Read The Hex Breaker's Eyes for Free Online Page B

didn’t seem to hurt her much, but
the social awkwardness of everyone looking at her seems to be a
really big deal to her. She punches the next locker in frustration,
picks up her book and throws it on the top shelf before slamming
the locker door hard. Whatever she came here to get, she’s
forgotten it as she snaps her lock into place and kicks the door.
She’s probably had a ton of things trip her, fall on her, and
otherwise bother her for the last three days and it’s obviously
getting to her. She kicks the locker a second time, and even this
far away I can see the tendons in her neck tense up like she’s
about to start screaming in anger. Instead, she sprints away and
around the corner. A moment later we hear a door slam.
    “Washroom,” Tam
says. “You should go talk to her.”
    “What?”
    “You could find
out who holds a grudge. Maybe it’s not Mason,” she says, but that’s
a flimsy excuse. Tam’s just trying to force me to ingratiate myself
into Dina’s life.
    I’m not buying
it. “It’s totally Mason. And why don’t you talk to her? I’m the one
who’s not a good detective, remember?”
    “But you have a
reason to talk to her. You caught her on the stairs. That’s your
icebreaker.”
    God, this is
starting to sound like it does when Tam tries to coach me to talk
to boys.
    “Fine,” I say.
“I’ll go see if she’s even in there.”
    I head around
the corner and into the ladies’ room, where I find Dina standing by
the counter with her face red, hair ruffled, teeth clenched and
hands rubbing her eyes.
    “Um, hi,” I
say.
    “What do you
want?” she asks. She pulls her hair out of the ponytail and shakes
it out, so now I can’t see her face behind the curtain of hair.
    “Are you OK?” I
ask as gently as possible.
    “What do you
care?”
    “Well,
yesterday I caught you when you fell down the stairs and today
you’re freaking out, so I thought—”
    “—That I’m a
freak? Some kind of insane spaz?” She’s really on edge.
    I wish I was
good at talking to people. This is just too hard. “I just thought
maybe you’d want to vent. Bitch about everything that sucks in the
world. Trust me, I know.”
    She pulls her
hair back again, and under the light I can see that her face isn’t
quite right. She’s done a good enough job with the makeup that most
people won’t notice, but she has a big bruise on the side of her
face, around her temple.
    “What happened
to your face?” I ask.
    She looks
appalled that I noticed. “What? Nothing. I just fell into a
wall.”
    “OK.”
    “And don’t act
all fake like when I say I fell into a wall what I really mean is
that someone beats me. I actually fell into a wall. Tripped over my
shoelaces.”
    “I bet that’s
happening a lot.”
    “What? Is that
a joke?” she’s really pissed at me now. I should filter my brain
before I talk. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
    “I’m Mindee. We
live around the corner from each other? We walk home the same way a
lot.” I hope to God she doesn’t think it’s creepy that I know where
she lives.
    “Great, I have
a stalker.” (OK, so that didn’t work.)
    “Can I tell you
something crazy?” I ask, trying for a kind, conciliatory tone.
“Something you might not really believe?”
    “Sure,” she’s
looking in the mirror, checking her makeup in the hope that no one
else will see the bruise.
    “I knew that
textbook was going to jump out at you.”
    She stops and
looks at me. “You shouted. Before I opened the locker.”
    “And I knew you
were going to fall down the stairs, that’s why I stood there to
catch you.”
    Dina finally
turns her body to face me, giving me her full attention for the
first time. And she is not happy with me. “What?”
    “You’re
cursed.”
    “What?” she
demands again, her skin reddening with anger. Darn, this is not
going well. “What did you just say?”
    “I can see
things, sometimes. Strange things. And you, well, you have a really
bad energy that’s