Rubbing the back of his head, he said, “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Everything all right?”
“Sure, I guess.” Turning on his heel, he looked around. Everyone was gone except for the Dark Fae girl, who watched him with large, wary eyes. He told Hugh, “I got really mad at somebody, and I almost lost my temper.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” But he could have. He had been awfully close. Did that make him bad? Honesty forced him to admit, “Not this time anyway.”
Hugh didn’t sound shocked or worried. In fact, he sounded as mild as ever. “Good job, sport. You okay?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Call if you need to.”
“I will.”
He hung up and said to the Dark Fae girl, “Hi, my name’s Liam.”
He kind of wanted to add the Double Oh Peanut and Rock Star stuff, but he didn’t think she would find it as funny as he had the first time.
She didn’t say hi back. She said, “I’m Marika.” She pointed to the phone. “First, that’s gonna get you into trouble. You’re in Mrs. Teaberry’s class, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She can be really mean if you get on her bad side. She’s made kids cry before.”
He pocketed it. “I’m supposed to carry my phone at all times, so it’s gonna have to be okay.”
Shaking her head, Marika said, “Second, those boys? They’re not going to forgive or forget what you just did. You’re pretty big for a first grader, and you’re really, really fast. In fact you might be faster than any kid I’ve ever seen, plus you look strong. But they’re third graders, and now you’re on their shit list, and that’s not a good place to be.” She scowled and muttered damn it under her breath. “Sorry. I know I’m not supposed to swear at school.”
Starting to feel entertained, Liam put his hands in his pockets again and rocked on the balls of his feet.
“It’s okay,” he told her, thinking of the sentinels, and of Hugh and Eva. And of Mom too, on occasion, but especially Dad. “I live with a bunch of people who swear a lot.”
Marika looked at him sidelong again, as if she wasn’t sure he had all his marbles. “Look, I’m trying to tell you something. You made some bad kids really mad at you just now.”
Actually, he wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He was running into a lot of new situations today. Rubbing the back of his head again, he thought about it. Cool didn’t seem like quite the right thing to say, so his mind wandered off on a different tangent. “Who were they, and why were they bullying that other boy?”
She paused as if he had surprised her. Then she said, “Andrew is the guy who tried to punch you. He’s the leader.”
Oh yes. Ringleader Boy. He nodded.
“Joel and Brad are tools. They just do everything Andrew says, but that doesn’t mean they do nothing. Perrin is the kid they were picking on. We’re all in the same class. Perrin did something really stupid last year—when he saw them breaking into the teacher’s lounge, he told on them. They got in major trouble and they weren’t allowed to go to the end of the year picnic, and now they won’t leave him alone.”
“What did they do?”
Her face tightened. “I told you, they’re really bad. They stole money and ruined his lunch several times. They tore up his homework, and beat him up a couple times. Once his mom had to take him to the hospital for stitches. I told Perrin he had started something he had to finish, and he needed to tell his mom and dad who had hurt him, but he got too scared and stopped talking. Summer break is a long time. I thought they would have moved on to something else by now.” Then her wide, gray gaze locked onto him, and her expression changed. “Since you’ve butted in, they probably have.”
“You mean they’ll start picking on me,” he said.
She looked exasperated. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Okay, thanks for the warning,” he told her. He still liked her, but he had to admit, she seemed pretty grumpy. “What about you? You stuck up for Perrin too.”
She looked angry and a bit lost. “I have to. He’s my neighbor, and we’ve sort of grown up together. We had to play together when we were little. And he doesn’t have a clue about how anything works.”
So she recognized Perrin as prey too. Liam blew out a breath. “So, they don’t leave you alone either?”
“Like I said, that’s probably changed, thanks to you crashing their party. It’s hard to believe you found so much trouble in your first recess.”
It didn’t seem like the best time to tell her he’d been looking for her.
Her head turned in the direction of the larger play area. “Look, I gotta go. Try not to be too stupid, will you?”
That sounded like some great advice. As she ran off, he called after her, “Thanks, I’ll try.”
The recess bell rang, and everybody ran to get in their line for class. For a few minutes, the playground swirled with confusion as kids pushed past each other, searching for the right place to get in line.
Something hit Liam between the shoulder blades, hard enough to send him down on one knee. Coughing in surprise at the sharp pain, he went forward, splaying his hands on the asphalt in front of him.
Then a blaze of energy shot through him. Breathing hard, he leaped to his feet and whirled, looking around. He couldn’t see Andrew or either of the tools, Joel and Brad. Other children surrounded him. The babble of their voices seemed too loud and shrill. Nobody was paying attention to him, or looked like they thought anything was odd, but he knew what happened.
That hadn’t been an ordinary shove. Someone had hit him, hard.
Nobody had ever hit him before.
He rotated his shoulders to ease the ache, while blood pounded through his body. It was another good lesson.
As strong and fast as he was, someone could still strike him in the back and hurt him bad, and if he didn’t keep his guard up, he might never see it coming.
The rest of the morning dragged on. Mrs. Teaberry didn’t smile at him or call on him, no matter how many times he raised his hand when she asked questions. She always picked somebody else to answer, until finally Liam stopped raising his hand altogether.
Perplexed, he studied her. She almost acted as if she were mad at him, or as if she didn’t like him. He didn’t know quite what to make of that. Usually, people liked him, but school had turned out to be much trickier than he had expected.
He was happy when lunchtime came. He would have gone to look for Marika, if he could have, but they were supposed to stay in line as they got their trays and went to sit at the long tables. Hungrily he ate all of his food, even though some of it was unappetizing.
After the meal, they went outside for another recess. The day had turned hot, and some of the other kids gathered in the shade of the large trees, but he liked the warm sunshine and basked in it.
The area between his shoulder blades, where somebody had hit him, still ached, and he rotated his shoulders. Sally, the girl he had sat by at lunch, asked, “Wanna play hopscotch?”
Just then, he caught sight of Andrew, Brad and Joel. They hung on the metal railing that bordered the concrete stairwell. As they talked, all three looked at him.
Andrew met his gaze. The other boy’s eyes were narrowed and cold, and the sore spot between Liam’s shoulders throbbed.
He said to Sally, “Thanks, but not right now. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She walked away.
He watched as Sally joined a couple of other girls, and they started a new game of hopscotch. Then he looked back at Andrew and the tools.
While he had been looking away, one of the tools, Brad, had disappeared. Andrew and Joel leaned their elbows on the railing, still watching him.
Liam’s heart kicked. On reflex, he spun in a circle, but Brad was nowhere in sight. Andrew smiled at him, and it wasn’t a nice expression.