Anna's daddy is an eighth-grade biology teacher in Dayton, Ohio, but Dillon didn't know that and Anna couldn't tell him. She was clinging to her cover just as ardently as I was clinging to mine.
The boys around Dillon started to laugh. And just like that I remembered why Gallagher Girls and town boys aren't supposed to mix.
Anna stumbled backward, because, despite nearly three and a half years of P&E training, she could hardly swat a fly. The town was swarming with Gallagher Girls that afternoon, but Dillon and his friends had found Anna. It wasn't an accident. Anna was alone and weak, so obviously someone like Dillon would be there to try to thin her from the herd.
"I'm just here to …" Anna tried to speak, but her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"What's that?" Dillon asked. "I didn't hear you."
"I…" Anna stuttered.
I wanted to go to her, but I was frozen somehow— halfway between being her friend and being a homeschooled girl with a cat named Suzie. If I were one and not the other, I could have stopped it, but instead I told myself over and over, She'll be okay; she'll be okay; she'll be—
"What's the matter? Don't they teach you how to speak at the Gallagher Academy?" Dillon said, and I would have given anything for Anna to bite back in Arabic, or Japanese, or Farsi, but she just took another backward step. Her elbow knocked a box of Band-Aids, and it teetered on the edge of the shelf.
Anna inched toward the door and mumbled, "I'll come back for—"
But a couple of Dillon's friends stepped in front of her, surrounding her with a wall of crimson lettermen's jackets, and I couldn't see her anymore.
She'll be fine, I said again, willing it to be true. Which in a way it was, because just then the doorbells chimed, and in walked Macey McHenry.
"Hey, Anna." To my knowledge, Macey had never said more than two words to Anna Fetterman, but as she strolled through the door, her voice was light and free, and she sounded like the tiny girl's best friend in the world. "What's going on?"
The four boys parted around Anna, backing away; maybe because of the way Macey chomped her gum then blew a bubble that popped in Dillon's face; maybe because they'd never seen a girl so beautiful in person before. But Dillon didn't stray.
"Oh," he said smugly, looking Macey's amazing figure up and down. "She has a friend."
Anna looked at Macey as if she half suspected her classmate to say, Who me? I'm not her friend. But Macey only fingered the bottles on the shelves, handing Anna a bottle of vitamin C. "You should really take these."
Macey walked down the aisle, examining the shelves, ignoring Dillon and the gang, who kept looking at their leader for directions.
"I should have known the Gallagher Academy wouldn't let its precious darlings out on their own," Dillon mocked. But Macey only smiled one of her patently beautiful smiles.
"Yeah," she said, eyeing his buddies. "We're not brave like you."
"Is there a problem here?" I knew the voice, but the accent was one Bex only used on rare occasions. To this day, I don't know how she got through the front door without setting off the chimes, but there she was, strolling past the Cold and Flu section, coming to stand on Anna's other side. I didn't know why she wasn't at the movie. I didn't care.
It was three against four now, and Dillon didn't like those odds. Still, he managed to look at Bex and say, "What's the matter? Is your yacht broken or something?"
Dillon snickered. The friends snickered. It was an idiot snicker-a-thon until Macey said, "Not that I've heard."
"Did you boys come over here to flirt with Anna?" Bex said, laying on her faux charm. She pushed a petrified Anna toward the clan. "Anna, tell the boys a little something about yourself."
"I have a boyfriend!" she blurted in a way that told me it totally wasn't a lie. I was stunned. Bex was stunned. Even Macey took a second to recover. Anna has a boyfriend?
In all this time, I'd never thought that one of my classmates might have a boyfriend—especially not Anna. "His name is Carl," she added.
"Sorry, boys," Bex said, sliding her arm around Anna's shoulder. "Carl beat you to it."
"Oh, so they have boyfriends. Tell me, is Carl a townie?" Dillon asked, as if he wanted to be let in on a secret. "Do you girls like to go slumming?"
"It's probably Carl Rockefeller," Macey added, and Bex squeezed Anna harder until she said, "Yes. Carl Rockefeller. We know each other from the physics"—another hard squeeze—this time with fingernails—"um, yacht," Anna corrected, "club."
Two pats on Anna's shoulder told her she'd done well.
"Hey," Dillon said, stepping forward as if he were tired of beating around the bush. "I was wondering if you know someone I know…" His voice trailed off. He leaned forward, and I just knew—I mean KNEW—that he was on to me, but then he said, "The Queen of England."
Well, Bex actually has met the queen, but obviously she wasn't about to say so. She just stood quietly as Dillon and his buddies laughed far too hard at the joke, making it even less funny.
"Honey, I got your—" The woman behind the counter stopped abruptly when she saw four boys closing in on three girls. The only sound in the room was the white paper bag that held Anna's prescription as it crinkled in her hands.