Trey’s face turned white. “Shit, Quinn.” He reached out to grab his friend’s shoulder, but Quinn flailed wildly, shoving him in the stomach. Trey staggered away, his eyes wide in horror.
“I can’t see. I can’t—”
Quinn fell to his knees, scraping at his face, his body trembling. His mother rushed over and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, screaming at someone to help him. Headmistress West sprinted across the field, her Morticia Addams gown streaming out behind her.
“Call an ambulance!” Quinn’s mother screamed.
“Do stop sniveling, woman,” Damon Delacorte drawled. He stood on the edge of the field, his arms swinging at his sides like he didn’t have a care in the world. “He’s just being dramatic, the way he always is.”
The last time I’d seen Quinn, he’d been heading off the field with his dad, and then he came back with that shiner…
Headmistress West picked up the jar and sniffed the contents. Her nose wrinkled and she gave a loud, unladylike sneeze. “Ah, I think some students have been playing a prank. The nurse should be able to handle this.”
“I’m blind!” Quinn wailed.
Trey’s shoulders sagged as he watched them drag Quinn away. Ayaz moved beside him, but Trey shrugged him off and stormed away toward the lockers.
My stomach twisted up in knots. I remembered what Greg had said about how he had to wear a face mask and goggles while he ground the itching powder. If too much got in his eyes or nose it could cause permanent damage.
Permanent damage.
I wanted the Kings to suffer the way they’d made me and the other scholarship students suffer, but I didn’t want Quinn to go blind.
I stood up, dusting grass clippings from my skirt. “I’m going inside.”
Greg lifted an eyebrow. “Want to gloat up-close?”
“Something like that.” I circled around the groups of gathered parents, dodging wait staff offering canapés and more glasses of Champagne. I noticed Quinn’s dad grabbing two glasses. One couldn’t have been for his wife, because she’d hurried off to the nurse’s station. Which was exactly where I was going.
From the atrium, I headed into the administrative wing, following Mrs. Delacorte’s wails to the nurse’s station at the end of a long corridor. I peered around the door, not wanting to barge in if the nurse needed space.
Quinn lay on a hospital bed, clutching his face and howling. The nurse – a portly black woman with a kind face who the students called Old Waldron – was making up an eye bath, while Quinn’s mother wiped at the powder on his face and hair with a damp cloth, her face screwing up as she got it all over her own skin.
Trey’s parents stood beside the bed, watching Quinn with worried expressions. Courtney and her parents were there as well, and her dad was speaking in a loud voice about how they shouldn’t give Quinn any medicine, because the FDA deliberately suppressed actual cures in order to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, and would in fact make Quinn worse.
“Dad, just shut up!” Courtney yelled. “My boyfriend could be blinded, so no one cares about your crackpot theories!”
At the word ‘boyfriend,’ Quinn’s mother flinched, but she kept on wiping Quinn’s face without saying a word.
“Open your eyes and hold this over them,” Old Waldron instructed, trying to pry Quinn's hand away.
“Don’t hurt him!” Courtney flew at the bed. As she did, she happened to glance up and see me in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” Courtney sneered.
“Nothing. I—”
Quinn’s broken voice punctured the tension in the room. “Hazy? Is that you?”
Courtney rocketed across the room and shoved me. “Get out. He’smyboyfriend. He doesn’t want you here.”
“If he doesn’t want me, then why was he making out with me at the party?” I sneered back at her.
Wrong thing to say.Courtney shrieked and lunged at me, claws raised. Thinking fast, I stepped back into the hallway and slammed the door in her face. She slammed her fist into the glass. “Next time, that’s your face, bitch.”
I backed away, my stomach all knotted up.Quinn, I know you can’t hear me, but I really hope you’re okay. I didn’t mean for this to happen.
There was no way I was getting back into that room. But there was one more stop I had to make.
Trey. I needed to see him. I couldn’t explain why, but when I thought of his white face as his father yelled at him, I knew that I’d unwittingly itched my way into the middle of something dark between them.
