Broken

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Brandon arrived just in time to pick me up before I got on the bus. As expected, he teased me about not waiting for him at my house, but it was a small price to pay for not having to worry about how I was going to get to school if he didn't show up. We made small talk and all too soon arrived at school. As we pulled into the parking lot I was desperately looking for something witty or insightful to say. I needed to give him a reason to stay interested in me, but nothing came to mind.

As we pulled to a stop, the quiet hum of a cellphone on vibrate broke the strange paralysis that'd gripped me for the last twenty seconds. Brandon's grin was more than a little sheepish as he fished his phone out of a front pocket and checked to see who was calling. I didn't need his groan to know it was one of his friends. A selfish urge to try and make him ignore the call and continue to focus on me momentarily flared up, but I suppressed it.

It was such a petty thing to do, and even worse was probably the quickest way to demolish whatever interest he might have towards me. I might be almost completely naive when it came to dating, but anyone who'd read more than a couple books, or sat through eight or nine chick flicks, totally knew that the quickest way to drive a guy off was to become controlling and manipulative. Unless maybe you were a cheerleader and you were talking about a guy that was used to dating cheerleaders. Which while I wasn't even close to the former, the latter actually described Brandon almost perfectly.

I almost stopped midway through the action of opening my car door, but it was too late. Even if I'd picked the wrong course, the moment was gone. I had to just play it cool and leave or risk looking like a total loser. He returned my wave with a nod and shifted his focus back to whoever was on the phone with him.

Brandon had parked on the opposite end of the parking lot from where he normally did. Presumably it was because all of the good spots in his normal area had been snatched up by people who weren't running quite as late as us. I was halfway to the closest door before I remembered that it was still closed as a result of the mysterious 'potato gun rampage' as everyone had started calling it.

A normal person, one who was really as self-confident as I pretended to be would have just turned and headed towards the eastern set of doors. Not wanting to look like a ditzy blond who couldn't even remember that someone had run a SUV into the flagpole and temporarily rendered one of the four main exits inoperable, I kept walking.

The school was narrower than it was long. I could walk around the west end, and use the closest doors on the north side, and still have plenty of time to get to my locker before Biology started.

I was busy replaying my conversation with Brandon as I walked around the corner of the building. The air was already hot enough to suck the moisture out of rocks, but that wasn't the cause of the sudden rush of heat to my face. I didn't think I'd ever seen the boy before, but Jasmin was easily recognizable, even half-hidden amid all the intermittently-functioning cooling units that lived on this end of the building.

I couldn't see much beyond the boy's wild red hair, but even that was enough to tell he wasn't completely comfortable. I wanted to turn around and go back the other way, but there was a chance that Jasmin had already seen me, and if so I couldn't afford to look like I was scared of her.

The fact I really was terrified she was going to snap and start trying to kill people was pretty much irrelevant. If I could convince her I wasn't scared, I was less likely to get hurt.

I kept walking, not necessarily steering closer to the three-quarter wall the boy was leaning against, but also being very careful not to go out of my way to stay further away from them either. As I got close to the pair, a little more of the boy became visible, reaffirming my impression that he wasn't happy to be talking to her. His shoulders looked unnaturally tight and he was shaking his head slowly from side to side.