by Brooke Moss
I nodded. She was one of the few people who understood how desperate I was to get back into the water. My parents bought me a full-body wet suit last year, and after that I was able to swim in the late fall and early spring. Every single day I woke up waiting for the temperature to hit sixty-five degrees so that I could go for a dip, but the winter here in the Inland Northwest was hanging on for dear life. My only water time was my weekly aqua therapy session with my physical therapist, and that left much to be desired.
“Maybe I’ll take a dip this afternoon.” I watched people in the crowd glance over their shoulder. As soon as they spotted me below them in my chair, they’d do their civic duty and shift to the side a bit. Grimacing, I inched forward. Courtesy wasn’t a perquisite to attend my high school.
“Luna, it’s too cold. You’ll cramp up. Not to mention the fact that Mom and Dad will kill you.” She took her place behind me and put her hands on the handles of my chair. “Excuse me.”
My cheeks scalded behind my curtain of dark hair. I hated being babied, even when it was necessary.
She sighed behind me. “I said, excuse me.”
A kid with white-blond hair and wearing a football jersey—even though football season ended months ago—gave Evey the once-over. I shuddered as soon as we made eye contact. In a school of a thousand students, why oh why did I always find myself in the same hallway as Ian McClendon?
Kevin, Ian’s zit-faced toady, demanded, “What’s the magic word, Prosser?”
I heard the plastic underneath my sister’s fingers groan as she gripped my chair. Evey hadn’t inherited my fondness for speaking up. Unless she was on the softball field, she preferred to shrink into the inspirational, anti-drug posters lining the walls.
She cleared her throat. “Please?”
His oily red face twisted into a smirk. “Nope. Try again.”
Ian pulled his gaze from mine and dutifully punched Kevin in the arm. “Knock it off, Kev.”
I grabbed my wheels and lurched my chair out of Evey’s grip and into the back of Kevin’s legs. “Is the magic word dickhead?”
When he stumbled, his backpack swung off of his shoulder and rammed into the girl walking next to him. Kevin usually preferred cramming himself halfway up Ian’s backside, which caused more than a handful of problems when Ian and I had dated sophomore year. Seemed like every time he’d gone in to kiss me, Kevin had popped up and taken a cheap shot at me: my looks, my family, the worn-out old Victorian house we lived in, which apparently wasn’t as cool as the posh lakeside cabin where he and Ian’s families lived.
Unfortunately, he was also the person who’d taken the news that I would likely never walk again and turned it into hot gossip in the halls of Sandpoint High. Ian, who was one part nice-guy, one part popularity-obsessed jock, quickly decided that breaking things off with me was the smartest choice. According to him, I needed to focus on recovery. But realistically, he needed to focus on dating the head cheerleader with the giant boobs and two working legs.
Not that I was bitter.
A few more heads turned, and Ian’s expression softened as soon as our eyes met again. “Sorry about that, Luna.”
“Right.” I shoved past him and ran over Kevin’s toe. The wall of teenagers parted, and we finally sidled past just as the first bell rang. I hated the fact that Ian looked at me with pity. It made me want to punch him in the face. If only I could reach it.
He shifted between his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry, all right?”
Kevin straightened up, rubbing his arm as he glared at me. “Gimp bitch.”
Ian glared down at his friend. “Dude. Shut up.”
I didn’t respond. I was used to it. As much as I hated to admit it, my parents were right when they whined to my doctors about kids today being so cruel. There was a kid I’d gone to school with since the third grade who missed the bulk of our freshman year because he’d been fighting testicular cancer. The kids in my school still tormented him by calling him One Nut Nick.
I rolled right up to Evey’s locker, and she dropped her pack to the floor with a thump. “Kevin’s a jerk.” She narrowed her eyes behind her glasses. “I don’t know why Ian puts up with him.”
“Because Ian’s a tool.” I picked at a thread hanging on the strap of my bag.
“He said he didn’t see you.”
