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go. Thanks for lunch.”

Chapter 5

    Joss

    There were footsteps on the stairs, heavy and
quick, jogging up, then down again.
    False alarm.
    I went back to my book. I was sitting on the
uppermost landing of the stairwell at the end of the science wing.
Fairview High was a Frankenstein Monster of a building, with all
kinds of additions grafted onto an old building. It was a desperate
attempt to keep up with the times, without actually tearing it
apart and starting over. My spot, the one I had found in the first
months of my freshman year, was in the older part of the school.
The stairwell was one of those dark, steep, wrap-around deals, far
away from everything else that it didn’t get much traffic. Most
kids just stuck to the more central stairs.
    This landing I was perched on was the end of
a road to nowhere. The stairs continued up, past the second floor,
for no apparent reason. I think maybe they meant to put in a roof
access door or something like that, but it didn’t happen. So there
was no reason for anyone to come up this far. Plus, because of the
way the stairs were all but stacked on top of one another, you
really couldn’t see from one landing up to another. Although you
could see down if you leaned forward and looked through the
railing. All in all, it made it a really great place to hide and
get a little peace in the chaos of Hell on Earth. Which I really
needed, regularly. That’s why it was My Spot.
    I wasn’t supposed to be in that part of the
school so early in the morning. No one was. But it was one of those
days when the pouring rain was so bad that they couldn’t make
everyone stay outside until the first bell, so they had to let them
all into the lobby and the gym. School, after all, is a place of
learning, and you can’t just have students roaming its halls. Who
knows what might happen? But, even when they open up the gym, it
gets really crowded and there are kids, like me, who always manage
to escape the corral. Even if it means manipulating a locked gate
or two along the way.
    I heard the footsteps again, slower this
time, and a few more of them. My heartbeat picked up as I shoved
the novel back in my bag and reached for the Chem text. After all,
maybe the appearance of scholarly duty would soften the heart of an
over-zealous Hall Monitor and save me from detention.
    But since when did Hall Monitors travel in
packs?
    Marco rounded the corner and stopped as soon
as he saw me. He was clearly surprised. In the next moment, when he
started up the steps toward me and that predatory smile started to
spread across his face, you could tell he was pleased in his evil
way.
    “Hey, Joss…You know…you’re not supposed to be
here.”
    I suck at this, I really do. There must be
some way, some right thing to say to diffuse this and make him go
away. But I didn’t know what it was. During the recent cafeteria
incident I had tried not saying anything, but that hadn’t worked.
So this time I went for mild sarcasm.
    “Huh. You don’t say?”
    Marco sneered at me and continued up the
steps, made a show of easing himself slowly down to sit beside me.
And of course, since I was leaning against the railing and there
were only four whole feet of floor beside me, he had to sit right
up against me. This is what crawling skin feels like, when your
whole skin wants to crawl away from something noxious, whether the
rest of you is coming along or not. I wasn’t about to give him
the satisfaction. He’d probably make himself comfortable and bug me
until the bell. I could deal that long without shoving him down the
stairs. Probably.
    Jeff came up next, pulling some girl behind
him. Some girl who seemed reluctant to follow. He pulled her up
onto the landing and pushed her back into the corner. Not a shove,
not violent, but it was a push. I felt a flare of something, rage
or human decency, probably some combination of the two. But I
breathed in and beat it down. Whatever this was, it was not my
business. Still, it