UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,15
her speeding up till someone shoves her into the muscle-bound guy ahead of her. His name is Dex, but everyone calls him Pecs for obvious reasons. She bounces off him and lands on her butt. He turns, reaches down, grabs her shirt, and jerks her to her feet so fast, her head is spinning.
“What gives?” he snarls.
She pries his fingers off her shirt. “Nothing, man. Someone pushed me.” She turns around, but no one is there. She looks for Logan—maybe he saw who had pushed her—but he’s nowhere to be found. Half a dozen boeufs are now looking at her—mostly guys. Not a friendly face in the crowd.
She spreads her hands. “Forget it. Let’s get to the firing range.”
“Someone pushed you?” Pecs says. “You mean like this?”
He plants a big hand on her chest and shoves her. She lands on her ass again. Remembering Tuesday’s fight and the note in her file about it, she can’t take another black mark. Especially now.
Staying on the pavement, she tries an ingratiating smile. “Yep, exactly like that. You all go on ahead. I’ll wait here for Logan.”
She hopes mentioning Logan’s name will appease them, but it doesn’t. Two boeufs haul her to her feet. She balls her hands into fists and then grabs her canteen, strangling it instead of Pecs. They won’t make her angry. They won’t. . . .
Pecs sneers. “You think you can trip Kip and get away with it?”
That catches her off guard. “I didn’t trip him. He just fell.”
Pecs steps closer till she smells his stinking breath. “Kip says you did. You saying he lied?”
She feels rage from the others crash over her. She freezes. Then Pecs slowly unscrews his canteen and takes a mouthful. She doesn’t expect what he does next.
He spits at her. Right in her face. In shock, she stands in front of him, the water dribbling down her face and shirt. It doesn’t feel good. It reminds her of when . . .
She wipes the spray from her face with the sleeve of her T-shirt, her fury rising. She can’t control herself. Her canteen is still in her hand, and so she whacks Pecs in the nose with it. He roars and reaches for her, but years of dirty fighting have honed her skills. She ducks under his hands and knees him in the groin.
“What’s going on?” Sarge yells.
The lieutenant and Sarge are now standing next to her. Pecs is paddling weakly on the ground, moaning. Most of the squad melts away from the scene.
The horror of getting caught creeps over her. First she swipes at her face; the grossness of Pec’s spit almost seems worse.
“He spat on me,” Brooklyn says. The two men look down at Pecs. His nose is bleeding from where her canteen hit it, and his hands cup his groin.
“Get a medic,” the sarge growls. Someone races back to the track.
The lieutenant studies her expressionlessly. “You’re the one that started the fight last week?”
She could argue that it’s never her who starts it, but she knows what the headmaster wrote in the report.
“Yes,” she says. “But I didn’t start this.”
The lieutenant nods at Sarge. “I don’t want her with the others. Walk her to the firing range. Now.”
Sarge grabs her arm and frog-marches her all the way to the shooting range behind the others, blistering her ears with commentary for the full time it takes to get there.
He releases her near the cart. Her weapons locker is the only one left on the cart’s bed. One of the plebes—a younger member of the squad—is charged with monitoring the weapons cart. Seeing the scowl on both Brooklyn’s and the Sarge’s faces, he steps back and lets her open her weapon locker.
Jabbing a finger at her and stopping inches away from her eyes, Sarge says, “You go last. The squad’s probably gunning for you, and I won’t be explaining why you got shot. Hear me?”
She nods. She’s lucky they haven’t already sent her back to the StaHo. She’s actually surprised they’re letting her finish the tests.
When they call her name, she uses every technique she’s learned about relaxing and how to breathe while shooting.
In the first firing position she lines up her rifle on a barricade. She makes eight of nine good shots, but then the gun jams. Like she’s been taught, she slaps, pulls, observes, releases, taps, and then shoots again. Distracted, she misses the shot.
In the second firing position she stands without the rifle supported. It malfunctions again on the second