Page 9

Laney couldn’t concentrate.

She put her pencil on the farthest edge of the desk and watched it roll slowly towards her, snatching it out of the air before it dropped onto her lap. Over and over.

She felt like her insides had been scooped out with a shovel. Her entire midsection was totally missing. It was an odd sensation, feeling like your lower body and upper body were connected by space taken up entirely by someone else.

She’d never communicated with anyone the way she communicated with Dustin, and she’d been unnerved when Shane asked about it. It’s like you’re speaking your own language… Dusty had always talked to her like that. And she’d always talked to him. But it had never, ever occurred to her that someone else might understand.

It had unraveled her a little, or a lot, maybe. More than his naked torso, shockingly beautiful despite his ribs jutting out. More than the damp collar of his t-shirt, soaked from his freshly dewy hair. Calling her and Dustin out was like he’d found the one loose thread that could pull her apart and tugged.

She understood why Dusty liked him. She wondered what had happened, the way Shane scowled when he mentioned those twats. Dusty didn’t like Laney getting involved with his problems, but she wasn’t stupid and knew he had to deal with assholes more often than not. She’d helped when they were both younger, but one time a boy named Trevor had kicked her as hard as he could in the gut. Turned out he’d been wearing steel-toed boots, and he fractured her rib. After that, Dusty stopped letting her help. She knew he was still being bothered, but he was also growing up and needed to learn to fight his own battles. His tactic was usually invisibility. And it worked. Mostly.

Laney had never mastered invisibility. “Always picking fights with someone twice your size,” their older brother Cary had said with a grin.

“Everyone is twice my size,” she’d grumbled. He’d ruffled her hair, and slipped her ten bucks so she could go to the movies. The following week, Cary made her pay him back fifteen – the ten that she “stole”, and five for interest.

“Laney?” someone asked, sounding annoyed.

“That’s me,” she said brightly.

“Are you paying attention?” Right. English class. Mr. Davies.

“Honestly, not really.” A few kids tittered.

She could feel him about to open his mouth to speak so she lifted her head and looked him square in the eye. He blinked at her, his eyes traveling over her face, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. But he moved on.

It was a testament to their neighbourhood that most kids didn’t look twice at her swollen face. Don’t ask, don’t tell was the school motto – there could be an orgy in the hallway and the teachers would probably have continued pretending to read student papers.

She brooded in silence for the rest of the class, wondering how the hell she was supposed to get through the rest of the school day knowing that the guts-vanishingly good-looking, alarmingly hyperaware boy who she’d just seen half naked was in her house, hopefully snooping through her bedroom.