot. It was so ballsy and obnoxious that it made my cheeks hurt, but Mr. Downs didn't say a word. No one did. Hunter Thomas wasn't the type of person you said something to.

Everything about him was a contradiction. His dark hair and pale skin. His rigid jawline and heated gaze. His casual walk and intimidating stance. He was relaxed but tense. Calm with a hint of violence. The only thing uniform about him was the intensity. He frightened me, but it wasn't the same way he frightened Margo. The storm swirling around him repelled Margo and everyone else, but I felt possessed, desperate to get closer to the downpour.

Scott brushed against me at the end of class as if there weren't a few hundred feet in the gymnasium. I stiffened as my lungs squeezed together, forcing a feeble cough in an attempt to repel the Abercrombie Fitch cologne making me dizzy.

"Hey, Alice, are you going to grace us with your presence Friday night at Jake's party?"

Hunter had long since abandoned his post against the bleachers, and he stood a few feet away with his back to us, but I swear I saw his shoulders tense.

"Uh, no," I said, trying to figure out why he was talking to me again.

Scott's gaze raked down the length of me. "Oh, c'mon, we both know you could be seriously hot if you ditched this whole I-don't-care-what-I-look-like phase."

My face flamed in response, and I shrunk inside my giant sweatshirt.

"That was me giving you a compliment, Alice."

"Was it?"

He stepped even closer. "Yeah."

"Well, in that case, you could be seriously tolerable if you weren't such a prick," I snapped and stepped away, my body cooperating for once in my life.

I knew I was making things more difficult for myself and I'd pay for it later, but all I could think about was the threatening cologne seeping into my pores and his hand on my ass again.

Mr. Downs blew his whistle, and I stomped away, passing close to Hunter.

For the very first time in human history, or at least since I'd seen, the side of his mouth turned up into a small smirk.

* * *

I floatedon pride for standing up for myself, but it was short-lived. By the time lunch rolled around, it had become clear I was going to pay for my insensitivity, and my pride festered into utter regret. I was the first to arrive at our lunch table, and I busied myself with a bag of chips but stopped cold when Scott entered the cafeteria uncharacteristically early and alone.

I tracked his blue Nikes as they passed his side of the table and stopped in front of me. I risked a glance through my eyelashes when his feet didn't move. His hand rested on the back of the chair across from mine, and he stood still, glaring down at me.

"This seat taken, love?" Despite the hardness in his gaze, his voice was playful.

I knew I should leave. My brain begged me. Escape to the bathroom. Call Chris to pick me up. Enroll in an all-girl private school. But my body didn't move.

He collapsed into the chair, his legs spread wide and comfortable as he leaned back, smirking. His sharp blue eyes remained fixed on me as he swallowed my fear as though it was the only thing in the world that could get him off. A slow pink sprawled up the sides of his neck. He drew his lips between his teeth, watching me as his pupils dilated, glazed over and needy. My eyes darted to where Hunter usually sat, but he wasn't there, and even if he was, Hunter couldn't help. No one could. After all, he was just looking.

I startled when Brian Cullen slid his brown paper bag across the lunch table and dropped into the seat beside me. "Hey, you okay, Alice?"

I shot him a grateful smile. "Yeah, fine." Brian Cullen was my first and only boyfriend. It was eighth grade and it was brief, but he was still kind, and I tried not to judge him for sitting shotgun every time Scott's orange Range Rover swerved into the school parking lot. Margo and Casey could be nasty, but that didn't stop me from sitting in their carpeted bedrooms, flipping through magazines while they chattered away.

Brian had been handsome in eighth grade, but it wasn't anything compared to the attention he received now. He had the sort of features that were all plain in theory, but they combined in a way that was almost too perfect.

