Page 16

My chest tightens during my shower and for a few minutes after. I end up smashing my locker while I get dressed for lunch. My stomach churns, like it’s going to eat itself.

I push open the double doors leading outside and notice Bax and the rest of them near the dusty parking lot getting ready to pile into his new Shaggin’ Waggin’.

It’s the ugliest piece of shit van I’ve ever seen and always smells like smelly weed. But he loves it, and it’s usually where we spend our weekends, getting baked and drinking.

I grab my keys out of my backpack and flick them in my hand but hesitate. I have my own new baby my parents bought me at the beginning of the year—a shiny blue Camaro parked right next to his.

To avoid them, I hurry toward the bleachers, shifting my backpack. My insides might burst, and this looks like a good hiding spot. I need a minute not to be me.

I stretch out my legs and drop my head into my hands, wondering how the hell I ended up here. This is my senior year; I should be scoring with chicks, smoking joints with Bax, and raising hell with my best friend. Instead, people are dropping dead, my best buddy is ignoring me, and I’m bombing math class.

“Dammit.” My growl echoes off the bleachers as I slam my fist into the hard metal and pain radiates up my arm. “Fucking. Motherfucker,” I curse as pain radiates up my arm. A tiny gasp from somewhere in the dark corner of the bleachers catches my attention and I freeze.

I whip my head around as someone shifts beside me.

My jaw tightens. “Who the hell is here?”

It’s quiet, just the muffled sounds of my classmates outside, but the heavy presence of someone else lingers. Whoever it is, they are trying to hide, so I edge closer and deeper under the bleachers, and she shifts into the single beam of sunlight casting in from outside.

Her eyes, specifically the whites of them, catch my attention first, and when our eyes meet, my heart skips a beat.

I’m speechless seeing her here like this, hiding in the dark. She’s awfully pretty.

Her eyes glisten. Her eyebrows and lashes, along with her two perfect tight braids, are brilliant white.

This girl is glowing and looks like an angel sent directly to me from heaven.

My hands turn clammy. “Hey,” I say, realizing that I probably just scared the shit out of her.

She blinks twice, as if she’s surveying me as closely as I am her. I’ve been trying to check her out all week. Her head is always down, her shoulders hunched, and she hides under her baggy dresses. She has no idea how beautiful she is. Instead of responding, she folds back into the shadows and diverts her eyes.

“Diana, right?” I reach out my hand to her. “I’m Tommy.”

Her lips part, but panic flashes across her face, and she looks away. Her eyes dart to the small opening on the side of the bleachers, at the ray of sun, and glaze over. She seems to look right through me as if they don’t work at all.

Is she blind?

She reminds me of a creature of the night…or a firefly.

“Hi,” she finally says, taking my hand, and her eyes change color.

I lean back on my hand and kick my legs out so my bell-bottoms hang loose, trying to play it cool.

Be cool. Be cool. Be cool.

“We have math together, I think.”

“I know.”

Not cool, Tommy. Math, really?

Dammit. I’ve never been this tongue tied before.

She relaxes slightly but still keeps her distance and presses her back into the cold siding.

I scratch my mustache. “What are you doing under here, Diana?”

She keeps her eyes cast downward to the textbook she has on her lap “I’m hiding,” she admits.