Page 15 of Lost
Zack thought back. He’d been to a vast number of parties in his senior year and had gotten drunk at every one of them. He couldn’t recall an occasion where he’d become so intoxicated he’d taken a girl to bed, but that didn’t mean much. He’d done a lot more than drink at those parties. It shamed him further when he realised that it could have happened several times. And he wouldn’t remember any of those names, either.
“I can ask her to stay with a friend for the night.”
“No.” Lysander shook his head. “It’s her house. And this is a weird situation. She has a right to be upset.” He swallowed, ran his hands over his face, and exhaled deeply. “I’m coming back down.”
He could see in the boy’s eyes that he wasn’t too thrilled at the thought, but he was determined to do it anyway. It made Zack smile. And in that moment, nothing could have made him prouder. Whoever Samantha Maverick was, he wished he could tell her what a stellar job she’d done in raising her son.
In raisingtheirson.
CHAPTER SIX
U.S. History was the kind of class where doing the work was optional, and their teacher — a middle-aged man with greying hair who went by Mr. Bailey — made sure his students knew it. Lysander’s old English teacher had been the same, so laid back that everybody begged to be in her classes, but he’d known better. He knew perfectly well thatoptionalmeant something more along the lines of, “Do it now, or you’ll regret it when exams roll around.”
He decided against taking notes regardless.
He and Jack sat in one of the corners at the back of the room, non-troublemakers in a prime troublemaking zone. Jack got his vantage point so he could see straight out into the courtyard for optimal daydreaming, and Lysander got his view of Eliza Beth where she sat across the room.
Her dark hair glimmered when she turned her head, catching dappled sunlight from a nearby window, but it was her smile that held Lysander transfixed. She sat with three of her friends, and even from across the room it was apparent to him that her group housed no leader. Eliza Beth was her own, independent person. She hung out with those sorts of girls.
She seemed like someone Dakota would get along with: bright personality with a darker fashion sense. He couldn’t wait until they had a chance to meet.
Did she have a boyfriend? She probably did. A girl as beautiful as her would never stay single long. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get to know her better. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
She never even glanced his way.
Back in their little corner of the classroom, Jack was having issues of his own. On the opposite side of the room sat a group of boys, five in total, who were taking it in turns throwing crumpled paper balls at him. Jack carried on scribbling into his notebook as if it didn’t bother him, but the way he hunched his shoulders and kept his head down told a different story.
Lysander grimaced. He’d been so caught up in watching the girl across the room that he hadn’t noticed his new friend’s discomfort until Jack had fallen into complete silence.
“What’s the deal with those guys?”
Jack’s hand faltered, but he didn’t stop doodling. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. They’re just idiots.”
He kept his head bent and his eyes on the book in front of him. He seemed determined not to show any sign of weakness. It only seemed to egg the boys on.
Lysander looked at the offending party. They looked like the sorts of guys that he was friends with back home — athletic, laughing as they pushed each other around, acting like they were on top of the world. Kings of the school, no doubt. But Lysander and his friends had never treated anybody the way they were treating Jack. Any friendship there was dead in the water.
The paper balls kept coming. Unless they landed somewhere that interfered with Jack’s drawings, they were ignored. The few that got in the way were casually brushed aside. Many of them littered the floor around the desk. Mr. Bailey hadn’t noticed a thing.
Lysander frowned. “How long has this been going on? The bullying.”
And how had Lysander not noticed it before?
“Since freshman year.” Jack’s tone was flat. He’d accepted his fate. “A few weeks after high school started.”
More than a year. Lysander looked at the boys again. “Why?”
Jack’s pen halted. He glanced at Lysander with a deep frown of his own. Lysander expected a defensiveI don’t knowor something similar, but instead was being met with hesitant silence. Had he asked too much too soon?
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he said. Maybe Jack wasn’t ready to talk about it. “I get it.”
“You’re going to find out eventually,” Jack said, and now he sounded defeated. His shoulders slumped. “It may as well be while I’m prepared for it.”
He picked up one of the crumpled pieces of paper and offered it to Lysander.
“Open it.”
Lysander looked at it. Judging by its lack of size, it wasn’t even that big a piece of paper. Hard to believe the answers to Jack’s torment could be on the tiny scrap. Still, he accepted the paper and unravelled it. On it was written a single word.
