I really want to see her. More than anything. But I hate driving long distances. It makes my head hurt and then I feel sick to my stomach. I get mad and then I hit stuff and yell. I don’t want to do that at Ellie’s school. I know she hates it when I do that and I don’t want her to feel bad when she sees me.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Ellie says.

“What time?” I ask her.

“I don’t know, Flynn! God, just for once, stop needing to plan everything out!” she yells again.

“I don’t want to talk to you if you’re going to yell at me!” I tell her.

“Fine, I’ll talk to you later.”

Then Ellie isn’t on the phone anymore.

“Hello?” I say but she’s gone.

I take Murphy on his walk. Then I watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Then I go to bed.

But I’m sad.

I miss Ellie.

But I don’t think she misses me.

Chapter Ten

-Ellie-

“God, what a freak!” Dania remarked, pointing at a guy walking with who I guessed was his mom, towards the front of the school. I didn’t recognize him so I assumed he was a new kid.

I didn’t know why Dania seemed so interested in him. He didn’t look like anything special. A little awkward maybe, but nothing to write home about. But Dania was staring at the kid like a fucking animal at the zoo.

“What’s wrong with him? He looks weird,” Dania observed.

“Who cares? He’s just some new kid,” I responded, bored.

“Just look at him, though!” Dania was so insistent. It was odd. I dropped the cigarette I had been smoking on the sidewalk and ground it out with the heel of my boot.

I watched the kid Dania was going on about slink up toward the front of the school. His head was down. His dark hair was on the longish side and hung down in his face. I couldn’t really see what he looked like. His shoulders were slumped and he clasped his hands in front of him.

“Okay, yeah, new kid’s a weirdo, can I bum a smoke?” I asked, poking Dania in the side.

“Didn’t you just have one?” Dania asked, finally forgetting about the new kid. I held my hand out, wiggling my fingers.

“Gimme!” I said, grinning.

Dania rolled her eyes. “Those things will kill you,” she remarked primly and then snorted. “You’re too mean to die, so smoke away.” She jumped to her feet and started waving her arms. “Stu! Come here!” she shrieked.

I sucked in a lungful of smoke and tried not to cough. I didn’t particularly like smoking. But Mr. Beretti hated it. He said the stink on my skin made him sick. If it made him sick then he wouldn’t try to cop a feel when he thought his wife wasn’t looking. Dania and I had become chain smokers in the last few months.

Stu, Shane, and Reggie came over, completing our depraved social circle. Dania wrapped her arm around Stu’s waist. He barely acknowledged her, holding himself rigid, obviously bored by her attempts at physical affection. She was relentless when it came to Stu Wooten and he couldn’t care less.

“Did you see the new kid?” Dania asked. I groaned. Time to beat an already dead horse.

“What is your obsession with the freaking new kid?” I snipped.

Dania glared at me, and I shut up. I may have balls of steel but even they didn’t stand up to Dania. Not unless I wanted to be swallowing her knuckles.

Just then the bell rang and Dania’s look of death was momentarily distracted.

A few minutes later, I sat in my desk in Mr. Goodwin’s English class and slouched down as far as I could go to still be considered upright. I hoped I could sneak in a nap during the next forty-five minutes. I was seriously low on sleep given the state of hyper vigilance I currently lived in.

The feel of someone messing with my hair behind me promptly ruined my plans for a mid-morning siesta. I had long hair. Longer than I normally wore it but I found it a great way to hide when my eyes just couldn’t stay open during class.

I heard someone huffing and puffing behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see the kid Dania had been watching that morning pushing my hair off his desk with the tip of his pencil.

Seriously?

I slouched farther down in my seat trying to ignore the obviously annoyed kid behind me.

“Move your hair,” the new kid said loudly just inches from my ear.

Everyone turned to look at the new kid and me. What a freak!

Mr. Goodwin frowned, looking at me pointedly as if I had somehow caused the disruption. Of course I would get blamed. What else was new? But instead the teacher shockingly turned his disapproving eyes on the kid behind me.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Hendrick?” he asked. The Hendrick guy didn’t say anything but I still felt him poking at my hair.

He was really pissing me off and I wasn’t in the best of moods to begin with. I turned around in my seat and gave him my best don’t fuck with me glare. “What the hell is your problem?” I growled.

The dumbass looked confused. Did he not understand English? What was his problem?

“Your hair was on my desk,” he said. He stared at me for a long time and I strangely felt my face start to flush under his scrutiny. He had really green eyes. The greenest I’d ever seen. His lips were set in a straight line but they were nice lips. He was really cute. If I cared about that sort of thing.

He pointed at my mouth and I resisted the urge to straighten my hair and rub at my smudged eyeliner. Because I didn’t want to admit I liked him looking at me.