Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (26 page)

Again to the beach. Sunlight glittered off of
the lazily moving waves.

You've never been to the beach,
Jenna.
I thought.
You always wanted to go but your parents never had the
time...

I tried to speak.

But I was tumbling again. The sun became the
yellow orb of the tennis ball, whirling straight for me.

White hot pain split my face in two. The
blackness swept up and pulled me under. A roar of noise filled my
ears like water. It hurt.

Hawthorne Gymnasium crashed back to reality. I
didn't remember opening my eyes; they were just open. My entire
head and face hurt, radiating back to my ears. My eyelids were
puffy, so I could only see through little slits.

I found my limbs again and brought my hand to
the wetness on my upper lip. Blood coated my fingers. My mouth was
full of the rusty metallic taste, choking me. Not to mention I had
the worst migraine ever, even worse than my unfortunate head injury
at the orphanage.  

I sat up. My t-shirt was dyed with blood, the
entire front so red it looked fake. I silently thanked the universe
for my strong stomach. Seeing that much blood come from my own body
terrified me. For a split second I wondered if I was going to die,
before I pulled myself together. No one could die from a tennis
ball.   

The gym was chaos. Kids were shouting,
screaming. Everyone had stopped playing and had formed a circle
around me. A forest of faces, some scared, some flushed with
excitement like this was the best entertainment they'd had in
weeks. The attention I hadn't wanted was all on me. I caught a few
phones filming me and I cringed, not wanting to see this particular
video pop up online and knowing there was no way to prevent it.
  

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Theo's
voice rang out clearly, like a very pissed off bell.

"It was an accident!" Lainey replied, the
ever-present self assured quality in her voice gone.

I searched the crowd for them, and found them
by the red patch of Theo's hair. The people around them were
backing away. Theo stood with her fists clenched, rising on her
toes as if to unconsciously appear taller. Lainey held her ground,
but she looked like she was shaking.

I heard Coach Fletcher's voice in the back of
the crowd.

"Get out of my way!" she shouted.

I tried to stand, but I was still disoriented,
not only from the pain and the shock but from the vision of my
absent friend that I had just been wrenched from. Reality didn't
feel real or right. It felt more like watching a badly filmed
movie.    

Theo stepped up so that she was now nose to
nose with Lainey. "You can't get away with this," she said, putting
both small hands on Lainey's shoulders and pushing her.

Lainey stumbled a fraction of an inch. A
switch flicked on inside her.

"Get your grimy hands off of me!" she
squealed. She pushed back with her palms flat, sending Theo
staggering into some onlookers. My trauma was all but forgotten,
and they were the new sideshow. The paparazzi of camera phones
turned their way.

Lainey hauled her fist back in a decidedly
unladylike gesture to punch Theo. Before I could yell, Coach
Fletcher appeared, with an unfamiliar woman in a white uniform at
her side. She caught Lainey's punching arm by the dainty
wrist.

"Enough!" she growled. "Office. Both of you.
Now!"

"But..." Lainey spluttered, her face
flushed.

"Not fair!" Theo said. 

"Go. Now!" Coach repeated, pointing to the
open gym doors. The fact that everybody had lost the ability to use
complete sentences tickled me. Maybe due to massive blood loss. I
snorted a laugh and immediately regretted it as blood sprayed out
of my nose.

Lainey screamed in frustration, clenching her
fists so hard her manicured nails must have cut her palms. She
stormed off, messy ponytail swishing behind her. Madison followed,
meekly, even though I hadn't seen her involved in
anything.

"You too," Coach said to Theo.

"But she's my friend," Theo
objected.

"I'll tend to her." Her statement was final.
 

Theo looked at me, frowning. She looked caught
between crying and rage. I attempted a little wave and fell back on
my elbows. For a moment she looked as though she would shirk
Coach's orders. Then she was gone, too.

A moment later Coach and the other woman
kneeled down next to me. "How are you feeling?" I was surprised by
how kind Coach sounded. People change when you're wounded. She held
up starched white towels to my still-bleeding nose.

"Lightheaded," I said, my voice
crackling.

"I brought the school nurse," she said, and it
almost sounded like an apology.

"Lie down," the nurse said, rolling up a towel
and placing it on the floor. She guided me back down, putting my
head on it. She was pretty and young-looking, with coffee colored
skin and kind eyes. Sparkly green baubles dangled in her ears. "You
look like you were in a prize fight," she said, smirking at
me.

"The nose is bad enough, but she hit the back
of her head pretty hard when she went down," Coach said to her as
if I wasn't there. She seemed scared. The nurse nodded, her face
professionally emotionless. She pulled out a stethoscope and held
the metal end to my chest.

"What about us?" A boy in basketball shorts
whined. Now that the entertainment was gone, the masses were
getting restless.

"You're dismissed, go change," Coach said
distractedly, as she cracked an ice pack and placed it gingerly on
my nose. The gym emptied out quickly, everyone chatting loudly. In
that moment, I would have given anything to know what they were
saying. The nurse continued checking my vitals.

"I'm Nurse Callie, by the way," she said. "I'm
going to take you to the office. It's really important that you see
a doctor, okay? So either we call your parents, or we call an
ambulance if they're working and can't come pick you
up."

"Call Hugh...my dad, he can come. He'll...be
able..." The lightheadedness was getting worse even on the floor,
and the gym was twirling gently like a ferris wheel.

"Okay. Does the office have his number?" She
asked, maintaining eye contact with me. I nodded. She checked my
pupils with her pen flashlight.

"Can you stand?" she asked finally.

"I don't know, but I can try."