I pinched the strap between my fingers. “He also said he didn’t like redheads, but look who he’s screwing now.”
“You’ve known him since you guys were in junior high.” She opened her locker and shifted through its contents. “You have to be nice to him eventually.”
“I don’t have to be nice to anyone.” I tilted my head and looked up at Evey. “Why are you suddenly so defensive of Mr. Jockstrap?”
She busied herself filtering through the contents of her locker. “I’m not.”
A younger version of Ian—bearing the same blond hair, but a rounder, softer face—walked by. “Hey, Evey.”
She glanced up and offered a smile, small and prim.
I raised one eyebrow. “Does this have something to do with his brother?”
My sister’s face flushed, and she pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “No. Geez. Be quiet.”
I rolled as close to her legs as I could get without knocking her down. “Come on. You like Hayden, don’t you?”
She watched his back as he sauntered away. “No. Yeah. I dunno.”
I followed her line of sight. Ian and I had lamented about our equally annoying thirteen-year-old siblings. We didn’t know that two years later, we’d be broken up in a very made-for-TV-teen-drama way and our fifteen-year-old siblings would be crushing on each other. Fate was peculiar sometimes.
We watched as a senior passed Hayden and slugged him in the gut so hard he doubled over. Papers and a baseball glove slid through the open zipper on his backpack, hitting the floor among all the walking feet.
“Tell your brother hi,” the older kid said with a snide chuckle.
Hayden moved quickly to gather his things. The hierarchy in my backwoods school was maddening. The popular kids were never nice to the younger kids, even if it meant betraying a sibling. So long as it made you appear cool and aloof, nobody cared about how much of a jerk you looked like.
“Hayden hates it when they do that,” she hissed down to me.
“He should. It’s rude.” Casting an evil glance at Ian’s back as he strutted away with his friends, I shifted in my seat. “I can’t stand watching crap like that.”
“He says that when they’re at home, Ian is cool. That’s why Hayden doesn’t get mad.”
I watched as Hayden shoved his way past a group of staring girls, keeping his head down. “I’d say he’s plenty mad. He’s just not saying anything because his brother is Mr. Sandpoint High.”
A hand came down on Hayden’s shoulder, stopping him as he barreled toward the corner.
His startled voice carried down the hall. “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”
I leaned back in my seat so I could see which teacher would lecture poor Hayden. I couldn’t see what faculty member it was, but the color drained from Hayden’s face. Poor guy was having a crap morning.
The surrounding kids scattered like mice, their eyes wide with unabashed curiosity. When some girls scuttled past Evey and me, I heard one of them say, “Where did he come from?”
Evey peered around her locker door, and her mouth dropped open. “Holy cow.”
I reeled my head back in Hayden’s direction. “What’s all the fuss about? I…oh.”
It was if things were suddenly moving in slow motion as he came around the corner. The first thing I noticed was his arm connected to the hand on Hayden’s shoulder. It was so defined that it looked as though it’d been Photoshopped. When my gaze rolled upward, I saw that the guy was cut enough to stretch the armholes of his worn black T-shirt. The knees of his faded black jeans were torn to shreds, as were the ankles, which were slit at the sides to make room for his dirty, scuffed boots
.
When his face came into focus, my stomach tangled itself into a figure eight. His square jaw was dusted with whiskers; his cheekbones looked like something carved out of marble. On the each side of his neck were three tattooed lines, drawn at a diagonal just below his earlobes. Dark brown hair the color of chocolate hung in waves around his face. His mouth pulled upward atone corner in a smirk that made my heart grind to a halt.
“Who’s that?” Evey said.
I couldn’t focus on my sister. The hot dude was monopolizing my focus. “I…uh…I don’t know.”
Evey’s eyes locked on him as he sauntered down the hallway. His head was half a foot above everyone else’s. “Well, whoever he is, the girls are all staring at him the way Dad looks at a prime rib.”
