Chapter 6

The impact drove the breath from her lungs and sent her crashing into the marble floor. Pain detonated up her spine. The fluorescent lights swam. For a terrible second she couldn't pull in air at all - just lay there with her vision blurring and her hands flat against the cold stone, fighting her own body for oxygen.

Her papers had scattered everywhere.

The boy who had hit her stood over her, running a hand through his hair with the irritated look of someone who had somewhere to be. He was wearing a crimson varsity football jacket. He didn't offer a hand.

He didn't even really look at her - not until he bent down and picked up a sheet of paper from the floor. He held it up, scanning it, and then went very still.

ABIGAIL RICHMOND. Printed in clean black type across the top.

The annoyance on his face dissolved. What replaced it was something uglier and more deliberate.

This was Dylon Waller. Star quarterback. Hank's best friend. And from the look on his face right now, he already knew exactly who she was.

"So you're the hick," he said. His voice carried down the empty hallway without effort. "The one who forced Debbra out."

Debbra. Abigail had heard the name only once before - screamed by Warren at the dinner table, forbidden, explosive. Now here it was again, and this time she could feel the weight of it, the way everyone around her seemed to orbit that name like a wound they couldn't stop pressing on.

She got to her feet. She didn't argue. She didn't look away.

Dylon didn't like that. He had expected flinching, and she wasn't giving him any.

He crumpled her schedule deliberately, slowly, making sure she watched every second of it, and dropped it into the metal trash can nearby with a sharp clang.

"Trash belongs with trash," he said pleasantly.

Abigail's eyes went to the trash can. Then back to him. Her face was completely blank.

That blankness infuriated him more than tears would have.

He crouched down and grabbed the strap of her canvas bag, pulling her forward until his face was inches from hers. He smelled of expensive aftershave and the stale certainty of someone who had never been told no in his entire life.

"Stay the hell away from Hank," he hissed.

Abigail jerked her bag free. "Excuse me," she said, her voice flat and even. "I have class."

For just a moment, Dylon looked genuinely thrown. Like the script had skipped a page.

The door to AP Calculus swung open. Mrs. Evelyn Reed, sharp-eyed behind her glasses, fixed Dylon with a withering look. "Mr. Waller. My hallway is not a stage."

He scoffed, deliberately drove his shoulder into Abigail's bruised arm as he passed, and swaggered away.

Abigail walked to the trash can. She reached inside, retrieved the crumpled ball of paper, and smoothed it methodically against her thigh until it was flat enough to read.

She walked into the classroom.

Thirty pairs of eyes turned toward her at once. The silence had a texture to it - thick and unkind. Whispers erupted from the back row.

She chose the rear corner desk, sat down, and pressed her textbook against the wrinkled paper until the creases disappeared. Then she looked up at the equations on the whiteboard.

She had been doing mathematics at the top of her rural Ohio class since she was twelve years old. Whatever else this school was going to take from her, it couldn't take that.

She picked up her pen, and began.