Page 72 of Rescued Faith

They sank back down to the floor. She sat between his knees, leaned against his chest. His strong arms wrapped around her, sheltering her from the chill.

“Buckle up. This is riveting stuff.”

Penny huffed. “Riveting, huh?”

“Oh yeah. See, my buddy and I wanted to be heroes. We knew that meant we had to rescue someone, and in the fourth grade, there weren’t many damsels in distress. So we set our sights on animals. Our science teacher, Mr. Hale, had specimens of different animals in jars, which always seemed kinda cruel to me.”

“Ugh. Those jars always creeped me out.” Penny shivered.

Bryce held her closer.

“What did you do?” she asked, settling into his embrace.

“Obviously it was too late for the animals in the jar, but I was determined to make sure Mr. Hale wouldn’t dissect any more creatures in the name of science. I wanted to send him a message. So my friend and I spent a week catching as many frogs as we could. We kept them in a couple of big buckets, and one day we cut last hour and filled Mr. Hale’s car with all the frogs.”

Penny chuckled lightly. “You didn’t.”

“Oh yes, we did. Got in so much trouble too. I think we had detention for a month.”

“You and Logan?”

Bryce froze. He didn’t say anything.

It was so foreign for this energetic man to remain this quiet and still.

“Bryce? Are you okay?” She pulled away from his arms, which had gone strangely limp, and turned around to face him. Seeing something beyond the good-time grin he always wore, or the powerful glower when he faced a challenge, was a rare glimpse at a man she’d always suspected was there but had hardly ever seen.

“What happened?” she asked.

He shook his head slightly. “Oh, nothing. Just…remembering. I haven’t thought about him in a long time.”

“About what? Your friend?”

“Yeah. Luke.”

“Did something happen to him?”

He looked at her, a sorrow in his gaze she’d never witnessed before with him. “Yeah. Luke died. And even worse, it was my fault.”

“What are you talking about? How was it your fault?”

“Because I didn’t do enough to stop it.”

The heartbreak in his voice almost wrecked her. “What happened?”

“Luke was my best friend. It was just him and his mom, and she worked a lot, so he was at our place all the time. Enough that I noticed bruises and stuff. When I asked about them, he’d get really quiet. He never said anything, but I suspected his mom. He admitted she got pretty mad sometimes, but he didn’t want me saying anything.”

“Did you?”

“Not at first. Then he missed a few days of school, and I got worried about him, told my teacher what I thought. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I shouldn’t accuse innocent people. His mom was simply an overworked singleparent. She had already contacted our teacher and said Luke was on a trip, so of course my teacher wasn’t going to believe me.”

“Did he come back?”

“Yeah. And when I asked how his trip was, he had no clue what I was talking about.”

“So his mom lied.”

“And when I tried to talk to him about it with the teacher,helied. Said I was just being typical Bryce, class jokester. He laughed at me, said no one could ever believe what I said. Then I got in trouble for taking a joke too far. And after the frog incident, who was going to believe me? The teacher even called my parents and told them I had a problem, that I wasn’t taking my classes seriously enough, was causing issues.”

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