An icy breeze played with my hair, lifting it and sweeping over the back of my neck making me cringe. I hoped they’d pick me up. It was too cold to walk very far.
I’d made it across the staff parking lot when I noticed a mustard yellow car idling in the student lot. Like my mom’s car, what it lacked in newness it had in character. Too far away, to see the people inside, I only spared it a passing glance as I cut across the lot to the school’s main access road.
It wasn’t a big school or a big town so the sidewalk only lined the main road. When I turned south to head out of town, I walked the graveled shoulder. The ditch dropped three feet before sloping away into the fallow fields just outside of town. The clumps of dirt exposed by the last tilling poked up in frozen disarray from the ground.
My light jacket did little to keep me warm and my fingers soon felt cold while my cheek grew warmer. I used my freezing digits to sooth the ache in my face. It kept them warm.
At the last school I’d attended, just an hour away, I’d finished the year as a complete outcast. I hadn’t liked it, but at least the bullying there hadn’t escalated past nasty words exchanged in the halls. Lightly touching my cheek, I wondered if it would bruise. My mom would flip if she found out just how bad things had gotten and would want to move. Again.
In my life, we’d moved eleven times… seven since I turned thirteen. We usually moved at the end of the school year, stayed somewhere for the summer and moved again before the next school year started. Every year, a different school.
According to Belinda’s book, moving often protected us. From what? No idea. But I was sure that Gran and Aunt Danielle knew. They instigated talk of moving. Their primary argument centered on the fact that moving meant new boys to meet. After all, finding ‘the right one’ remained our priority. When I made my selection, we’d all be free… until my fatherless daughter turned twelve.
I wished I could be like other kids at school. The normal drama of who dated whom and what so-and-so said to what’s-her-name appealed to me. Heck, just having a friend, someone willing to sit with me at lunch, would be nice. But did I want that bad enough to move again so soon?
Even if we did move, the chances of finding someone willing to deal with my weirdness was low. No, better to stay with the devils I knew. If I beat mom home, I could try to hide whatever mark might be on my cheek with makeup. Maybe the problem with Brian and Clavin would die down.
Lost in thought, it took me a moment to hear the growing sound of a car from behind me. Already on the shoulder, I took another step away from the road as I turned to look back. The large faded yellow car from the student lot approached fast. I narrowed my eyes, squinting trying to see the driver. Squinting hurt my cheek. Absently, I touched my cool fingers to it.
The fire in my cheek dulled in comparison to my anger when I recognized Brian behind the wheel. His glare and white-knuckled grip on the wheel had me spinning away and running toward the field. I almost fell scrambling over the frozen tilled clumps. Running through the field wouldn’t work. I’d only made it about five feet in.
A large overturned stone lay loose on top the hard ground near my feet. I picked it up and faced the road waiting to see what Brian would do. The car flew past with Clavin hanging an arm out the passenger window to flip me off.
I stayed in the frozen field, facing throbbing, watching them disappear over the next slight rise. Dread filled me. The fields gave way to woods in the direction they’d headed. The same direction I needed to go. The way home. Did they just drive by to scare me one more time, or did they have a plan?
The remoteness of the tree-lined road made it a great place to catch a lone walker. My eyes lingered on the dense trees stretching more than a field’s length on either side. Tops barren, their thick trunks still afforded protection.
Without any other option, I moved back to the road, jogging along the shoulder, trying to hurry. I held onto the rock. Heavy, about the size of a hardball, I figured I could try to throw it at the windshield if they decided to come back before I reached the trees. Apparently, they weren’t ready to forgive and forget.