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  Chapter 2

  Thwack!

  Alex’s head rocked violently sideways. The entire right side of his face suddenly burned as if it had been set on fire. For a split second, all he saw was the bright white light that comes with being cracked in the head.

  “Pick it up!” PJ screamed.

  His ear ringing deafeningly, Alex numbly watched a volleyball bounce twice and come to rest near his feet. Had PJ really just thrown it into the side of his face?

  On purpose? Why?

  He slowly reached down and picked up the ball, still dazed. He stared at it like he’d never seen one before. All around him in the gymnasium, phys-ed went on as if he were invisible.

  “Now hand it to me!” PJ demanded, screaming even louder now.

  The players on Alex’s team shuffled away and left him standing alone.

  Alex felt the familiar burn of rage stoke in his gut. He raised his head to glare venomously across the volleyball net. PJ was on the other side, four teammates surrounding him. They watched with malicious interest, none of them speaking in Alex’s defense.

  Not that he would have expected them to.

  PJ sneered back, a hateful gleam in his eyes, and Alex curled his lip. He and PJ used to be friends, but that was a long time ago—back in elementary school. As it was with almost everyone in Alex’s life, after his mom had gone missing he’d let their friendship fade away until it was nonexistent. He hadn’t done anything specifically offensive to PJ, he’d just done nothing, period. He’d made no effort to maintain their bond, and generally PJ had done the same. But for the past two years, PJ had made it his personal mission to make Alex’s life as miserable as possible. Alex wasn’t quite sure when they had become enemies, or why. Probably about the same time everyone started calling him ‘Pat’ instead of PJ—that, too, had gone unnoticed by Alex until the day someone mentioned ‘Pat’ and he had to ask who they were talking about.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter. Alex didn’t care.

  PJ had hit him with the ball without any provocation. It had been PJ’s turn to serve and Alex had rolled the ball to him under the net, exactly the way they had been taught. PJ had scooped it up and, without a word, thrown it as hard as he could at Alex’s head. With his usual lack of interest in all things school, Alex had already turned away. He hadn’t even known the ball was coming until he’d taken it full in the side of his face.

  Alex glanced up at the second level of the gym where the majority of the class was working on an aerobics routine. The phys-ed instructor, Mr. Tomes, was there but his head was turned away. If he’d noticed what was going on between PJ and Alex, he wasn’t planning to get involved.

  “Hand it to me!” Spittle actually flew from PJ’s mouth this time.

  Alex wasn’t afraid. In fact, what he really wanted to do was throw the ball back at PJ and punch him in the face. It’d be David vs. Goliath, considering PJ had doubled in size over the past two years, but Alex knew how to fight. If they got into an all-out brawl, he was pretty sure he could give at least as good as he got.

  He looked past PJ, at the people on the other team, and realized that a fight was exactly what they hoped to see. Two of them even smirked, throwing cocky grins his way. No surprise there. Alex knew he didn’t have any friends.

  If that was the case, if a fight was what they wanted, then he’d be damned if he’d give it to them. They were exactly the kind of people that made Alex think high school was a waste of time.

  Slowly, carefully, Alex bent down. Looking PJ straight in the eyes, he very deliberately rolled the volleyball under the net. He rolled it tauntingly slow, so slow that the ball stopped before it reached PJ’s feet.

  PJ’s eyes grew wide and his face turned a deeper shade of red. Alex sneered, briefly wondering if the guy was on steroids, and blew PJ a sarcastic kiss.

  PJ took three rapid steps forward, grabbed up the ball and threw it at Alex in one swift motion. Alex had no time to react.

  Thwack! The ball slammed into his head again, hitting him on the same side as the last time. It stung terribly, but if he hadn’t turned his head at the last minute he’d have taken the main impact on his nose instead of his cheek and ear.

  “I said hand it to me you jean-jacketed little freak!” PJ demanded.

  Something inside Alex cracked, and all he could see was red. PJ had said one of the few things that could really set him off. He’d taken to wearing a jean jacket after his mother was gone. It was the last gift she’d ever given him. He wore it every day without fail. Every time he outgrew one, he bought another. At times like this, in physical education class, he almost felt naked without it. It wasn’t just a reminder of her. For Alex, it was more than that. It was like armor against the people of Beaver, Utah.

  He was mad, now. Roaring mad. He picked up the ball and hefted it, clenching it in his hand. His whole head was ringing now, but he barely noticed. All he could think about was hurting PJ.

  He took a step toward the net and PJ’s eyes glinted, hands clenching into tight fists. “Think you’re better than everyone else, rich boy? You above us all? Too good for us?”

  “Don’t you pander to him,” someone hissed from behind Alex. “It’s what he wants.”

  Leeann. His one and only friend.

  Alex looked back at her. Leeann was a diminutive Asian girl who would probably end up the valedictorian of their class. They’d gone to school together since kindergarten, and her father worked at EMIT. Alex knew she was just trying to keep him from getting in trouble or hurt, and maybe she was right, but he was way past calming down. He scowled back at her and turned away.

  “Alex,” Leeann warned, her voice louder, her tone maternal.

