Jesse ignores him, gently palpating the bruise on my thigh.
“It’s barely bleeding,” he mutters. “Not nearly enough to cause disorientation.”
“She faints at the sight of blood, douchebag,” Alex snaps. He wipes the blood from his mouth with the edge of his sleeve.
I close my eyes, tuning them out in favor of counting the raindrops falling onto my cheeks. My stomach settles. Without moving, I say, “I could’ve been asleep under six blankets right now.”
A thumb sweeps away the water lingering in the hollow under my eye. “How do you feel?” Jesse asks.
“How do I feel?” I swat his hand away. “How do Ifeel?”
The boys glance at each other, momentarily forgetting their antipathy in favor of shared confusion.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” I push myself onto my elbows, carefully avoiding the red patch on my thigh. “In about fifteen seconds, I’m going to get up and start walking. If either of you so much as twitches in the other’s direction, I’ll ask Greg if I can climb onto his shoulders and use him as a human battering ram. I think I could make a solid case to a judge that my actions were a public service. Jesse, do you think if Alex was cheating on me, Rainie, Aida, and Lucia would have let it slide? Do you thinkIwould have let it slide?” I move my glare to Alex. “Can you finally start telling everyone we broke up? People are going to accuse Diane of being a homewrecker, and she doesn’t deserve that.”
Slapping away their efforts to help, I pull myself to my feet. Diane emerges from the admin building, the school secretary on her heels. “Alex,” I grind out. “Get your girlfriend away from here.”
“She’s not—”
“Alex!”
He leaps into motion, heading straight for Diane. Jesse and I rush in the opposite direction, around the theater building and behind the teacher’s parking lot. I don’t let myself relax until we’ve cleared the gym.
My chest heaves with exertion. Alex better have used his good boy charm to explain away Diane’s accusation. I can’t stand the idea of Jesse getting in any more trouble, even if he deserves it. What was he thinking?
At the student parking lot, I veer from Jesse, giving him my back as I stomp toward the crosswalk.
Jesse follows. “You can’t walk home with a bleeding leg and a concussion.”
I ignore him. I walked here just fine this morning. I’ll just sit on the curb if I start to get woozy.
Jesse tries again. “Mansour.”
I press the yellow crosswalk button. The stop sign changes to a small white figure.
“Why are you upset? I thought the ball jockey was cheating on you. Turns out I was wrong. No harm done.”
I whirl around. “No harm done? You could’ve gotten suspended!”
“I thought he was cheating on you in front of the entire school,” Jesse repeats curtly.
“Why do youcare?” I yell. My frustration echoes in the empty parking lot. “You could’ve, I don’t know, asked me before you stormed off. God, don’t you get tired of being angry all the time? You don’t even try to change. Angerburns, Jesse, and you’re so distracted by the smoke that you don’t realize it’s eating away everything good inside you!”
A vein pounds in Jesse’s forehead. “You’re assuming there was anything good inside me to begin with.”
I throw my hands up. “Unbelievable. You aresodramatic, do you know that? Oooh, I’m dark and damaged, world beware.Iam literallydescended from a family of killers, but I still pour my cereal before my milk like everyone else.”
Jesse’s face does a complicated dance, like he can’t decide whether to laugh or trip me into a puddle. What he eventually settles on looks a lot like remorse. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out, and I’m well aware your friends would have torn the guy to shreds if he was actually disrespecting you. I just …” He studies the sky, seeking answers behind the gray veil permanently cloaking Ward. “I don’t have a lot of experience with this.”
“With …”
He lowers his eyes to mine. They’re pained, clearly struggling against some revelation. “Caring about someone. I don’t think I’m doing it right.”
The pause that follows lasts a century. Holding on to my anger becomes impossible, and it settles into a warm and familiar exasperation. I’ve already seen countless examples of how Jesse acts when he cares about something. Dedication doesn’t do it justice. Up until now, most of what he cared about revolved around curses, home improvement projects, plants, and a bird feeder.
I sigh. “You can just ask next time.”
Relief loosens the tension in Jesse’s shoulders, and he gestures at his car. “Let me give you a ride. Please.”
