Chapter 10 #2
The sound Morgan let out was torn between a screech and a gasp, and she flung away from him as if she’d catch death itself by having contact with him.
Morgan grabbed my arm, and I didn’t miss how she edged herself slightly behind me, almost into my locker. “W-We were just talking,” she said, voice like a mouse.
“About me?” Hudson watched her squirm for a moment longer before looking over. “Please tell me we don’t have more barcodes today.”
“I have homework to do today, so thankfully, no barcodes.”
He flicked his hair from his eyes and waited for me to finish gathering my things and shut my locker door. Morgan squeezed my arm again. Though her gaze still cut to Hudson’s like she expected him to lunge at any second, she was hesitant to let the topic go. “Text me when you find out.”
I swallowed a sigh. “I will, I will.”
A part of me expected Hudson to ask what we’d been talking about—if the roles had been reversed, I was sure my curiosity would’ve been piqued—but of course he kept silent as we walked down the hall.
The history worksheet I had was nothing too substantial—a paper I’d no doubt be able to finish with twenty minutes of focus—and I wondered if Hudson had any homework.
As we turned into the main hallway, my steps faltered.
It was easy to spot members of the Top Tier in the Brentwood High hallways due to the way other students reacted around them.
Sort of like how everyone edged away from Hudson, afraid to get too close, the students flocked to the members of the highest tier, almost like some of their popular-ness would rub off.
It was the way people got invested in celebrities—curious about their lives, wishing they could be a part of that crowd, too.
There was a little bubble of people surrounding two football players, Connor Bray and Ashton Shaw.
Landon had quite a few friends from the football team, but it was safe to say that Connor Bray was his best friend—possibly only tied with Reed Manning.
Landon told me once that even though he was the quarterback, he was glad that Connor was the one who got all the attention and love.
Which made sense, given how reserved Landon was.
And it also made sense why everyone ogled Connor—the guy was almost stupidly handsome.
I didn’t know much about Ashton, since Landon never talked about him or brought him over. The only thing I knew was that he’d been in the fight with Hudson and my brother in their freshman year. Landon wasn’t close with him anymore.
But both boys were on the football team with my brother, and they’d no doubt report on seeing me walking down the hallway with the Grim Reaper in tow.
Hudson stopped walking, too, when he spotted the football players, and when I looked over at him, a muscle in his jaw tensed.
His eyes darted from boy to boy, shoulders stiffening as if he was bracing himself.
Just when I was going to suggest we go the long way around to avoid them, Hudson started forward toward Ms. Murphy’s office, toward the boys, leaving me behind.
Even from here, I could hear Connor speaking to one of the underclassmen who’d crowded near him while he shifted through his locker, but Ashton wasn’t as engaged. He was the only one who looked at Hudson as the boy approached, thick eyebrows pulling together in a frown.
“Look who it is,” Ashton said, cutting off what the underclassman had been saying, drawing everyone’s attention. “The Grim Reaper. Whose funeral are you off to?”
“Yours,” Hudson replied, not even glancing over at the glaring boy.
I took a step forward, my heart picking up its pace.
Ashton wasn’t satisfied with Hudson’s lack of interest, because when Hudson was about to walk past him, Ashton snatched the handle of Hudson’s backpack and pulled him to a stop.
The students who’d been around the Top Tier boys shuffled back, the awestruck excitement draining from their faces, leaving nervousness behind.
“That a threat?” Ashton asked, seeming much too entertained by the situation he was creating. “Because I don’t think you want to threaten me, freak.”
“Knock it off, Ash,” Connor ordered, grabbing his backpack out of his locker and slamming the door shut. He turned to the two boys warily. “Let’s go. Coach will kill me if I’m late again.”
Listen to him, I willed to Ashton, taking another step forward while clutching my backpack straps tighter. Right down the hall were the doors to the offices, which meant the door to Principal Oliphant. If I raced past them, I could get her before anything escalated.
“Go ahead,” Hudson said to the football player, unbothered with Ashton’s hand still wrapped around his backpack handle, holding him in place. It was like Hudson couldn’t help but provoke him. “We both know how it turned out last time.”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m a whole lot bigger than I was freshman year.” Ashton tugged Hudson closer by his backpack, staring down into the Grim Reaper’s eyes. “Bigger than you.”
He was right, of course. He had a few inches in height on Hudson, inches on the muscles he held the Grim Reaper in place with. He pummeled guys on the football field for fun.
But instead of backing down, Hudson lifted his chin to the side, offering his jaw to Ashton, almost like he was saying try it. He would’ve seemed completely unaffected if it hadn’t been for his right hand, which had clenched into a fist as Ashton spoke.
For a long moment, no one breathed.
Ashton didn’t move, though. Didn’t pull his arm back, didn’t do anything besides clutch Hudson’s strap.
I only had a side view of Hudson, but I could see the wide, amused smile when it spread across his mouth.
It made my heart stop. Hudson reached over his chest and pried Ashton’s hand free.
“Don’t worry,” Hudson said, readjusting his bag, glancing around at the few students who still gathered.
“Not that many people saw your ego get knocked down a peg. I wouldn’t sweat it. ”
And then, without another word, he turned and continued down the hallway toward Ms. Murphy’s office. He walked with the same lazy gait he always had, not glancing back once.
