Damsel[ed]: Rescue Required (#3 of the Damsel[ed] Series)

Chapter Fifteen: It's Over, Isn't It?

Angelos.

It's funny, returning to a place where the only thing that's different about it is you. Because Starlight City Modern Learning is the same school it always was before the capitol building burned, before my mother died, before I ran from Jay at that dance and had my head bashed in on the gymnasium floor. It's a three-floor gilded cage where the kids carry laptops under their arms and the adults are your garden-variety underpaid professionals who don't want to deal with our crap. The crowd of people, it scares me. My head is pounding, my chest is tight. Standing at the bottom floor, looking up, all I can see is the crush of student bodies. No escape from the mass of limbs.

Gats's fingers are looped in my right belt loop, curled so tightly they've gone white. And then a girl using her tie as a belt waves down at him from the stair rail and Gats lets go. "Hey!" He skids on the soles of his shoes, happily leaving me to join the small group that's formed around her. From below, I squint up at them, watching Gats act. He's leaned up against the banister with his arms crossed over his chest, talking casually, sometimes waving a hand, sometimes offering a calm smirk, a smile. He hops on the rails and leans his head on the shoulder of one of his friends.

A quick squint and I make out the boy's coppery red hair, the slight build of his wiry frame, the hoodie tied around his waist. Aaron Elms. The perpetual on again off again boyfriend.

I shake my head, run a hand over my beanie. "What are you looking at?" asks a girl I can't name. Blonde. Wavy-haired. She tips her head, and I'm so unaccustomed to people walking up to me and offering conversation I flinch.

"Dead meat." The words snap out of me, cold and cruel.

"Aaron and Gatsby?" She squints along my line of sight, "They're cute."

"One of them's dead, anyway." I flip the straps on my backpack, squirm wings that are already beginning to ache. These halls are narrow and stuffy, made more so by windowless red brick and a constant rush of students. They're always moving, since classrooms are relatively small and spaced apart, and I don't mean to take up such a large corner.

"Angelos, right?"

"Right."

"You okay?" She widens soft blue-gray eyes. They look innocent in a lean, tanned face. "Everyone saw what happened at the dance."

"Oh." I'm starting to blush. "Yeah, well. I was just, you know, nervous? I guess?"

Both of her eyebrows rise. Aaron and Gats aren't the only ones who she's squinting at now. And there's this thing about groups of recognizable people standing still and talking that encourages other people to circle up around them. There's a guy named Tony, the school quarterback, and his girlfriend who wave at us and join in. I finally remember the girl's name, Cheyenne. And then I remember exactly how much of a recluse I am when I'm pressed into the corner with the hem of my shirt twisted around my fingers. Social interaction—not my forte. No wonder kids don't tend to sit with me at lunch.

"You good, man?" Tony asks. He's slim, and my eyes lurch down his body; I'm bulkier than he is.

"Yeah."

"What's up with the eye-patch?"

"I walked into a wall," I say drily.

He buys it. Or at least, he's a good enugh actor to keep his expression from shifting. His brow only furrows, and his concern looks so real I ache. "Are you okay?"

"I, uh, yeah." My fingers trail up to my wrists, lifting my sleeve and rubbing the bruises. They've faded now, but they're still easy to make out from any distance, some blossoming across my skin in horrible black and blue splotches. Scrapes, where the skin is tough and raised. Lumps, bumpy ridges of dried blood. "Yeah, I'm okay. Think I need to...get to class."