Read Online Starstruck by Cyn Balog - Free Book Online

her throat loudly, as if to say, “Get off now.” For a second I want to command her to close the doors and drive, drive anywhere, but she’s not my limo service. Shark pit, here I come.
    I step down the stairwell, but suddenly the doors almost fly closed, right on my face. The bus driver laughs sadistically. “Just kidding, hon!” she cries as I turn and glare at her. I wish she would save her warped sense of humor for a day when I’m not about to vomit all over myself.
    My flip-flops touch down on the sidewalk and I look at them like they’re alien feet. They’re ever so cute, but they can’t belong to my body. My body would have had the sense to stay home today. To stay home forever.
    My heart is drumming out a Sousa march. I plaster a fake-confident smile on my face and carefully navigate around a few people, whose backs are to me. A girl in one tight circle runs her fingers through her long hair, and they catch on a knot at the very end so that when she pulls her hand loose, she does it with such force that she accidentally scrapes my cheek with her vulture claws. Ouch, ouch, ouch! It’s like someone sliced my cheek with a razor blade. She turns, smiling, as if to say, “Sorry,” but then decides not to when she realizes it’s just me. I rub the skin over my mouth, then inspect my fingers. Blood. The hoochie with the fingernails of death has drawn blood. Drawn blood and not even apologized.
    And it isn’t just a little scratch. I feel something wet sliding down my chin, a few drops collecting there before diving off onto the concrete. As I’m searching through my bag for a tissue, I tilt my head, so the blood starts to slide down my neck, onto my frilly white blouse. Were those fingernails or miniature chain saws?
    I clamp the tissue over my cheek, but not soon enough. A few people notice. They break out of the circles, not to offer me a Band-Aid, but to gawk. Even the girl with the mongo fingernails turns to look, batting her eyelashes innocently, as if she has no idea what happened. “Um,” someone says, tugging on my sleeve. I turn to see a cute freshman, wide-eyed, innocent, giving me a wholesome, friendly Noxzema-faced grin.
    Finally, someone to offer a nice word. “Yes?”
    She points to my middle. “Your fly is open.”
    I look down. It isn’t just my fly that’s open. That would be an easy fix. Below my frilly blouse, my jeans are sitting there, wide open, on my hips. You can see my orange underwear. A flashback of Wish seeing my peace undies in the restroom of the Cellarton Country Club floods my mind. The tissue in my hand flutters to the floor and I hoist the jeans up toward my waist, then try to button them. But I can’t. The button must have popped off somewhere. And without that button, the zipper can’t hold the fort. Without that button, the pants are doomed to go the way of the Alamo.
    Little freshman goes back to her group, but they’re still all laughing and whispering. By then, I have a bit of an audience. A few more drops of blood hit the pavement. I clasp together my pants with one hand, then lean over to grab the tissue I dropped. Because my books are so heavy, I nearly topple forward as I do, and force myself right into the middle of one of the closed circles, one of the only closed circles that heretofore had been unaware of my existence.
    “Gwen?”
    It’s almost like a beam of sunlight falls upon me before I even raise my head, because I begin to feel warm and feverish at once. I close my eyes. Oh, no. No. No. No.
    I take a breath. Another. And straighten. And turn toward him.
    “Um. Hi.”

13
    T HE MORNING AIR of early September is cool, but my face is all asizzle. My body starts to ache, starting with a pounding in my head. I hear some voices, a little laughter in my ears, but I can’t tell if the titters are directed at me. My vision is blurred, and I can’t lift my eyes from a lopsided smiley face that my blood has made on the cement between my feet. Even my own