“Nine feet!” Blake said, incredulous. “You’re saying that Seth — if it was Seth, which I’m not admitting—”
“I’m not suing anybody, Blake,” Fletcher quickly said, “whatever the situation or circumstance might have been. After all these years, you of all people should know I fight suits. Have I ever actually initiated one?”
Blake Baker shrugged. “There’s always a first time.”
“Well, this isn’t it,” Fletcher said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened last night, okay?”
Baker tipped his head in assent. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it was Seth. And let’s also assume there’s no way he could have picked Zack up and slammed his head against a limb of a tree that’s nine feet up. At least not by himself.”
“Then he had help,” Fletcher said. “From who? I don’t mean this as anything against Seth, but let’s face it — he’s never had a lot of friends.”
Now it was Baker’s turn to fall silent. He nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “Until a couple of weeks ago, I’m not sure he had any.”
“But now he does?” Fletcher asked.
“So Jane tells me,” Baker replied. “Your niece. Seems Jane saw them dancing together Saturday night.” He met Fletcher’s eyes. “So where does that get us?”
Instead of answering the question, Ed Fletcher glanced at the clock on Blake Baker’s desk. “It’s almost noon,” he announced. “I’ve got a lunch and then a meeting. What do you say we meet around two and go have a talk with my brother-in-law? At least we should find out where his daughter was last night.”
“What am I gonna do?” Seth asked as the clamor of the bell announced the end of lunch hour. All through lunch, Angel and Seth had felt the eyes of their classmates on them and heard the whispered murmurs as the tale of what had happened to Zack Fletcher last night swirled through the cafeteria, getting more exaggerated with every telling. Seth sat with his back to the room, but he felt Zack’s furious glare as clearly as if they’d been sitting across the table from each other.
And he heard the rumors about what would happen after school. It didn’t seem to matter where he went that day — there was always a group of boys whispering among themselves, then glancing at him and nudging each other.
At least half a dozen boys — most of whom had never before bothered to speak to him at all — had brushed roughly past him, offering one promise or another just loud enough for him to hear.
“You’re dead meat, Baker.”
“Zack and Chad are gonna kill you, you little creep.”
“Who do you think you are, jumping Fletcher?”
“Your ass is so in a sling.”
It wasn’t just Zack’s friends either — it was everyone. Everyone who’d never said a thing when Zack, Chad, and Jared used to pants him or shove him into a wall or push his head into a toilet. And the worst of it was, it wasn’t even true! Zack had jumped him.
Now, as the rest of the kids swarmed past Seth and Angel — and one of them “accidentally” shoved him hard enough to send the contents of his lunch tray cascading over Seth — they stayed at the table, trying to figure out the answer to Seth’s question: What was he going to do?
Seth had all but given up on finding an answer when Angel brightened. “Meet me at your locker right after school, okay?” she said.
Seth cocked his head. “What are you—” he began.
“Just meet me, okay?” she said, and then she was gone, hurrying out of the cafeteria with her backpack. By the time he cleared the mess from their table and went after her, the last bell rang.
He was already late for class, and he still had to go to his locker. As Seth moved through the silent and deserted hallways — free of the whispered conversations, the barely suppressed snickers, and the angry stares of Zack’s friends — the tendrils of fear that had been gripping him more and more tightly as the day wore on began to loosen.
Then just as he reached his locker, someone behind him said, “What you doing, Beth?”
Chad Jackson’s voice startled Seth so badly that his backpack slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor.
“Scared, Beth?” Chad asked, his voice low, but carrying a note of menace that made Seth’s stomach churn.
Bluff, he told himself, and turned to face Chad, who was flanked by Zack Fletcher and Jared Woods. “Why should I be scared?” he asked, and prayed that they hadn’t heard the tremor in his voice.
“Because now you’re all by yourself,” Chad said. “And Zack’s not.” He moved closer, and Seth could see a hint of uncertainty in his eyes, as if unsure what Seth might be able to do to him.
“I was by myself last night too,” Seth said.
“Were you?” Chad replied. “Or was your girlfriend with you?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Seth said, and instantly wished he could reclaim the words.
Chad’s lips twisted into a sneer. “I bet she’s not,” he said. “In fact, I bet you wish you were someone’s girlfriend, don’t you, Beth?” He cast a sidelong glance toward Zack. “How about it? Is that why you were following Zack last night? Do you wish you were his girlfriend, Beth?”
“Don’t call me that,” Seth said, but now the tremor in his voice was so bad, he knew Chad couldn’t miss it. Sure enough, Chad’s eyes glittered with malice, and as Zack snickered, he moved closer to Seth.
“Why not?” Chad asked. “What do you think you’re going to do about it?”
The urge to turn and run was almost irresistible, but Seth steeled himself against it. “The same thing I did to Zack last night,” he said softly.
Not even a flicker of fear crossed Chad’s expression, but Seth was sure he’d seen Zack flinch. Chad only moved even closer, so he was towering above him. “You think you can jump me like you jumped Zack?” he demanded.
“I didn’t—” Seth began, then realized it didn’t matter what he said. The attack he’d been afraid of all day would take place anyway. Grabbing his backpack, Seth tried to duck away, but it was too late. Chad smashed him up against the bank of lockers, slamming his head so hard against the metal that for a second Seth thought he might pass out.
“You listen, you little shit,” Chad hissed, clutching Seth’s shirt and shoving his face so close that Chad was spitting on him as he spoke. “You jump Zack, you might as well have jumped me! So I’m going to make you wish you were dead, get it? I’m going to hurt you so bad you’ll never—”
At the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, Chad let go of Seth as quickly as he’d grabbed him. By the time the principal appeared at the top of the stairs, Chad was busily working the combination of his own locker, and Zack and Jared appeared to be paying no attention to Seth either. Phil Lambert, though, had been the school principal long enough to read the entire situation in an instant, and he focused on Chad, the only one of the four boys in the corridor who wasn’t looking at him. “Something wrong, Jackson?” he asked.
Chad turned around, shrugging. “Just can’t get my stupid lock to work.”
“Then maybe you should get the custodian,” the principal suggested. “And even if Jackson has a problem,” he said, addressing the others, “shouldn’t the rest of you be in class?”
Zack Fletcher and Jared Woods jumped at the opportunity to escape the principal unpunished, and Seth held back just long enough to let them start downstairs before he hurried down the hall toward his trigonometry class.
Though every eye in the room shifted from the teacher to stare at Seth when he entered, and the teacher himself was glaring, all Seth was aware of were the words Chad had spoken to him.