The Dragon's Scale (COMPLETE, EDITING)

2.3 || No Pain, All Gain

Hannah stood at the foot of the cot, her arms crossed, any worry that had plagued her before replaced by suspicion and annoyance.

Oh no. Josh withheld a groan as he draped an arm over his eyes. "Thanks for bringing me here, but weren't you supposed to get back to class?"

There was a pause. "Are you okay?"

Josh almost opened his eyes again. There was no way he'd read her expression so incorrectly. "Yeah, why?"

"I just wanted to be sure first. And now that we're sure of that, maybe you can tell me what in the world went on out there."

He could imagine Hannah's expression all too clearly—an overly pleasant smile that contradicted the sharpness of her gaze. "You were right there, Hannah. The nurse gave me a check-up."

"You know exactly what I mean, Joshua Alexander. Outside with that guy from the football team. You have three seconds to start spitting it out before I go ask him myself."

Very awake now, he shot up in his cot, a glare in place. "Really, Hannah? You're going there?"

She shrugged. "Only if you don't tell me."

He held her stare, but after a moment, he sighed. She wasn't bluffing. He knew she wouldn't hesitate to track down Darren at some point and demand answers. Caring was a strength of hers, but right then, Josh wished she would care less."

"Look, it's nothing out of the ordinary for us," he said. "Darren just throws his hissy fits, and sometimes that includes trying his best to hurt me."

Hannah stared down at him as if he'd grown another head. "Darren? As in Darren Gifford, the football team star? That guy bullies you?"

Josh fought off an eye roll. "He doesn't bully me. More like he just..." He shrugged. "He releases his anger on me, I guess."

She threw her hands up. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I guess I forgot the definition of bullying."

He met her annoyance with a glare. "Fine then, sure, whatever. I guess Darren knows me. But you know what?" He leaned forward and pointed a finger at himself. "It's either me or some other kid, and unlike me, I'm pretty sure that other kid can feel pain."

There. He threw out his trump card. The nurse had reinforced the knowledge only moments before, and it wasn't like Hannah wasn't very aware of how impossible it was to make him feel pain. She'd seen him fall face-first on concrete just to jump back up without a second thought.

The doctors had diagnosed it originally as congenital intolerance to pain, but not everything about him fell into that. He did feel pain sometimes, but it was little more than a pinprick. The weirdest thing was how hard it was to hurt him. One doctor he'd seen had wondered if it was an unnatural sturdiness when a teacher had freaked out after he'd fallen from a tall tree on the playground and nothing had been injured.

Hannah knew all of this, but instead of nodding her understanding, she looked incredulous. "If you want him to stop bullying, why don't you, oh, I don't know, just tell the principal?"

Josh rolled his eyes. "Because what will that do? Get Darren suspended for a bit? Sent to detention? Sure, maybe. School trouble." He scoffed. "But then what will he do? He'll come back at some point, and he'll just target someone else if he thinks I'll talk. As it is, the only way I get him not to go after someone else is threatening to talk if he does."

He could still remember the day. Last fall, he'd arrived late due to a dentist appointment—which, according to his mom, was not an excuse to skip the rest of the day—to find the school's most well-known football player shoving a scrawny kid against a wall in a small alcove. At first, Josh did debate telling, but he had realized the very issues he presented Hannah. Instead, he struck a deal with the bully: he wouldn't blab, but only if Josh was Darren's only target.