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  He pressed his burning joint to the exposed skin of her hand.

  She jerked back with a surprised cry, her eyes going wide with pain.

  That’s when I lost it.

  I came at him from the side and grabbed his hand holding the joint. I got a grip on his thumb and yanked back roughly until he cried out.

  Almost immediately I took a hit from behind. I can’t say I was surprised, but I was still angry. Jenner’s friend knocked me to the ground, snapping my neck back hard and crushing me under his shockingly hefty weight. Dry, dead grass and sand scraped against my skin as I pushed off against the ground, immediately using all the leverage I could find to lift him up and off me. I was able to throw him back before he could square himself over me and pin me down, but Jenner jumped on in his place, shoving me to the ground again.

  I saw a bright pink blur fly past my face, heard Jenner cry out and go limp for a second. It was all the time I needed. I pushed up again, taking him with me and making my arms shout with exertion. I was able to throw him off before he got himself together. I jumped forward, landing on my hands and knees looking down at dark earth and the girl’s shoes.

  Bright pink. She’d kicked Jenner in the face.

  I stood up just as his buddy was getting to his feet, his face contorted with rage, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in huge lungful’s of salty sea air.

  He lunged at me, but I’d had enough. It was stupid and reckless of me, but I was done holding back.

  I fell into my fighting stance, centered my weight, reared back my right hand, and landed a punch to his face that used all of my strength and all of his forward momentum. We connected violently, my hand screaming as the skin on my knuckles split on his cheek bone, but the guy dropped to the ground. He went dead weight, his bell completely rung.

  Jenner sat up, looked at his friend, looked at me, and swore loudly. He came at me, driving in low and grabbing me around the waist. I was waiting for him. I grabbed him under the shoulders, spun with his hit, and threw him out across the ground. He skidded on his side, the sandy forest floor gathering around him. He recovered quickly and came at me again, but I put a fist in his stomach.

  “Oooof,” he bellowed, the air escaping his body fiercely. He stood bent over, gasping slightly with his hands on his knees.

  I could have walked away. More than likely I would have still ended up in a world of trouble for the fight, but I wasn’t beyond saving yet. I could have called it done, walked the girl to her car, and worried about the repercussions later. It probably would have been the smart thing to do, but I was seventeen. I was young, dumb and full of… well, I was young and dumb, and I was also angry. So very angry. And you can’t unleash the beast sleeping inside you, let him have a snack, and expect him to go back to bed no problem.

  The animal was out. He was awake. And he wanted to play.

  Jenner stood as straight as he could, murder in his eyes, and he made a run at me. I hit him in the face once. Twice. He fell back a step, blood pouring from his mouth, but he growled low and crouched to make another attempt.

  Part of me was excited to see him coming.

  What saved us both was the cops. Suddenly voices were coming through the trees from the direction of the bonfire. Flashlights swept the space, cutting through the darkness and casting long, jagged shadows over the ground.

  “Everybody out here, now!” a woman shouted sternly.

  I backed away from Jenner. He leaned over, a fine line of spit hanging from his open, gasping mouth that shone brightly in the police flashlights.

  I knew I was screwed. My hands were aching, his face was a wet mess, and two cops were making their way into the small clearing. As they closed in on us, their flashlights blinding each of us in turn, I glanced at the girl. She was standing at the edge of the clearing with her eyes on me. I didn’t know what I expected to find there. Fear. Sadness. Gratitude.

  What I found was nothing.

  “Alright, everyone,” a male cop droned, sounding tired. “All of you come on out here. Let’s see some ID.”

  Jenner’s dad was an architect who designed a big portion of the buildings in Orange County. I was pretty sure the other guy’s dad owned a chain of sporting goods stores up and down the coast. I didn’t know what the girl’s dad did, but I was sure it was more than mine ever had. I was sure it’d be enough to make sure she slept in her own bed that night.

  But me? I didn’t have enough connections to get out of trouble with a mall cop, let alone evade the shit storm rolling my way.

  I was going to jail.

  Chapter Two

  I got my own holding cell. That was pretty exciting. Any time I can avoid being vomited on by a drunk or shanked by a tweaker I count myself uncommonly lucky. What wasn’t so lucky was the Breathalyzer test I took and failed. I saw a couple of other kids taking them and being loaded into the backs of police cars, but none of them showed up at the station. Just me. You can say I would have gotten off light like them if it weren’t for the fight, but if that were the case then where was Jenner?

  Maybe at the hospital getting stitches.

  They called my foster father even though I told them not to bother. They said they were talking to him but then no one mentioned it again and I didn’t ask. I didn’t need to. I made myself as comfortable as I could on a metal bench in the small, stark room and I tried to sleep.

  It didn't happen.

  I couldn't stop thinking about what it all meant for me, or I guess what it wouldn't mean for me. I'd be kicked out of Weston for sure and shipped on my ass back to the ghettos of L.A.. I wouldn’t finish the Higher Focus accelerated class work I’d been working on for the last three years, meaning I wouldn’t receive college credit for it. Maybe no credit for it at all.