Connor smacked the back of Ashton’s head, too hard to be playful. “You’re asking for it,” he muttered, letting out a breath. “If you had hit him, I would’ve told Landon.”
Ashton muttered something under his breath, something that sounded like a curse word. Connor would’ve told Landon?
They started in my direction, with their fan club dispersing behind them, and that was when Connor spotted me. “Hey, Gemma,” he greeted, cutting a look at Ashton, who didn’t even meet my eye. “I’d stay and chat, but Coach’ll skin me alive if I’m not on the field in five.”
“You should go, then,” I said, forcing a smile that felt so totally phony. I hoped he didn’t notice. “Good luck at practice.”
The two boys hustled past me then, leaving the tense atmosphere behind them. Stiffening my spine, I headed toward Ms. Murphy’s office.
Hudson sat rigid in his seat at the foldable table when I walked into the doorway, his fists clenched underneath the table.
In that second, there was no snark in his expression, no dark humor, and no malice.
Everything that he’d been wearing a moment ago no longer showed on his face.
For a brief second, his gaze was transparent on the table, almost like he was unsettled. Beneath the table, his fists shook.
And then he spotted me, and it was like everything shifted. He went from Bridge Boy to the Grim Reaper in a snap. His tight posture slackened, and he propped his elbow on the table, trying for nonchalance. “There you are. Enjoy the show?”
I felt off-kilter staring at him, unsure how to respond. I pulled the door shut behind me, sealing us inside Ms. Murphy’s small office. “Why did Ashton do that? Pull you aside like that?”
“It’s funny,” Hudson said with a smirk, sitting back in his seat. “He’s funny. Putting on a show for his followers but too much of a coward to follow through. I must’ve made quite the impression freshman year.”
“That, or your fist did.”
Hudson’s smile deepened.
“Then again,” I said as I sat down across from him, still unable to shake the uneasy feeling. “If he grabbed you in the first place, how much of an impression could it have made?”
“He just wants me to be afraid of him like he’s afraid of me.” Hudson reached up and scratched the spot underneath his eye, right where his scar was. “I guess he gets credit for trying.”
If I hadn’t seen Hudson’s split-second reaction a moment ago, with his shaking hands and stiff spine, I never would’ve thought that the football player affected him. I wondered if Hudson was afraid of Ashton, but he didn’t want to show it.
I almost told him about Connor’s response to it all, about how he was going to tell Landon, but thought better of it at the last second. “Principal Oliphant called me to the office today,” I said instead, pulling up my backpack and taking out the textbook.
He seemed less than interested in the topic. “What’d she want?”
I debated on my answer, deciding to give a half-truth. “She wanted to talk about the Most Likely To list. She said she was going down the list and talking to students about it.”
To a bit of my surprise, Hudson pulled out a math textbook from his backpack and set it on the table as well, flipping open to a page bookmarked by a folded lined piece of paper.
His handwriting was neat on the page, half-finished.
“That’s what they do, huh? Try to cover up the aftermath instead of planning to stop it?
So much for their zero-tolerance bullying policy.
It’s only zero-tolerance as long as it isn’t one of their own, huh? ”
The Most Likely To list hadn’t been around that long, at least to my knowledge.
I thought I remembered hearing that it started when Landon was a freshman, but there was no solid evidence.
The school’s gossip site hadn’t started until Landon’s sophomore year, and there had been a list out then.
“How can they stop it if they can’t find out who runs it? ”
“I’m sure if they went after that the way they go after me, it wouldn’t be hard to figure it out.” Hudson’s voice took on the edge it always seemed to gain whenever he talked about the Top Tier. “That was all she wanted?”
I didn’t hesitate before nodding.
We worked on homework in silence after that, with no sound but the fluttering of textbook pages between us.
It was impossible to focus with my thoughts dancing the way they did, especially with Hudson beside me.
I read and reread the same passage probably four times before I set my pencil down, rubbing my knuckles.
“There’s an away game tomorrow,” I said haltingly, saying the first thing that came to mind. “Are you going?”
He didn’t look up, his pencil scratching across the page. “Do I seem like the type to go to football games?”
“I could see you in full Bobcats spirit gear.”
“Unfortunately, I look incredibly tacky in blue and gold.”
I cracked the world’s tiniest smile. “What a shame.”
Something in my expression caught Hudson’s attention, because he leaned further across the table, lowering his chin. “Tell me honestly. What else did the principal say?”
I’d hate for you to get caught in the crossfire.
Whether it would hurt Hudson or not, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it to him.
“She found out we had lunch together yesterday. She said that’s usually when Superintendent Filmore takes his lunches, and if he saw us together, he’d tell my parents.
” I dropped my gaze to my textbook. “And my parents can’t find out. ”
He blew out a breath accompanied by an eye roll. “Nosy, isn’t she?”
“It just means we have to meet after the program.” I was convinced, then, that the person who spoke wasn’t me. Normal Gemma wouldn’t propose meeting outside of school—outside of the peer program. Normal Gemma wouldn’t even dream of seeing him without school as an excuse. “I mean, if you want.”
“We have to finish checking things off your list,” he replied without hesitation. “So, yeah, I’m down.”
I’m down. The words themselves seemed flippant, but the way he said them felt like anything but. That excited thrill came back, and I didn’t try to bottle it up.