“Did you just pee one-handed?” I ask, and he laughs at me. The sound is pleasant, echoing off the walls of the bathroom. For the briefest of instances, I almost forget why we’re in here, hiding from the world at large.
“Like a boss,” Chas confirms, turning back around to rest his ass against the sink’s edge. “You do know that I’m the student body president, right?” he asks, glancing over at me. I raise both my brows at him, and he laughs at me again. “Does not compute, am I right?”
“It’s just … where do you find the time?” I wonder, and he shrugs his shoulders at me.
“I don’t sleep much. When I sit down to focus on something, I don’t let myself get distracted. What does it matter? Anyway, I’m sorry I wasn’t there. What did they do to you? Who was in on it?” He sounds almost disturbingly interested in the information.
“They tried to throw me over the edge of the third-floor courtyard wall,” I whisper, and Chasm goes completely still. “There was a redhead leading the pack. Veronica something? Chas, they said a bunch of stuff to me about my dad. That, and … I honestly couldn’t tell if they were trying to … kill me. I mean, that’s insane, right? It’s insane.”
Chasm says nothing, staring at the opposite wall of the bathroom as the bell rings to signal the end of break. Frankly, the idea of making it through the rest of the day makes me feel unstable on my feet. How many days of school do we have left? Eleven?
It feels like an eternity.
“What did they say to you?” he asks, looking over at me, seemingly unconcerned with getting to class on time. It bothers me that he doesn’t deny the idea that his classmates might’ve actually been trying to, you know, murder me.
“A bunch of stuff about Justin. They called him an embezzler, a thief, they …” I trail off because the words that Veronica threw my way hurt. They shouldn’t. I mean, she was clearly trying to get a rise out of me. But for whatever reason, I’m bothered by them. “She claimed he stole a bunch of money and research and was driven out of town. I never found anything when I looked him up online.”
“There won’t be anything online about it,” Chas offers up, turning to me with a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Any news of Justin Prior was scrubbed a long time ago.”
“You know about Justin?” I ask, feeling suspicion rise hot and unwelcome in my chest. “You didn’t act like you knew anything about him when I first mentioned his name.”
Chasm shakes his head at me.
“I didn’t. I mean, I’d heard stories of your dad, but I didn’t know his name. Nor did I think it had any bearing at all on this.” He gestures randomly, seeming to indicate the situation with Parrish. “Look, we … we’ll talk later.” Chasm puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezing hard enough that we both wince from our injuries. “I’m going to walk you to and from every class from now on. Do not go anywhere without me. Not even to the bathroom.”
“I already told you—” I start, and he gives me such a sharp, punishing look that I stop talking.
“I don’t give a fuck about my reputation,” he says, and then he grabs my arm and yanks me into the hallway. Most of the students have disappeared into their classrooms already, but the few that are lingering cast strange looks our way.
Chasm takes me to my technical writing class, dropping me off at the doorway. The way he pauses there, his hands on either side of the doorjamb as his amber gaze tears across the classroom, worries me. He looks like he’s declaring war with a single look.
As promised, Chasm finds me after and guides me to computer science and then, later, keeps me by his side during lunch. Everyone is staring, but nobody dares bother us.
“They’re afraid of you,” I realize after a while, watching the crowd. I glance Chasm’s way, but he doesn’t bother to acknowledge my statement. Neither of us in the mood to eat, but we’re in the cafeteria anyway, sitting at a table in the corner by ourselves.
“Maybe,” he offers up, sighing and putting his elbows on the table. Chasm lets his head hang down for a minute before looking up at me. “Or if they aren’t, they should be.”
“Tell me what you know about my father,” I start, sitting up straight and wondering why I have to get this information out of a friend instead of my own bio mom. I mean, she told me about the typewriter, but nothing about … a startup or embezzlement or anything like that. “What’s the story there?”
Chasm’s gaze sweeps past me, searching the crowd for, I think, either Lumen or that Veronica girl.
