Page 8 of Friends Like This

Are they talking about me?

Do they know we know?

I sigh.

Whatever.

Then I feel an arm wrap around my waist.

“Hey,” Aaron says with a smile. And suddenly I feel like I can handle anything that might come.

We go through the lunch line and head to the big table where Miles, Joel, Mackie, and Sarah are sitting with some of our other friends like Trevor and Hyla, their best friends Greg and Jenny, Nick, his brother Vince, and their best friends Braden, Maia, and Leigh.

When I sit down, I look pointedly at Sarah.

“Did you get into it with those girls?” I ask, nodding in their direction.

“Not into it. I heard them whispering and snickering, then they were staring at me, so I let them know in no uncertain terms what would happen if I heard or saw them doing that again and that I’d turn them in.”

I let out a big sigh.

“They seem to be behaving themselves, so try to let it go,” Mackie says.

I nod.

After lunch, the six of us are walking out of the lunchroom together when a group of guys at a table near the door start snickering.

And then one says, “So, do you give blow jobs to all three of them or just him? Must be good to be your friend.”

Oh no.

Aaron yanks the guy up from the table and slams him into the wall.

“Aaron!” I yell, but the guy’s friends are trying to pull him off, which means Miles and Joel are right there. Punches are thrown, and there are way too many cracking noises.

As Trevor, Nick, and Braden are about to join the fray, some teachers pull everyone apart and haul them off.

“He says it was unprovoked,” the principal says.

“Unprovoked?” Aaron shouts.

All six of us are sitting in the principal’s office with the guidance counselor, both of my parents, Joel’s dad—Jeff, Aaron’s parents—Cathy and Bob, Mackie’s mom—Linda, and Miles’s mom, Katie, arguably the most formidable of them all, as the principal lists the charges against us.

“Calm down,” Bob hisses at Aaron. Then he looks at the principal. “What I think he means is the other boy was probably not giving the full story.”

“Then why don’t you tell me whatdidhappen?” the principal asks pointedly.

“What happened is that guy is a jerk,” Sarah sasses.

“Ms. McKinley, perhaps you’d like to tell me about the threats you made to a classmate this morning. Because given what happened at lunch, I’m guessing it’s all connected.”

I put my head in my hands.

This isexactlywhat I didn’t want to happen.

Finally, Mackie says, “People have been spreading terrible rumors about Rae. It started in bathroom stalls, but now they’re saying it in person.”

My parents look stricken.

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