“What’s up, man? Nothing to see here. I’m sure you have better things to do than to bang up our night.” Nolan’s voice was toneless. He was trying to swallow in the anger he’d felt for being interrupted.

“Snowflake, what should we do with them?” Bane said ‘Snowflake’ like we had pet names for each other and ‘we’ like it was a concept I was familiar and comfortable with. Like we did things together all the time. Like we were friends.

I don’t date. My job doesn’t allow it. Long story. Let’s be friends.

A month after The Incident, I got back to school to complete my senior year and graduate. I saw Henry, Nolan, and Emery every day. I saw them in the cafeteria, and in class, and at whatever events Pam and Darren dragged me to in town in their attempt to fit in. Emery, Nolan, and Henry acted as if I didn’t exist, and they did such a thorough job, by the end of the year, even I’d bought into it. Point was, we always pretended we didn’t know each other. I was tired of pretending it didn’t happen.

It did, and it hurt. It still hurt, years after. It would always hurt, for as long as I lived.

I took a step forward. “What are you doing in Todos Santos?”

Nolan turned his head to me. Henry winced. The silence was pregnant with things I didn’t want to hear.

“We’re on a forced vacation.” Henry’s voice broke. He was always so much weaker than Nolan, than Emery. The frail, dangling link that was likely to snap first.

“What’d you do?”

“None of your business,” Nolan snapped.

“What. Did. You. Do?” Bane’s tenor was chilling. A cold knife gliding down your skin, its edge poking your flesh. Roman Protsenko was highly connected in Todos Santos. Even I knew that. He was the kind of person you really didn’t want to mess with.

“Campus incident.” The words sounded like they wanted to be swallowed back into Nolan’s mouth. The three golden boys of All Saints High went to college together. East Coast. That was the deal their parents had made with Darren and Pam.

We want your kids as far away as possible from ours. Much good it had done me.

“Consisting of?”

“A girl…” Henry said through clenched teeth. My heart split into mosaic pieces. They’d assaulted someone else? “We didn’t do anything. That’s why it’s just a week. She was sauced as hell. Anyway, we only messed around with her. Shit was under investigation for like, a second, but we’re good to go back.”

Bane’s eyes sought mine under the sad artificial light. He was no less dangerous than they were. If anything, they were hyenas, and he was a lion, quiet and deadly. “What’re we gonna do with them, Jesse?”

“I don’t want them anywhere near me ever again. No talking, no touching, no breathing in my direction.” My teeth chattered, even though it wasn’t cold. I wasn’t proud of using Bane to make sure the boys were off my case, but the temptation was too much. Henry and Nolan were bullies. If they smelled weakness, they would strike. They’d continue to provoke me until the day I died if they didn’t have an incentive not to.

Bane said, “You heard her. Consider this her official restraining order against you.”

“I’m sorry, but who the hell are you to tell us what to do?” Nolan spat out. Bane released Henry from the chokehold, sauntering over to Nolan. The air was drenched with menace. The world seemed painfully mundane while wrapped up in Roman Protsenko’s exceptional orbit. Like he was bigger than the place he was born in. He captured Nolan’s throat in his palm and squeezed, still reeking of bored stoicism. “If you get anywhere near her again, I will personally make sure it will be the last time you step foot in this town. Your family will be driven out of here. Your college dream will be dead. I will unleash every ounce of power I have in this town to make sure your lives are a continuous, Freddie-Kruger-style nightmare. Fair warning: I’m very good at nightmares. I’ve lived a different life from yours, and know what you rich kids can survive…and what you cannot.”

I’d have paid good money to see Nolan’s face at that moment, but he had his back to me. What I did hear clearly was Henry choking on his own saliva. “Man, let’s get the hell out of here! Let’s go!” simultaneously with Wren, who wept out, “Nolan, don’t be an idiot!”

Nolan stood like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, askew and unsteady, realizing for the first time the lesson he had taught me—that we were all fragile and breakable. Bane unlocked his hand from Nolan’s neck and pushed him toward the car.

“You’re trying my patience,” the blond mammoth growled. “Under any other circumstance, you wouldn’t walk out of this park alive.”