Broken

Chapter 7

"How did you...nobody knows..."

Brandon's hand was on my shoulder despite my inability to remember how it had gotten there. "Are you ok? I was just kidding, you know, about the near fight and then telling Alec off and having Britney decide she was moving on to greener pastures. I didn't mean anything by it."

The attack was still trying to overwhelm me, but Brandon not knowing the full extent of my weakness robbed it of some of the momentum necessary to roll me all the way under.

I managed some kind of reply, one that might've even been witty, but which apparently didn't manage to cover up the fact I wasn't really ok. We drove in silence the rest of the way into town, and by the time we turned into the school parking lot I'd come back to myself enough to be desperately looking for something else to say. I needed something cool enough Brandon wouldn't write me off as a lost cause.

Wish granting fairies somewhere were working overtime, because as Brandon turned off the engine, I saw a mob of people over by one of the smaller entrances to the school.

"Wow, I wonder what's going on over there."

We were both out of the car now, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to grab Brandon's arm and tug him over to the crowd. It wasn't until I felt the iron-hard muscles under my now-tingling hand that I realized what I'd done.

I felt a surge of heat wash over my face and neck. Brandon for once didn't have an easy comeback to defuse the awkwardness. If anything he looked slightly uncomfortable himself.

"I'm sure it's nothing important..."

He trailed off as my traitorous hand found his arm of its own accord and started pulling again. I wasn't sure why I was so anxious; usually I avoided crowds like the plague. Maybe I was just trying to prolong our time together.

I let go as soon as we reached the fringe of the crowd, and prayed it was only my imagination that made me think Brandon was just the slightest bit relieved. Luckily there was plenty to distract me.

It looked like there'd been some kind of war behind the school. The flagpole had a massive dent in one side, and actually looked it was leaning slightly to one side. The straggly grass, kept just barely alive by the nearly non-existent rain and irregular watering by some anonymous grounds keeper, had been torn up. Large patches of reddish dirt had been exposed and the ground was scarred by gouges that looked like they'd been made by some kind of farm machinery except for being so irregular.

My eyes were momentarily pulled back to the ground. Something about the gouges was tickling the back of my mind. Had I seen something like that before? Hiking maybe? Only I could count the number of hikes I'd actually participated in on one hand. Surely something like that would've stayed with me.

Someone gasped as the crowd shifted around, distracting me from my half-formed suspicions. I looked over at the exterior wall of the school and felt my jaw drop. Maybe mom had read the story about the three little pigs a few too many times to me when I was growing up, but I'd always thought of brick as the strongest possible building material. I didn't have any idea if it really was, but it seemed incredible that anything could've wreaked such damage.

The bricks on the wall next to the door were cracked and set back in the wall, almost like they'd been hit with some kind of wrecking ball, and the concrete of the sidewalk had gouges criss-crossing its surface like some kind of abstract painting.

"There's nothing to see here kids. I want you to all disperse and go to your home rooms."

The short, mostly bald man who'd ordered us all to leave, was just visible through a gap in the crowd. He walked like an administrator, but I hadn't ever seen him before.