  He looked over his shoulder again, annoyed. She could be so infuriatingly matter-of-fact and logical sometimes. But he wasn’t going to back down and he wasn’t going to stop to tell her so. They could argue about it later. He squeezed the ball again and gave her a slow, almost imperceptible shake of his head. He would handle it his way.

  “He’s just a bully,” Leeann muttered disgustedly. Whether it was because she was his friend, or because she was extremely smart, or just flat-out right, apparently she needed the last word. Fine. He could live with that if she’d just butt-out.

  PJ was a bully, she was right. Alex had seen him harass plenty of others. But there was more to this situation.

  When they were in the first grade, Alex and PJ had lived in the same neighborhood. Back then, they’d been best buddies. PJ’s parents had been well-to-do, they’d had money, but something had gone wrong and their marriage ended in divorce. PJ’s Dad had left, never to return, and his mom had been forced to move them across town into a less affluent neighborhood. The other side of the tracks, so to speak.

  The week before they moved, all the kids in the neighborhood had been playing in a field next to an apple orchard and decided to have a war using apples as ammunition. They’d picked sides, and Alex and PJ had ended up on opposing teams.

  During the ‘battle,’ one of the apples hit PJ in the head and he was sure Alex was the one who’d thrown it. He’d come barreling across the field, throwing punches. Alex defended himself and ended up having to punch PJ in the face to make him stop. PJ had left the field crying, bloodied and shamefaced, the laughter of their peers following him.

  Although Alex had wanted to go after his friend and apologize, everyone had congratulated him and told him he was amazing. He hadn’t felt amazing. And to make matters worse, PJ’s older brother had come blazing back onto the field on his dirt bike a little while later, PJ on the back, screaming for a rematch because “no brother of his was going to lose a fight to a little nerd like that.”

  Of course all the kids on the field wanted to see more and goaded Alex to fight, but he said he didn’t want to. Even PJ didn’t seem like he wanted any part of a rematch, he just stared at the ground while his brother made all the demands. But finally both of them were bullied into it and once again the two friends squared off
—and once again PJ ended up leaving the field in tears.

  Alex had never felt more ashamed of himself than he had on that day. PJ was supposed to have been his friend.

  And now here they were, ten years later. Alex was smart enough to recognize that today’s attack was borne from years of pent up shame and humiliation, all stemming from that day on the apple field.

  But he was sick of being blamed for the past. Sick of being blamed for things that weren’t his fault. Sick of Beaver, Utah.

  Alex hadn’t wanted to fight ten years ago, and he hadn’t want to today. PJ started it—again—just as he had in the apple fight.

  His father had always told him to walk away from a fight if at all possible. Not because he wanted to protect Alex from being hurt—because he’d also said sometimes you can’t walk away. But if you were fighting to further your own ego, or for some false sense of pride, or just because someone else wanted you to: walk away. It didn’t matter what someone else thought. What mattered was that at the end of a fight there was never really a winner. Even if you beat the tar out of the other guy, you still had to deal with the knowledge that you’d hurt him when you didn’t have to. There was always a higher ground; you just had to have the courage to step up to it. The day you no longer cared if you hurt someone else, his father said, was the day you became the loser of every fight.

  But his Dad didn’t have to go to high school every day.

  Unfortunately for him, Alex mostly agreed with the philosophy behind his dad’s bleeding-heart perspective. Inwardly, he cursed himself for thinking of his dad’s words right now. He didn’t want to think about repercussions, he was mad.

  But Alex knew even if he beat the crap out of PJ today it would only make him feel terrible later, especially knowing that the real reason PJ was picking this fight was out of a desire to salvage what he perceived as a loss of dignity at age six.

  Clenching his teeth, he glared back at Leeann again, as if his full-circle thoughts were her fault. He sighed.

  “PJ…” Alex began, shaking his head. Through gritted teeth, he managed to say, “I’m sor—”

  “I said hand it to me!” Obviously, PJ was way past wanting an apology. Probably about nine years past it.

  Alex looked back at Leeann and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘See? I told you so.’ She gave him a slow, tight-lipped shake of her head. ‘Don’t you do it,’ she was telling him.

  Mumbling under his breath, he faced PJ again and rolled the ball under the net. In a flash of movement, PJ had it in his hand and, from point blank-distance, slammed it against Alex’s head so hard that he fell backward.

  Alex stumbled, almost falling to the floor.

  It really hurt that time—bad. Childhood friend or not, PJ deserved what he was about to get.

  When Alex’s vision cleared, he drew back his fist and found himself looking into PJ’s frantic eyes from only a few inches away. One of them brimmed with tears.

  PJ hurriedly looked away.

  And just like that, all the rage Alex had been feeling vanished.

  PJ was scared. After all these years, he was still afraid.

  Afraid of what might happen if Alex fought back.

  He needed this victory.

  The path to his Dad’s ‘higher ground’ was clear now.

  Alex gave PJ a thin-lipped smile and nodded. Ignoring Leeann and the smirks of all those watching, he picked up the ball and placed it in PJ’s hand.