Read Scorpion Shards for Free Online Page A

Lourdes—”
    Boom!
    The final step. Lourdes stood right before Conroy, and the principal’s shoulder-length hair was falling forward across her face, reaching toward Lourdes. Her immense belly pinned the principal against the wall, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Fear was in the principal’s eyes now. Fear and disgust.
    â€œIt’s not my fault I’m like this,” said Lourdes. With that the principal’s body began to crush inward, from Lourdes’s mere touch, collapsing in upon itself. Barely able to breathe, Conroy snarled out her words.
    â€œYou don’t belong here,” she said, and Lourdes knew she wasn’t just talking about school. “Here,” for Lourdes, meant this world. She brushed Conroy away as if swatting a fly, and the woman gasped for breath, as if she had just escaped the crushing force of a black hole.
    Principal Conroy clutched the railing to keep from collapsing and shouted at Lourdes, but Lourdes didn’t listen. She just continued out of the stairwell and onto the first floor.
    T HE FIRST FLOOR HALLWAY housed mostly English and history classrooms. The nearest exit was to the left, but the schoolsecurity guard and guidance counselor were standing there, blocking Lourdes’s escape route. At the other end of the hall stood the vice principal and a whole legion of teachers. They all began to close in.
    Either she could run at them, hoping her momentum would take them out like bowling pins, or she could duck into an empty classroom. Since there were too many of them to bowl over, she chose the classroom. Once inside, she would be cornered, but at least she’d have an arsenal of things to throw at them as they tried to come at her. If it had to be her against the whole world, then the whole world would be made to suffer for what it was doing to Lourdes Hidalgo.
    She pushed into the classroom, and instantly caught sight of Miss Benson—the new English teacher—and Michael Lipranski in the front of the classroom.
    Lourdes was not prepared for what she saw. Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open.
    Because Michael Lipranski was kissing his English teacher.
    The very sight of it distracted Lourdes a moment too long, and she was caught off guard when everyone burst into the room. With so many people trying to wrestle her under control, not even her crushing gravity could save her. In the end, she had to give up. Her only consolation was that Michael Lipranski was also caught, and he would be in as much trouble as she was. Maybe more.
    M ICHAEL L IPRANSKI WAS AN unlikely make-out king. Sure, he was attractive, but there was something about him that was unnerving, unclean, and a bit slimy. He was a bit too thin, his dark hair was a bit too long—and always damp. When he would look at you, you could swear that he was reading your most secret thoughts and thinking great mischief.
    He wasn’t your typical stud—had no great muscles to speak of, and there was always a constellation of bruises over much of his body. Some of these came courtesy of his father, who was known to use his fists, but most were from fights around school. Michael wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had learned to defend himself in a world that turned out to be far more cruel and vicious than he ever thought it could be.
    Physically, the only thing truly special about Michael Lipranski was his eyes. He had these impossibly intense turquoise-hazel eyes, layered with rich coronas of color that made them seem as deep, warm, and inviting as a Caribbean sea. The girls in school could lose themselves in Michael’s eyes, and often did. It happened last year in Baltimore, and it happened here in the Hamptons. Maybe that’s why all the guys hated him.
    And maybe that’s why no teacher wanted him in their classroom. For several years Michael could never figure out why this was so. He was friendly, funny, and personable. He made an effort to do the