  Higher Focus was a program initiated at Weston High School for people who went beyond being Talented and Gifted. It was for tried and true geniuses. I’d been lucky to get in, to be pulled out of the inner-city school system of L.A. and bussed out to Orange County. To be given the kind of education that was on par with most of the Ivy League colleges in the country. It was supposed to groom me for the real thing. Give me the opportunity that my poverty level denied me.

  Now it was probably gone. Out of my reach, taking everything else with it.

  Almost as devastating was the fact that boxing would be stripped from me. My foster father would take it from me the way you take a toy from a toddler. It brought me joy, it gave me relief from the tension and anger that sometimes threatened to consume me, and that was why it would have to go. He was always looking for a reason to punish me, and I’d just given him a big one.

  I should have stayed out of it. I should have minded my own damn business. I should have—

  “Kellen Coulter,” the cop on guard called out, pulling me out of myself, “you got a visitor.”

  I blinked up at the ceiling. My back was aching from lying flat on the metal bench but I’d stayed. I’d born it as a punishment. I didn’t know how long I’d laid there or what time it was, but it felt either way too late or way too early.

  Had to be my foster father even though I didn’t think he’d bother to come get me that night. In fact, I was hoping he’d let me rot in that place and forget all about me forever. I was seventeen, just one year shy of getting out of his house. Of being free.

  “He’s in here,” the cop called into the hall. “You have ten minutes, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart?

  I never got a good look at her in the dark, but when she stepped into the yellow tinged lighting of the room, I recognized her immediately.

  The girl from the woods.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked bluntly.

  She paused to stare at me, her arms wrapped tightly around her body still encased in the black fleece coat. It looked like it was a size or two too big for her. It hung off her small frame like a sack. I wondered if it was Jenner’s.

  “I came to see you," she answered almost silently.

 
; “And they just let you walk right in?”

  “I had some help.”

  “From who?”

  “My mom. She’s the lead on Broken Badges. The crime show? On Thursdays?”

  I stretched, groaning slightly as my back protested. “I don’t watch a lot of TV.”

  “This precinct is where she did all of her research. Ride alongs and stuff. They love her here.”

  “So they let you into my cell because they like your mom?” I asked dubiously.

  She grinned nervously. “They like me too.”

  “Obviously. Why are you here?” I asked again.

  “To talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Dave.”

  Jenner.

  Now that I was looking at her in the light, I recognized her from more than just the woods. She was Jenner’s girlfriend. I’d seen her on the sidelines at football games for the last year cheering him on. The guy was a tool, but as far as I could tell she was crazy for him.

  This conversation would not be good for me.

  I sat back against the cold cement wall, looking at her guardedly. “What about him?”

  She glanced around the room uneasily and I wondered why she bothered. There wasn’t much to see. There wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t a cell like you’d find in the movies or on TV. No bars and graffitied walls. No uncharacteristically articulate gangbanger dropping insightful bombs into our conversation that would blow our minds and leave us reconsidering our outlooks on life.

  It was a room with a bench and a door, one they’d exposed the windows of so they could watch me. I’d scored on the Breathalyzer and I was between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, a group of men statistically more likely to commit suicide when held in jail. Even just overnight.

  Eventually she brought her brown eyes back to mine. They were tight, her mouth a stiff line. “That wasn’t the first time he acted like that,” she told me quietly. “When he’s drunk he... he gets mean."

  I watched as she absently rubbed at the white gauze taped to the back of her hand. “Are you going to tell any of these cops about that?”

  She shook her head stiffly. “No. If my dad found out he’d… no.”

  “Are you going to keep dating him?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to keep the baby?”

  Her mouth fell open, her eyes going wide. “How—what… I haven’t t—“

  “It was a guess. Because of the coat,” I explained, pointing to the baggy fleece. “It’s too big and it’s too hot out to be wearing it. And when he made the comment about calling him ‘daddy’, he wasn’t talking about you, was he?”

  Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t look away. “No, he wasn’t. And I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do." Her lip quivered violently. "My life is over."

  It wasn't, but I could understand that feeling. Right then I understood it very well. It was why the suicide rate for kids my age was so high in here. Our futures were full to bursting with potential, which was really nothing but dreams and aspirations – nothing more substantial than air. It felt fragile. Precarious. As though one small mishap like a night in jail or a baby on the way could bring it all crumbling down like a sandcastle washed away by the tide.

  She gnawed on her lip to still it before continuing. “He wants me to get rid of it. He said no matter how I do it, he just wants it gone. My mom…” She took a quick, sharp breath. “She wants me to give it up. She wants me to go away for a while. Disappear for nine months. As if people won’t notice, you know? Who isn’t going to do the math? It’s so stupid.” She reached up to angrily swipe away an errant tear from under her eye. “I don’t think I can do it alone but I don’t want to do it with him.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked abruptly.

  She blinked. “Emma.”

  “Emma, do not listen to Jenner.”

  “You think I should keep it?”

  “No,” I said seriously, shaking my head. “I think you should do what you want to do. Not what I think you should do or what your mom thinks, and definitely not what Jenner thinks.”

