Read Online Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah by Erin Jade Lange - Free Book Online Page A

options for only a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. Andi must have seen something in my face—some change—because her angry shout dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
    â€œCome on, Sam. You’re with us.”
    I yanked off my hat and let my fingers wander over the scars on my scalp, tracing the wide raised lines, smooth in spots where the hair had never grown back. I ruffled up my curls to make sure those spots were covered, which was pointless, because I just hid them back under the hat a second later anyway.
    The siren grew louder, more urgent, and Boston punched the car horn in frustration. But it wasn’t the horn that propelled me back into the SUV with three strangers and a world of trouble. It wasn’t the ominous wail of the police sirens, either. I climbed into the backseat and slammed the door shut behind me because, for once, I was invited.
    Â 
    BEFORE
    LOOK AT ME.
    I stretched the thought across the wide hallway to the lockers on the other side. Or, more specifically, to the boy standing in front of those lockers. He was cursing as he spun a lock dial back and forth, every so often tugging on the latch and then throwing his head back when it refused to budge. I liked the way his muscles moved under his shirt when he tensed up to try again.
    â€œThirty-two, thirteen . . . no, thirteen, thirty-two . . . Shit!”
    He banged his head on the locker in frustration, then turned to lean against it, blowing a thick lock of hair out of his eye.
    Look at me. Look at me.
    Not that I had any idea what I would do if he
did
look at me, but I wasn’t exactly practicing my invisibility. I had pushed my gray ski cap back off my face—not far enough to tease out any curls, but far enough that if he looked my way, he mightsee my eyes. Some people seemed to like my eyes, when I let them look.
    But he didn’t. Look, that is.
    His gaze was focused on one end of the hall instead, his eyes narrowed in a laser-like search. I wondered who he was watching for and hoped, beyond reason, that it wasn’t a girl. He looked too old to have a locker in the freshman wing, and it occurred to me he might be trying to break into someone else’s. Maybe he was on the lookout for teachers so he wouldn’t get busted.
    It was unlikely. Most teachers retreated to their lounge during lunch hours, to get a little peace or hoover up some coffee or take a Xanax—who knows?—but I doubted they’d come marching down the halls of F-wing. The only action this hallway ever saw at this time of day was a few kids running back and forth between the cafeteria and the good bathrooms . . . and me, eating my lunch on the floor in front of my locker.
    â€œYork!”
    The shriek came from the cafeteria end of the hallway, and a whirlwind of skinny arms and legs propelled itself forward—too fast; the kid was going to fall! As though my thought had triggered it, just then the boy pitched forward, tripping from his own momentum. His bony arms, all elbows and freckled skin, stuck straight out in front of him, Superman-style, and for half a second it looked like he might actually fly right past the boy with the lean muscles and floppy hair.
    But instead, the boy called York threw out an arm and hooked it under not-so-Superman’s chest, catching him beforehe face-planted on the floor. A smile touched my lips. Now who should be wearing the hero’s cape?
    The scrawny kid—I searched my brain for his name but came up blank—straightened himself up and glanced in my direction. I ducked my face into my tuna sandwich so fast I nearly inhaled mayonnaise up my nose. I didn’t want the poor guy to think I’d watched his almost-fall. When I dared to look up again, his back was to me.
    â€œI got your text,” he said breathlessly to York.
    York.
Three months into the school year, I hadn’t learned many names outside of the freshman class, but this