He removed a ham and turkey sandwich from his brown paper bag, the same kind his mom used to pack for him in middle school. His eyebrows furrowed. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I nodded, even more relieved when Margo and Casey strolled up to the table. "Hey, I waited for you at your locker," Margo said to Scott, sounding like she had when I'd forgotten to spearhead an extravagant locker decoration for her fourteenth birthday. She glanced between us, and I tried to shoot her a look of relief, but her eyes narrowed at me before flicking back to Scott. "Why are you sitting here?"

He shrugged. "Alice and I were just chatting." He yanked her into his lap, and she must have forgotten she was supposed to be mad, because she giggled, wrapping both arms around his neck.

"Should we go to your house or mine after school?"

He kissed the side of her neck, all while keeping his eyes fixed on me. "Definitely mine. My parents are out of town."

Casey watched them, both hands perched beneath her chin. "Aren't they so adorable?"

I scooped my abandoned bag of chips into my brown paper bag. "I think I've lost my appetite."

Scott chuckled into the side of Margo's neck as he slid her shirt farther off her shoulder. "I think our PDA is bothering prudish Alice."

Brian had been talking to the person on the other side of him, but he stopped short. "Hey!"

Scott parted from Margo, eyebrows raised. "Yes?"

Brian frowned at him. "She's not a prude." His clear voice fumbled with uncertainty, and though I appreciated the sentiment, it would have been better for both our sakes if he hadn't said anything at all.

There was a flash of irritation, but then Scott's smile was pleasant, his words as slippery as his hand on Margo's thigh. "I forgot. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Cullen?"

* * *

The real surprisehappened at the end of the day, and by some miracle, it wasn't Scott shoving me into a janitor's closet and taking what he thought was his.

I was standing at Margo's locker with Casey, tuning in and out of the conversation, when a shadow fell over me. I glanced up, prepared with my best scowl and eye roll, but almost dropped my books instead.

Hunter Thomas stood in front of me, his bright green eyes locked on mine as though he hadn't looked away since Monday.

Margo and Casey stopped chattering, and we all waited in silence.

"I hate everyone, but I find you annoyingly tolerable," he said, as if it was our fiftieth conversation instead of our first. I gaped at him, and his mouth shifted into a subtle smirk. "That was me giving you a compliment."

His smirk grew as though he'd told the world's most hilarious inside joke, and my mouth snapped shut. I opened and closed it a few times as if I was a fish out of water.

"So it must be a household thing." I tried to match his overall indifference, but he just laughed. It was sharp and sudden, filled with surprised appreciation. I hated to admit it sounded sort of nice, but it was over as quick as it began, so I wasn't sure if I liked it because it was rare or because it was genuine.

His face turned stonelike and bored again, his laughter as distant as the blood flow to my brain. "You're intriguing."

Then he did the strangest thing: he shrugged as if it was nothing, as if calling someone intriguing somehow didn't matter.

"It's distracting." He was scowling again, and my brain jerked to life.

"Wow, I'm sorry. I never dreamt of distracting you."

"You should be sorry," he said, but his voice was all breathless and soft instead of threatening. Before I could sputter a response, he turned around and walked off, but not before I saw him smile—an actual smile instead of a smirk. I watched him slink away, already halfway down the hall. Silently, I begged him to turn around, but I knew he'd be grimacing again, the unusual smile long gone.

Margo and Casey shifted beside me, and my face flamed with self-consciousness as I remembered them standing there. I turned toward them in slow motion and cringed at their matching horrified expressions.

"What the actual fuck was that?" Margo asked, enunciating every word while Casey glanced around, begging our classmates for some kind of social forgiveness.

"Seriously, Alice. He is such a freak."

"Do you know why he tried to kill himself?" I blurted, and Margo and Casey turned to each other in utter astonishment.

"Because, Alice." Margo's voice was high-pitched and slow, the same tone people used on my grandma at her assisted living. "He is a lunatic. That is why he tried to kill himself. Do you know how fucked up a person has to be to do something like that?"

I decided to take a page out of Hunter's book, but I wasn't quite ballsy enough to walk off without saying anything at all. "Chris is waiting for me." And then I hustled away before they could say another word.