They each took hold of one of my arms, and I
pushed my body up. I was unsteady on my feet, but I figured I could
make it out to the office. It wasn't very far from the gym through
the commons.

"Lean on me, we can make it," Nurse Callie
said resolutely.

"Can I get a new shirt? This one is gross," I
said. I didn't even want to know what my face looked like. From the
feel of it, Quasimodo would be about right.

 
Nurse Callie chucked. "A
little blood goes a long way. I'm sure we have a few extras lying
around. Never know when someone is going to throw up."

I reflexively wrinkled my nose at the image,
and winced at the sharp pain that followed.

"You okay?" she asked. We were finally out of
the gym. We passed by the trophy case that took up half of the
opposite wall.  

"Can we just rest here for a moment?" I asked
hoarsely. The ferris wheel was turned up to high and nausea was
overtaking me. Although I hadn't had lunch, I didn't want to
revisit breakfast.

"Of course," she said, helping me lean up
against the trophy case.

"McPherson would hate me even touching
this...with my unworthy fingers..." I said, shutting my eyes and
laughing a little.

To my surprise, I heard Nurse Callie laugh
back. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him."

After a moment we began again, me still
leaning on her for support. We went out into the commons, where
everyone who had been dismissed was sitting around, enjoying their
free time. I groaned. Several of them openly gaped at
me.

"Just ignore them," Nurse Callie whispered in
my ear. I tried to focus on my steps on the floor. I had never
realized just how huge the commons was. We finally navigated out,
and down the long, empty hall to the front of the school. When we
arrived at the office, the bell rang for the end of
class.

"Good timing," Callie said.

She held the door to the office open and
ushered me in. The door shut with a shushing sound, shutting us
off. The secretary behind the desk gasped beneath her blonde,
poodle-permed hairdo, nearly dropping the phone in her
hand.

"What happened to you?" she asked. "Were you
in a fight?"

"Sports accident," Callie said, picking up a
clipboard off of the counter and scribbling on it. "Got it
covered."

She led me back down the hall and into a
little closet of a room with a cot. Fluffy white clouds were
sponged on the baby blue walls. My nausea rolled into my throat
again. The starchy cot sagged as I sat down.

"Just lie down here and I'll call your dad,
okay?" She said with her smile. I wondered how old she was; she
couldn't have been more than twenty-five. "And I'll get you some
less gruesome clothing."

She returned a second later with an oversized
t-shirt with Hawthorne's mascot on it, the Hawthorne Hellcat. It
had always looked like a tiger with horns pasted on the head to
me.

"Thank you," I said, realizing I hadn't
before. She just nodded and shut the door for my
privacy.

I peeled off the bloody t-shirt and my bra,
for once thankful I didn't really need it. Those went into the
biohazard bag Callie had provided and into the trash.

I grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser
on the wall and wet them in the little sink that stood in the
corner. For the first time I glimpsed myself in the mirror. As I
wiped blood off of my chest, I examined my face. Blood choked my
nostrils and ran down to my chin. The bridge of my nose and my
cheeks were puffy and purple. All and all it wasn't as bad as I
expected beneath the gruesomeness, but I still looked like crap. I
had no idea how someone could cause that much damage with a tennis
ball, and the hatred that had to fuel that made me
shudder.

Now that I no longer looked like a murder
victim, I sat down on the cot, leaning my head back against the
wall. My legs wouldn't stop jiggling. Hugh would be so worried, not
to mention Claire...I hoped he wouldn't tell her until she got out
of work, knowing that was futile.

 
I looked around the room for
distraction. Flyers addressing good health habits filled a plastic
rack on the wall. The whole room smelled of illness, with hints of
cough syrup and vapor rub.

I sat up when I recognized Theo's voice. It
was coming from out in the hallway.

I stood up on still-weak legs and crept over
to the door. Voices filtered through, one of them Theo's and the
other Lainey's. I opened the door carefully to avoid making
noise.

"I already told you a million times, it was an
accident," Lainey said. In the minutes since she had left the gym
she must have composed herself, because her voice was as steady as
ever.

They were sitting a few doors down the hallway
in McPherson's office. The door was cracked. I couldn't see them
but I could hear them clearly.

"You aimed for her face, Lainey," Theo said. I
imagined her pushing up her glasses. I had never heard her so mad,
despite the few demonstrations of her anger streak I had
witnessed.

"What motive would she have to hurt Ms.
Donovan?" McPherson interjected, his tone maddeningly
disinterested. For a split second, I remembered the strange odor in
his shed, the impersonal way his house was decorated.

"Are you kidding me?" Theo asked. "Do you pay
any attention?"

"I am your principal, Ms. Weaver, I would care
for you to show me some respect." he said coldly.

"Why, when you don't respect any of us whose
parents aren't rich?" Theo said, baiting him.

C'mon, Theo, don't get in
trouble
, I silently begged. What I
wouldn't give for telepathy.

 
And I knew why Lainey had
attacked me. Henry. It was because I went to the dance with Henry,
who she had branded on day one as hers. Whether he agreed with that
or not. There was every possibility she had started that rumor
about them dating, as well.  

"That's enough," McPherson growled.

"Yeah, I mean, I was hoping that Ariel and I
could be friends," Lainey purred. "But it's like they won't accept
me into their little club." Now she was just pushing
buttons. 

"Don't exaggerate," McPherson said to her. "We
need to talk about a fair punishment."

"Punishment?" Lainey sputtered.

"You were fighting in class. We have a no
tolerance policy for fighting. I think that three lunch detentions,
for both of you, is an extremely fair and mild
discipline..."

"What?" Theo asked. "What about punishing her
for the fact that she broke my friend's face?"