“Just … leave it.” I shake my hand and look at it, cringing.
“Oh, God, look at that,” he says, grabbing my hand. The skin is sliced, and the whole nail is bright, screaming red. “Damn it, you gotta see the nurse.”
“I’m fine.”
“Mack.” He steps forward.
I shake my head. “Stop calling me that!” I yell. Irrational, I know, but the pain is insane and I can’t think beyond fighting the tears that are threatening. “Just leave me alone.”
“I feel like shit. I’m sorry.” He closes the locker door. “Let me look at it.”
“No.” I just want to get away from him. I don’t belong around a kid like this. He makes me nervous and … A new thought settles. Did he do that on purpose? Because I wouldn’t tutor him?
“I’m fine,” I say again.
He replaces the lock with a firm click that reverberates through the empty alcove. “I’ll take you to the clinic.”
“No thanks.” Squeezing my wounded hand, I take off, heading into the hall just as the bell rings and the classrooms empty, swallowing me up in the crowd and separating me from a boy who admitted he followed me.
Why? Because I’m fifth on a list he just told me he doesn’t care about? Because he was looking for a tutor? Because he thinks I’m attractive? So he could break my finger if my heart didn’t happen to be available? None of those options seems plausible, but I can’t help wondering.
CHAPTER IV
The parent volunteer in the nurse’s office has put me in a holding room that smells like bleach. Was the last person in here so sick they had to disinfect? The thought makes me a little queasy—but maybe that’s just the throbbing, bleeding, purple middle finger on my right hand.
Not that it really hurts so much. The cut isn’t that deep, and the really nasty bit under my nail is almost numb. Even though I wrapped it in some paper towels I got from the bathroom, I know it looks wretched. It’s bad enough that I didn’t bother to hunt down Molly for a second opinion—or third, if you count Levi Sterling, perpetrator—before I headed straight to the office for some antiseptic and a Band-Aid.
I perch on the edge of a vinyl cot and close my eyes, reliving my conversation with Levi, feeling stupid for being so caught up in his eyes and his game and his suggestion I tutor him that I didn’t realize I’d stuck my finger in the locker door. So I can’t really blame him for hurting me.
Although … he’s been known to hurt people. At least, that’s the rumor. Put a guy in the hospital, they say. Disappeared to a truant school for a while. Oh, hell, I’ve heard he’s robbed banks and stolen cars and, basically, if it’s a crime in Vienna, he’s the cops’ go-to guy.
Why would he even talk to me? He admitted he wasn’t all about some idiotic Hottie List. Or was that a line?
A tap on the door interrupts my thoughts. “Kenzie Summerall?” a woman calls as the door inches open.
“You can come in.”
The school nurse enters and gives me a quick smile, brushing back a strand of frosted blond hair that has slipped from her clip. “What’s the problem?” she asks cheerily. “You hurt your finger?”
I hold up the whole hand because just showing her the one finger could get me a detention.
She reacts with raised eyebrows. “Bleeding?”
“A little.”
She comes closer, searching my face. “You’re very pale.”
I touch my cheek, which is cool. “I just need to clean this out and get a Band-Aid.”
“Let’s take a look.” She sits across from me, her considerable size making the chair squeak as she reaches for some latex gloves from a box.
“Am I going to lose that nail?” I ask when she takes hold of my hand, dreading the answer, because right now, that’s my biggest fear.
She shakes her head, plucking at the slice in the skin. “How’d it happen?”
Flirting accident. “Locker injury.”
She looks up, a gleam of humor in her pretty blue eyes. “We don’t have a lot of those.”
“I was … distracted.” No way I’d admit the truth to her.
“All the attention around the list, I assume.”
I jerk my hand a little, stunned. “The faculty knows about that?”
She sets my hand back down on my lap before getting up to go to a cabinet, opening it to block her profile from me. “Some do. Of course, I’m in the in crowd.” She leans away from the