  She nodded at the ground, her eyes refusing to meet mine. It was good advice but it wasn’t worth much. It didn’t solve all of her problems, nothing could, and when that’s what you’re looking for, you’re shit out of luck. People can talk all they want, but at the end of the day you’re the one who has to make your choices and you’re the one who has to live with the consequences.

  "Dave said you were a piece of shit,” she said suddenly. “He’s always saying that. He says it so much I thought he must be right. I came in here thinking he was right, but…” She looked up at me, her eyes full of turmoil and confusion. “Now I don’t know.”

  I grinned slightly. “He’s not entirely wrong.”

  “He’s not completely right, either. I’ve heard a lot of people say nice things about you, but Dave was always complaining and he just hates you so much.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” I muttered, showing her my busted hand.

  “No, he hated you before tonight. He mentioned it whenever he could.”

  “It’s probably because I slept with his sister.”

  “That and he’s jealous. You kill him on the field in practice. He says you shouldn’t even be a wide receiver. He says you’re too big.”

  I grinned wryly. “So did his sister.”

  “Oh my God,” she muttered, but she was fighting a smile.

  “Is that why you’re really here?” I asked seriously. “To see if I’m a piece of shit?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll save you the suspense. Jenner is r—“

  “You stood up for me,” she interrupted, her voice gaining a strange strength. “You didn’t know me but you stood up for me. Why would you do that?”

  “Is that a real question?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a weird question.”

  “Just answer it.”

  I spread my hands open in front of me, not sure what she was looking for. “You needed help.”

  “Dave’s friend Miner knew I needed help. He didn’t step in.”

  I felt my heart pump hard in chest. Anger tore violently through my veins and I fought the urge to stand up just to get the edgy feeling in me to subside.

  “He was part of the problem, wasn’t he?”

  She frowned. “Yeah. I think he was about to be. They wouldn’t let me leave. I just wanted to leave.”

  The sight of her standing small and pale outside my cell was starting to kill me. She looked so fragile with hot tears shining in her eyes and a tiny bump resting warm and safe inside her coat. She needed to go. She had to leave so I could distance myself from the night and calm the angry animal inside of me. So I could scratch the itch in my palms.

  “You should go home,” I told her as gently as I could. “Get some sleep.”

  She nodded, her face falling. Looking tired. "Yeah, I should. When will they let you out of here?"

  "Soon," I lied. "I'm just waiting for my dad to pick me up."

  "Okay. Good."

  "Goodnight, Emma."

  "Goodnight, Kellen. And," she swallowed hard, looking like she might cry, "thank you for what you did. I'm sorry it got you in trouble."

  "I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

  And despite the fact that I was pretty sure it'd cost me just about everything, the truth was that I would.

  ***

  Three hours later when the sun was full swing into its arc across the sky, my foster father showed up. He came in making a huge scene, shouting and cursing at everyone that was ruining his day and wasting his time. Turned out that was all of us. I could hear him before I saw him and he sounded worse than the drunks and junkies I'd been listening to for most the night. His words were more coherent, but his message was the same - we were all idiots. His massive, bull frame filled too much of the building, his booming voice taking up whatever space was left. With his long, gray hair flying wild and
his dark eyes hooded and angry, he brought officer hands to holsters throughout the precinct.

  As they out-processed me I found sympathetic eyes all over the building. I was more humiliated by that, by this man, than by the fact that I'd spent the night in jail.

  I should have been happy to get out of that building. To leave my cell and head home where a shower and a bed waited for me, but there was more to it than that. There was still more punishment to endure and even as I climbed into his beat up pickup and we roared down the sun soaked streets toward home, I knew my night wasn't over.

  I lived in a tiny apartment with the chain smoking Asshole and his elderly mom who never left her room. It smelled of piss and BO whenever you walked down the hall past her closed door and I wondered how the smell would change when she died in there. I had no doubt it would come to that. I just hoped it happened after I left because the idea of cleaning that room – something the Asshole would make me do ‘cause he was way too lazy to do it himself – made me want to vomit. I’d rather take the inevitable beating that came with saying ‘no’ than clean that place.

  He was a big guy, but I was bigger. I was stronger, in much better shape. I shouldn’t have been afraid of him, but I was. I’d been in his home under his care since I was twelve, since before I could fight back and dream at all of winning, and the fear I had for the Asshole’s rage was so ingrained in me that I still felt it. Even then when I knew I could win, I was too afraid to fight. That fear fueled the anger living inside of me, fanning the flames to unbearable degrees until I felt like the entire apartment was on fire, and I was breathing thin air and smoke into my burning lungs. It made me feel impotent. Small, ineffective, and so consumed by that caged feeling I dreaded that I thought I’d choke to death just walking in the door.

  I took that beating the way I always did – silently. I'd learned a long time ago to keep my mouth shut, my eyes and ears closed, and my mind locked away somewhere dark. I couldn't tell you what I thought about while he hit me. I couldn't – and would never – talk about what he hit me with or for how long. I shut myself down and I waited for it to stop.