“Is that…?” Another voice trailed off. Younger, like he was my age, maybe.
“Yeah, it’s the mayor’s daughter,” a raspy voice added. “The blind one.”
“Oh, shit. I heard she was coming.”
“She’s cute.”
Heat covered my face, but I kept my jaw locked to keep the panic from rising. I spun around again and tried the door.
I pushed my body into it, it gave way, but it was pushed closed again by the same weight. More cackling from the other side.
I shook my head. I was going to kill them. Whoever they were, I was going to kill them. I wanted to scream—to demand they open the damn door and let me out—but it would just entertain the boys behind me even more.
“It’s okay, babe. You can stay,” one of the same voices told me. “Not like you can see our shit anyway, right?”
“Shower’s all yours, babe.” A towel hit my body, and I caught it on reflex. “Unless you don’t want it all to yourself.”
Heat rose to my cheeks, and I swallowed a couple times to wet my throat. “Hello?” I called, hoping to alert a teacher that a girl was in the room so I could get some help. “Hello?”
“Hello!” a voice called, mimicking me.
And another. “Hello!”
“Hello!”
“Hello!”
Male voices around the room laughed and joked, and I gritted my teeth together, aggravated. I didn’t know why I was surprised. The guys in this town…
“What the hell’s going on?” someone asked.
“Winter Ashby wandered in, man.”
I backed up to the door, my hands at the ready as it sounded like more guys came in from the showers or the gym, I wasn’t sure.
But before I hit the hard doors, I hit something else. I stopped, feeling a body behind me.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m Simon.”
I jerked, but there was suddenly a body to my left and in my ear. “I’m Brace.”
And then another one in front of me. “I’m Miles,” he said, and I sucked in a breath and held out my hands.
I tried to slip in any direction I could, but they were everywhere.
“Guys, come on, leave her alone. Get her out of here!” someone barked from farther away.
“Oh, come on, Will…”
I stepped to my left, but there was someone’s bare skin there. I shot to my right, and I ran into someone in a towel. I growled and darted out my hands, pushing at the body of the boy who said he was Miles in front of me.
“You guys are assholes,” I said. “Let me out of here!”
Suddenly, a hand swung into me from the front as Miles grunted, and the boy behind me shoved into me as he was pulled away, knocking me forward a little. I lost my breath and held out my arms to brace myself, but they were suddenly gone. All three of them.
Someone took my hand, and I jerked on reflex, about to pull it away, but then he asked, “Are you okay?”
His tone was light and gentle and immediately put me at ease. Or at least more ease than I was. I stopped, letting his fingers hold mine by the tips.
It was a small gesture, but it didn’t scare me. Just more reassuring.
“I’m Will,” he said. “I’ll find someone to get you out of here, okay?”
I inhaled the fragrance of body wash and fresh laundry on him and nodded, his presence helping me calm down a little.
But then our hands were knocked apart.
I went rigid, stunned for a moment. What the—
“What?” Will asked someone.
“Get off her and go get dressed,” the new voice said. “I got it.”
I got it? Who was this?
“I wasn’t on her,” I heard Will say, but his voice faded away anyway.
Wait…
I backed up, pressing the door again and finding it still not giving way.
“Are you hurt?” the dark voice asked me.
I shook my head. His tone wasn’t taunting like the others, but there was something about it that gave me pause.
“Are you going to class?” he pressed, his voice growing closer. I couldn’t back up anymore, just kept putting all of my weight into the door.
I opened my mouth. “I have—I have lunch.”
He leaned in close, his body brushing mine, and I sucked in a breath and put my hands up.
“Let me get the door for you,” he said in a low voice.
“I…” I planted my hands on his chest to keep him away from me, feeling a crisp shirt, stiff collar, and skin. I let my fingertips linger a moment too long in the strip of bare chest where his shirt wasn’t buttoned.
Shit. I moved to pull my hands down, but just then, my thumb brushed an object—a little ball or…bead—peeking through the opening of his shirt.
Déjà vu washed over me.
Grazing it with my finger, I felt another and then another, tracing the beads on the chain—warm from his skin—down his torso where the two strains joined into one as it draped down his stomach.
Wood. I could feel the grooves under the gloss coating.
