“Well, as delightful as this is, I don’t have a free period, so I’ll just be on my way to calc now.” Adam rolls his eyes, a pretty ballsy move in my opinion, and starts to move out of Bryce’s shadow.

“What would you do with a free period anyway? It’s not like you have anyone to hang out with,” Bryce taunts, fist-bumping Justin. The King of Weak Insults strikes again and I’d be moaning at the cliché of it all except I can feel the comment lance right through Adam’s anger and hit him in the blue place. The wind gets knocked out of me for a moment and the sting of the insult feels close to actual physical pain. It’s like I’m watching Adam bleed out in front of me and I can’t do anything to stop it.

“Shut up,” Adam growls, rounding on Bryce. His anger is still there but it’s erratic, pieces of it flying all over the place before getting sucked into the quicksand of hurt.

“What are you gonna do about it, Hayes?” Bryce goads. “The way I see it, it’s two against one, and I don’t think you could phone a friend, even if you wanted to. No one’s gonna come running to save a freak like you.”

I take another step toward them, ready to intervene, but moving closer means being hit with a wave of angerfrustrationsadnessdoubt that turns me inside out. Before I know what’s happening, words are coming out of me.

“Just leave him alone, Bryce, can’t you see he’s sad enough?”

The hallway goes a bit silent. I hadn’t even noticed there were other people there, but students are still milling in between classes and it seems we’ve drawn a bit of an audience, because people are starting to whisper and a few of them are openly staring. Guess I was a bit louder than I meant to be.

But none of that matters when I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I want to throw up and also maybe start crying, and that’s so stupid because it looks like Bryce has stopped his bullheaded quest to get into Adam’s face. He’s staring at me weirdly, like I’m some sort of alien. Or maybe he’s staring at me that way because I look like I might throw up and/or cry. He nudges Justin’s shoulder, says, “C’mon,” under his breath, and they walk away. I’m left facing Adam and then I realize why I feel the way I feel. Adam’s eyes shutter as he looks at me, the life drained from his face. My stomach is in knots and I don’t know if it’s mine or if it’s his but it makes me want to collapse on the floor right then and there.