“Sure—”

Then a hand smacked him on the back of the head, hard enough to slam his face into the locker.

Stars blossomed in his vision, but Hunter was already spinning automatically, an arm coming up to block, the other swinging a fist.

The other guy barely got out of his way. Garrett Watts, a heavyset junior who usually trailed after Jeremy Rasmussen. His brown eyes were small and beady above doughy cheeks, and the only thing about him that gave Hunter pause was the fact that this guy had to have seventy pounds on him.

But at least he couldn’t run fast. It was probably a lucky miracle he’d missed Hunter’s first swing.

Hunter was about to remedy that when a teacher appeared in the hallway. Miss Janney, the first-year Spanish teacher. She had guts getting between them. “Boys. Take a walk. In opposite directions.”

Hunter didn’t move. Clare had shrunk back against the lockers. Garrett looked like he was ready to come around the teacher—or through her. If Hunter turned around and started walking, Garrett wouldn’t follow his lead. He’d strike again.

Hunter could feel the promise of violence in the air. He wondered what he’d done to draw Garrett’s attention today.

Once he had the attention of Jeremy’s crowd, it was insanely hard to lose it.

He started planning how he could minimize the damage.

“Walk,” Miss Janney said. “There are two more days of school. I’m sure you don’t want to spend them on suspension.”

Garrett didn’t move. “He started it.”

Hunter opened his mouth, but Miss Janney held up a hand. “I don’t care who started it. Walk or I’m calling security.”

“Whatever.” Garrett shrugged his backpack higher on his arm as he turned to walk. “I know where to find him later.”

New way home. Check.

Once Garrett was walking, Miss Janney disappeared back into her classroom, muttering something about forty-eight more hours until peace.

Clare left the safety of the lockers and touched Hunter’s arm. Her eyes were full of concern. “Are you okay?”

He would let Garrett punch him again if this was the result.

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice sounded slightly thick. His cheek had taken the brunt of the hit, but his nose felt sore, too. “I think you’re bleeding,” she said. “Do you want to go to the nurse?”

Bleeding? He touched a hand to his nose and felt wetness. Crimson drops clung to his fingers.

Clare was fishing through her backpack. “Here.”

Tissues. He held one to his face. This was just great. Maybe he could pee his pants next.

“You were going to fight him,” said Clare, her voice soft.

“I wasn’t going to let him kill me.”

“Aren’t you afraid of him?”

“I used to be,” he said honestly.

“Did your dad teach you to fight, too?”

“Yeah.” He checked the tissues. Ugh. “God, I look like a total wuss.”

“No way,” said Clare with a smile. “I think you look totally fearless.”

CHAPTER 3

The early summer air was soft on Hunter’s face as he trudged through the woods to the edge of the cornfield. He’d shoved some apples and two cans of soda in his backpack, along with a box of ammunition and two unloaded handguns.

Clare was walking by his side.

He was going to teach her to shoot.

His father’s lack of anger left him feeling more worried instead of less. The warning still rang in his ears, and he told his brain to knock it off. What could she be using him for? Shooting lessons?

Stupid.

She’d been mostly quiet on the walk to his house, and he’d been walking a cord of tension himself, ready for Jeremy or Garrett or one of those morons to come flying out of the trees.

But nothing had happened.

“You could take them, couldn’t you?” she said out of the blue.

He didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. After that display in the hallway, he wasn’t surprised those thugs were on her mind, too. He smiled. “Take them,” he mimicked. “I don’t really want to fight them.”

“Why not? Don’t you think they’d leave you alone?”

Hunter stopped at the edge of the tree line. There was a long stretch of grass here before the cornfield started, and his dad had set steel targets of varying heights into the ground. He set his backpack gently on the ground.

“That’s not how it works,” he said, dropping to sit in the grass. He unzipped the nylon. “If it were that easy, I’d have done it at the beginning of the year.”

She hesitated, then dropped to sit beside him, pulling her skirt over her knees. The grass was warm here, the sun beating down. “I don’t understand.”

“People don’t really leave me alone,” he said. “Kind of an occupational hazard.”

She frowned. “I still don’t understand.”

Hunter smiled and shook his head. “Sorry. I just mean, when I fight them, it seems to inspire them to fight more. You know how sometimes when you put up resistance, it just makes people push harder?”

She was staring at him, and he couldn’t figure out the tension in her expression.

“What?” he said.

She shook her head quickly. “Nothing. So they keep coming after you?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged and started snapping bullets into an empty magazine. “It’s like they keep coming up with more creative ways to try to kick my ass. And if I fight them at school, it just gets me in trouble. Getting in trouble pisses off my dad. I mostly try to avoid them. Want an apple?”