My stomach dipped. No, no, no…
I couldn’t help it. I followed the line of the beads, feeling his stomach tighten under my fingertips, and his breathing quicken.
Reaching the crucifix I hoped wasn’t there, I pinched it between my fingers, my nerves firing hot under my skin as I instantly recognized the carefully crafted definition of the fingers attached to the cross.
Oh, my God. I let the rosary go like it burned my fingers.
But he grabbed my hand, pressing it back on the beads and his skin.
“Oh, why stop when you were doing so well?” he taunted.
“Damon,” I murmured, trying to pull my hand away.
“Mmm,” he affirmed. “Missed you, kid.”
I tore my hand free, clenching my jaw.
Jesus. In my head, I still saw him how I last saw him. A kid, not much bigger than me, with a lanky body and a shaky voice.
But everything had changed. His hand in mine was bigger than I remember, his voice was deeper, he was taller, and he had a voice now. He wasn’t eleven anymore.
Why did I feel like I was just now realizing that?
And any hope that he’d forgotten about me was now gone, too. He knew exactly who I was.
But before he could say anything else, the door behind me gave way, I fell back, and he caught me, pulling me forward again and into his body. I didn’t have time to push him away before someone grabbed my hand, pulling me off him. I stumbled.
“Winter,” my sister snapped. “What are you doing?”
But she didn’t wait for my response. She hauled me out of the locker room and into the hallway, and the door slammed shut behind us as a trickle of sweat glided down my back. My head was swimming, and I could still feel him near me.
I jogged to keep up with my sister as my heart pounded painfully.
But my body buzzed with warmth, too. I frowned, rubbing my fingertips over my thumbs and still feeling the beads between them.
Ari was probably the one who stuffed me in the damn locker room in the first place. Or she had her friends do it. How else did she know where I was?
She was probably just pissed when I didn’t make it back out right away and she had to go in there and fetch me. Were she and Damon friendly?
They were in the same grade, but I had no idea if they hung in the same circles. My parents would’ve advised her to stay away from him, but it wasn’t like she would listen unless she wanted to. I had absolutely no idea what he was like anymore or about my sister’s life at this school. The former I couldn’t admit I wanted to inquire about over the years, and the other, I really didn’t care. My sister and I had been struggling through our growing pains for about ten years now, and I wasn’t sure why. There just seemed to be a layer to her I couldn’t crack, and we didn’t have much in common, either. Especially not anymore. She’d gotten used to life as an only child while I was away and obviously liked it.
“God, he’s looking at her,” Claudia, one of Rika’s friends, said across from me as we sat in the lunchroom.
I perked my ears, an earbud still stuck in one as I half-listened to music and half-listened to the conversation. I didn’t want to be rude, and I should’ve been concerned with making friends on my first day, but after the locker room debacle, I needed to recharge for a few minutes.
“Who?” Rika asked.
But no one answered her—at least not verbally. It was times like this when I realized how aware people were of my disability. Answering with nods or body gestures I couldn’t see.
My disability.
I hated that word.
But it was what it was, and people, without meaning any harm, used it to their advantage. They could communicate with their eyes, their hands, their gestures…all in a possible attempt to keep me out of the loop.
Who was looking at who? Someone was looking at me?
“His attention has been on her for longer than seven seconds,” Noah, another of Rika’s friends commented, “and longer than seven seconds is not good.”
Who and who?
But Claudia cursed in a whisper. “Oh, shit.”
Rika shifted on my left, and the next thing I knew someone sat down on my right, their knees blocking me in, like they were straddling the bench and facing me.
“What are you listening to?” a deep voice asked.
I had a moment to process whose voice it was before the earbud was plucked out of my ear.
Damon. They’d been talking about him. He’d been staring at me in the lunchroom. The scent of tobacco and cloves wafted off him, and I searched for ways to get rid of him.
He was bold. A lot bolder than I remembered, and I wasn’t used to it.
He was quiet for a minute, and I guessed he was probably checking out my playlist. The oldies I listened to when I needed something fun, light-hearted, and peppy to get me out of a mood. The same mood he put me in this morning.
The earbud dropped back in my lap, and his voice was low but sure. “It won’t be like that with us.”