“Huh.” I fingered a long strand of my dark hair, faking indifference while my heart coughed and groaned to a reluctant restart. She was right. Every single set of female eyes in the hallway was locked on the mystery boy.
He approached us, and the air around me filled with the aroma of the water grass that grew between the rocks along the edge of the lake.
Evey immediately turned to her closed locker, pretending to check and recheck the padlock. My fingers froze as soon as he fixed his gaze in my direction.
His eyes were the clearest, most crystal blue I’d ever seen. They looked ethereal, the same color as a robin’s egg, and slightly iridescent. I swear to all things holy that they could see right through me to the metal lockers behind my chair.
He scrolled his gaze down to my scrawny legs, which were covered in dark gray tights and propped on the footrest of my chair. His stare strayed from my legs, travelling over the metal framework of my chair as though he’d never seen one before.
The side of his mouth dropped, and his smile faded away. It was as if the sun slid behind a cloud, and I was inexplicably disappointed. I waited for his nerves to take over. The shifting eyes. The fidgeting. I’d seen it all.
None of that happened. Instead, he held out his hand. Whether he knew that he was setting off tingles up and down the back of my neck, I had no idea. But he did, and it felt amazing.
“Hello, Luna.”
Chapter Two
After The Pretty—as I’d dubbed him—held his hand out to me, I just sat there, staring at him like my little brother stares at his video games for five seconds until Evey kicked my chair. When I raised my palm and put it in his, I realized my sweat glands had thrown themselves into overdrive. I was good and clammy when he slowly shook my hand.
“Your hand’s shaking.” His voice was deep and rich, like the drinks my parents made at their coffee shop in downtown Sandpoint. It wrapped itself around me like a heavy, warm blanket, and the trembling stopped. “There,” he said. “That’s better.”
I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again. All of my witty, scathing one-liners eluded me, and I suddenly felt as though I were completely stoned on a handful of painkillers. During the first few months after the accident, I’d spent plenty of time being medicated, and this guy apparently had the same effect.
Most of the activity in the hallway ceased as The Pretty held my hand and smiled down at me. Lockers stopped slamming. Feet stopped walking. And all eyes—especially those belonging to the girls—locked themselves on our exchange. My school was just small enough that a new kid usually warranted stares and whispers. But when a kid walked into our school with bulging muscles, a jawline that could cut stone, and inexplicable tattoos on either side of his neck…kids froze in place with their mouths hanging open.
Right as the silence between The Pretty and I stretched into uncomfortable territory, he leaned his head forward, pressed a quick kiss to my knuckles, then dropped my hand. I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the warm fuzzies and form words, but he walked away before I regained use of my tongue, and he spoke to no one else before turning down the west hallway.
After school, as we were leaving, my wheel bounced in a parking lot pothole, splashing my leg with rainwater. “Hey.” I bent to swipe at it as Evey pushed me to the back fence where we met Mom every afternoon. “Slow down there, slick.”
My sister giggled. “Sorry. I’ve got a need for speed.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I can’t feel how cold the water is.” I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Otherwise I’d be pissed right now.”
“Not funny.” Evey’s green eyes narrowed for just a moment before looking around. “So?”
I tugged my hair into a makeshift bun on the back of my head, fastening it in place with a pen. “So, what?”
Evey and I came to a stop at our waiting place.
“Come on, Luna. Spill it.”
I had to laugh at my sister. She was staring at me with such an intense gaze that I thought my chair was going to sink into the gravel a few inches. “There’s nothing to spill.”
“Don’t give me that.” She sat down on top of her backpack. “Did you see him again? Did you have any classes together?”
I raised my eyebrow at her. “Who?”
She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “Please. The guy. With the T-shirt and the muscles and the…the hair and stuff.”
“Wow, that was some description.” I pulled a compact out of my bag and started to reapply my dark red lipstick. “And no. I didn’t see him again. Amber and Jessie saw him in the hallway, but we didn’t see him in any of the classes. He sort of disappeared.”
