Page 92 of Fearless

“Carter, wait.” Mason’s expression changed, his eyes widening and pulling down at the corners, something like desperation coloring his face. “Wait. Shit. Dude. I’m sorry. Just hold on a sec.”

Carter stayed seated.

“I…shit.” Mason blew out a loud breath and slumped forward onto the table, the fatigue weighing heavy in his eye bags. “Yeah, my dad invited you, okay? So? He knew I wasn’t going to do it myself.”

Carter waited.

Mason glanced down at his hands, head hanging like he didn’t have the strength to hold it up. “It’s been hard for me, okay? Going back to school. People are saying shit…people are looking at me funny. One of my best friends has abandoned me.” He glanced up then, from under his brows.

Carter said, “That’s shit, yeah, I get it, but you know this is your own fault. No one made you take that stuff. You don’t like Ava, fine, but I do, and I’m not going to lie just because you want to get her in trouble.”

Mason’s smile was mocking. “Aren’t you a goody-two-shoes.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He got to his feet.

“Is she fucking you?” Mason asked. “Is that why? You getting good head off that biker slut, so you turn on me?”

“We’re just friends.”

“But you wish you weren’t, right?”

“She has a boyfriend,” Carter said, exasperated. “She’s really into him, and I’m not trying to get in the way of that, okay? Just drop it.”

Mason coughed a humorless laugh. “What? She only puts out for bikers? You gonna join the Little Doggies so you can get some off her? What’s yourawesomebiker name gonna be?”

“Thanks for breakfast,” Carter said, shrugging into his hoodie. “It almost tasted like it was made by someone who cared about you people.”

“You’re a dumbass, picking her,” Mason called at this back. “She’s just the kind of whore cops find dead on the floors of abandoned houses. Setting yourself up for disappointment.”

Carter kept walking. On his way out the front door, he cupped a tiny crystal angel off a side table full of crystal sculptures. Its cool, sharp edges bit into his palm and he smiled the smile of a white trash kid. The theft made him feel a little better. It fit just right in his hoodie pocket.

Art class. At ten-fifteen, Ava stored all her belongings in a cubby at the back of the room, as per her teacher’s instruction, and went to fetch a fresh lump of clay from the storeroom. The art room was a long rectangle, full of long rectangular tables, lit by the sunlight passing through six long rectangular windows. The symmetry was soothing to her tattered nerves. The air smelled of wet clay and paints and chalks and freshly-shaved pencils. Sketches from students and instructional posters covered the stark cinderblock walls. Voices zipped back and forth, echoing in corners: the friendly chaos that was every art class.

Ainsley Millcott was still wearing a white bandage across her nose; the skin around her eyes still had a certain shadowy look to it, but Ava was convinced she was using makeup to prolong the appearance of injury. She’d counted on the little princess tossing the wounded shtick as soon as possible. Instead, Ainsley was lapping up the sympathy like a cat with cream.

Whatever. Ava sat down with her back to Ainsley, at a table full of girls she knew, liked okay, and who wouldn’t pester her. She dug her hands into the clay and swept her mind clean of all worries: Mercy, the baby, everything.

At the end of the hour, she had a drunk-looking vase, and a wealth of clay jammed under her fingernails. As she washed her hands, she overhead Ainsley saying to one of her friends, “As ifCoach expects me to play volleyball. Look at my face!” Dramatic gesture as she pulled her backpack from the cubbies.

Whatever, whatever, whatever…

Ava waited until they were gone, until she began to feel the pressure of the next bell, before she retrieved her things. She reached into her purse out of automatic habit to check her phone – maybe Mercy had texted, was awake and thinking better and would apologize – and closed her hand over her bottle of hand sanitizer instead. Huh?

She yanked the purse off the shelf and rummaged. Where was her phone? It was always right in the middle, between her pepper spray and a spare package of pretzels.

Dread crawled up the back of her neck. Paranoia, most like, or maybe something valid. Maybe…

There it was, in the front pocket, with her tampons and lip gloss.

Relief flooded her, and then doubt. Had she put it here? She never did.

Then again, she was all full of new, cartwheeling mommy hormones, wasn’t she?

Cursing to herself, she jammed the phone back where it belonged and hustled off to calculus.

Twenty-One

Five Years Ago

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