Fifty-three

 

Kaleb met her outside class. Talia stiffened and tried to move away, but he was too quick. He caught her arm.

No one else seemed to notice. They all streamed to their next classes. Even the security guards were looking the other way.

“I know you don’t like me,” Kaleb said. “But can I talk to you for a second?”

“No,” she said, and shook him off.

She started down the hall. She heard his footsteps behind her, his voice on her link.

Talia, please. Just one second. Please. It’s important.

She turned around. He seemed smaller than he had before. She had always thought of Kaleb as a big guy, but he wasn’t. He was beefy, but not tall. In fact, in the right shoes, she would be taller than he was.

She could pull over one of the security guards. She could contact someone on the school’s links, saying that this was an emergency, that Kaleb wouldn’t leave her alone.

But something in his face bothered her.

Talia, please, he sent again. Taking a risk, using the school links, stuff that could be traced.

If he was up to something bad.

She sighed. Rolled her eyes. Stopped. And turned around.

“What?”

The puffiness in his face looked worse than it had that morning. The bruising went all the way down his chin. Kaleb clearly didn’t like looking like that. He turned his head slightly, so that the bruised side wasn’t in the main part of her field of vision.

He took her arm again, and she immediately regretted stopping.

“Touch me one more time, and I swear, I’ll hurt you,” she said.

He let her arm drop.

“Can we go over there?” He nodded toward a side corridor. No one stood in it. “Please? It’s private.”

“You try anything—”

“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

She was going to make some snide comment about the quality of his promises, but she changed her mind. She wanted this conversation over fast, and taunting him would prolong it.

She followed him to the side corridor, and they stood near some large plant that Talia couldn’t identify. Its blue leaves gave them a bit of cover from the kids still passing through the main hallway.

He lowered his head. “I know I’m a jerk. I know I’m an idiot. I know I’ve been really mean, and I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be apologizing to me,” Talia said. “It’s the Chinar twins and all those other kids—”

“I know, but they’re not here.” Kaleb sighed. “My dad wants me to stay home. He wants to hire someone to tutor me there, and I can’t, Talia. I just can’t.”

Something in his voice, something terrified, caught her. She looked at him, at the bruising, at the way his lower lip trembled.

He said, “If you say you’ve forgiven me, if you say that I’m not so bad after all, maybe they’ll let me stay here.”

He sounded desperate. She recognized desperate. But she didn’t get this, not entirely.

“Why won’t they just put you in a different school?” she asked.

“My mom.” His voice broke. “My mom died last year, and she said school was important. My dad doesn’t think it is, and he thinks if we hire someone or use one of those knowledge implants, I’ll be just fine. And maybe I will, but I’d have to stay home.”

And the way he looked, the way he said home, Talia got the idea that he wasn’t objecting to leaving school so much as to being trapped.

“They’re not going to listen to me,” she said. “I’m just some kid.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “Your dad has juice with the headmistress.”

Talia bristled, but didn’t say anything.

“And besides, you and me, we’re the ones who started everything yesterday.”

“No, we didn’t,” Talia said.

He nodded. “Sorry. I started everything. You tried to stop it.”

“That’s better.” She sounded mean. She felt mean. But why the hell would he think she’d do anything for him, considering how mean he’d been?

He’d been mean as long as she’d known him. He’d always picked on other kids, and he’d always laughed at them. She hated him, and she hated his pretty eyes, and his occasional really funny sense of humor. If he left school, no one would miss him except those dumb kids who banded around with him.

“Why don’t you ask your buddies to talk to the headmistress?” she asked.

“No one’ll believe them,” Kaleb said. “Everybody knows they listen to me.”

“And everybody knows I don’t, is that it?” Talia asked. “So if I say you’re okay, then you are, right?”

He shrugged.

She shook her head. “I’m not doing you any favors. You don’t deserve favors.”

She pushed past him and started down the hall, bracing for him to comment on her links. Bracing for more begging, bracing for him to try to manipulate her.

But he didn’t say anything.

In spite of herself, she glanced over her shoulder. He was still standing behind that stupid plant, his head down, one fist covering his face.

He looked defeated.

That should have made her feel better.

Instead, it made her mad.