She flared her nostrils at the mention of my friends. She wasn’t exactly their biggest fan. Protective sister and all that. “Lucky them. So he disappeared, huh?”
“Poof.” I waved my hands with the lipstick still extended. “Like magic.”
She twisted a strand of her ponytail around her finger. “How did he know your name?”
“Besides my wild reputation?” I watched as a rowdy group of boys emerged from the back of the school, pushing and shoving each other like ten-year-olds. When I caught sight of my sister gaping at me with unabashed curiosity, I held up the thick canvas strap of my bag where my name was spelled out in metal studs. “I think he saw the poor crippled girl in the chair and felt sorry for her. Nothing epic.”
I’d grown used to people’s pity. Not that I liked it. Because I didn’t. I actually loathed it. There was a time when I warranted looks from guys because I was cute and filled a pair of skinny jeans like nobody’s business. Now my calves and ankles were so thin and weak, my skinny jeans hung loosely around them.
“Oh.” Her shoulders drooped. “So you didn’t find out his name?”
“Nope. You saw what happened.” Dropping my lipstick back into my bag, I rubbed my lips together.
“It looked like he liked you.” She opened a stick of gum and offered me half.
I snorted and popped it into my mouth. “You’re dreaming.”
“Shut up, I’m serious.” She pushed up her glasses. “The way he looked at you. It was so intense. Like he could see through your skull at the lockers behind you or something.”
My head jerked in her direction. “That’s exactly what I thought. Talk about X-ray vision.”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “Intense.”
Shuddering as the March wind danced around us, I pulled my sweatshirt around my body. The Pretty had looked at me with an intensity that still made my insides heat up and churn like lava in a blender. Why me? Of all of the girls in the hallway, including my own totally-beautiful-but-doesn’t-even-know-it sister, he stopped and talked to me. It didn’t make sense.
“Pity,” I spat.
“Huh?”
Sadness chilled and hardened the lava in my stomach. “He was looking at me with pity. Because of this.” I tapped the side of my chair, and my rings made a dinging sound against the metal.
“Luna.” She twisted away from me. “You don’t know that. You’re still pretty.”
Shaking my head, I pulled my hood on and searched the parking lot entrance for our minivan. I’d been told that so many times over the past year—th
at I was still pretty—the words made me roll my eyes. As if having beauty made up for the fact that my legs were useless. There were times when I wished my face had gotten mangled in the crash instead of my spine. I might not look as presentable, but at least I could walk to the kitchen for a drink of water at night. If my mother held my face in her hands one more time, and told me, You’re still so pretty, Luna. You see? The accident didn’t take away everything, I was going to puke. The accident did take away everything. A person has the right to move when she wants to move, walk when she wants to walk, and dance when she wants to dance. Being forced to be stagnate was like a prison sentence I would never climb out from under.
“Hey, look!” She tugged on my sleeve and pointed across the lot to the football field. There walking along the tree line at the edge of the school property was The Pretty. His dark clothes stood out against the bright green of the brush as he strode along with his hands fisted tightly at his sides.
“No books.” My sister’s voice sounded very far away.
“Huh?” I didn’t glance at her. I didn’t want to look away. His head was down, and even though he was so far away, I could tell he was frowning. There was a shadow on his face that hadn’t been there that morning. Where had it come from? Had he been assigned Mrs. Josephson for chemistry? She was a complete lunatic. Did the jocks give him a hard time? They considered screwing with the new kids a sport.
“He’s not carrying a bag. No books.” She wrapped and rewrapped her blonde hair around her finger.
“I’m not entirely convinced he even went to class today.”
The Pretty took a sharp left and darted into the woods. He was quickly swallowed by the brush.
“Good grief, we have roads. Where is he going?”
The sound of a car rumbled across the parking lot, its tires popping and crackling. Evey stood up, tugging her backpack onto her shoulders and pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Maybe his Harley’s parked out there. He looks like the Harley type.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” I laughed, as the red minivan skidded to a stop in front of us.