She grinned as the bell rang. "I guess I've spent my life building a thick skin. It's nice getting a compliment every once in a while."

"Maybe you'd get more if you didn't have on the Goth shields all the time." We grabbed our book bags and walked to the gym exit.

She gave me a searching look for a moment before shrugging. "See you at lunch."

I watched her vanish into the crowd of students and wondered if I'd hurt her feelings with that comment. I also wondered what she was hiding from me. There was definitely more to her than met the eye.

Homeroom was only marginally bearable. Annie and Jenny did their best to tick me off, sniggering and saying things loudly enough that I could hear them, as usual.

"Somebody has a new Goth girlfriend," said Jenny.

"I hear they bang heads really good," Annie added.

"I'll bet she's got piercings all up and down her cooch. Is that true, Justin?"

I ignored them.

"Oh, he's embarrassed, Annie. Maybe we hurt his feelings. Can you hurt the feelings of a stalker?"

"Only if you get a restraining order," Annie said.

They burst into fits of laughter.

"A haircut and new clothes don't mean you're not a creepy pervert," Jenny said, trying to punch through my cold-shouldered disregard.

Their sex vapors, as I decided to call them until someone instructed me otherwise, hung nearby for the taking. But I didn't have the slightest desire to touch those vile things. The thought of giving those bitches any pleasure made me cringe.

Jenny poked me in the back with the sharp end of a pencil. I turned around. "What is your problem?"

"You and your creepy friends are," she said. "Katie told us you've been stalking her. She saw you at the mall following her."

"Well then she was following me, because I haven't set eyes on her."

"You should watch out," Annie piped up in her nasal voice. "Brad is out for payback after your lucky hit."

"And he just got a new Harley," Jenny said as if that should strike the fear of God into me.

I felt an evil grin spread across my face. "Maybe I'll wrap that scooter of his around his scrawny neck."

Jenny gave me a Yeah, right! look. "How's a ball of lard like you gonna do anything to Brad Nichols?"

I grabbed the corner of her desk and snapped off a chunk with a loud crack. She jumped and squeaked along with half the class. I smiled the coldest smile I could muster, although I'm sure it looked more crazed than anything. "Oops." I handed her the chunk.

She raised her hand and started shouting for Mr. Herman, the art teacher who served as our homeroom teacher.

"What the hell do you want?" he asked as he looked up from his artistic rendering of Simon and Garfunkel.

"Justin broke my desk." She held up the chunk of desk as proof.

Mr. Herman squinted at it, then at her desk. "It looks fine to me. Now shut up and leave me alone."

Jenny bonked me on the back of the head with the bit of desk but it didn't hurt. She scowled. "I'm gonna make your life miserable, you low-life creep."

"Your very existence already does that." I stuck out my tongue.

The next few classes consisted of a string of people trying to make my life miserable with rude comments, gestures, and outright hostility. I decided not to break any more desks, though. Something told me that keeping my new strength under wraps might be a good idea. No telling what top-secret government agency would capture, tranquilize, and vivisect me once they found out a teenager was destroying school property with his bare hands.

Apparently, Katie had been spreading some untrue rumors about me as well. Given my past digital missteps a la Twitter and Facebook, it was no surprise everyone believed her.

Lunchtime mercifully arrived. I joined Crye and gang at the usual table.

"Looking better," Nyte said, giving my clothes a once-over.

"Not too mainstream?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You are who you are. That's not for us to decide."

"It's good to see there are decent people left in this place."

He nodded solemnly. "I know. Not too many decent people left in the real world either."

"Apparently, you and I are an item," Crye said to me with a smirk. "At least that's the gossip."

"I heard," I said. "Will the dumbassery never end?"

She pursed her lips. "Oh well. Sticks and stones may break my bones but—" An orange plopped down atop her mashed potatoes and splattered her lacy chocolate-brown dress with the nuclear-flavored gravy only school cafeteria workers know how to make.

My jaw clenched. I snatched the orange out of the brown muck and shot a glare toward the only place it could have come from. Nathan and two sniggering linebackers sat at their usual table with several cheerleaders. I stood up.

"No!" Crye said.

Nyte and Ash both grabbed me but I shook them off. "I'll be right back."

I forced back my rage and calmly strolled to Nathan's table. Despite the confidence in my new strength, I really didn't want to get into a full-out battle royale. I could be suspended or even booted out of school. Knowing how the principal and upper brass felt about the football players, they wouldn't hesitate to protect their interests.

Nathan had his back to me while the other players and cheerleaders watched me the entire way. They were apparently telling Nathan about my approach because he tried to get up when I reached them. I put my hand on his shoulder and pressed him back down into the seat so hard the metal legs groaned.

"Oh, don't get up on account of me," I said with a big grin. I took the orange in my other hand and fought back the desire to crush it in his face. Instead, I squished it into his mashed potatoes until the orange was a pulpy mass. Nathan continued to struggle to stand. I kept him down with very little effort.

One of the linebackers stood up. I couldn't remember his name or his real position on the football team, so I called pretty much all of the ones I didn't know linebackers. It made things easy on me.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" he said. He walked around the table.

I smiled the friendliest smile I could, although it probably looked maniacal on my pale pudgy face. I was going to have to work on practicing my grins.

He took a swing at me. I jumped back and watched his slow-motion fist smack into Nathan's ear. Nathan yelped like a puppy. I turned and walked back to the table while Nathan and his pal yelled at each other. I took a seat and calmly wiped orange bits and mashed potatoes off my hand. Then I bit into the burger that the lunchroom ladies had probably cobbled together from dead alley cats.

Crye shook her head. "That was about the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Are you looking to get yourself killed?"

"I thought it was pretty cool," Ash said with a huge grin.

"I don't condone physical violence," Nyte said. "Although you forced them to perpetrate it on each other, in which case I whole-heartedly approve."

A smile cracked Crye's angry reserve. "Okay, so it was kind of artful. But still so stupid that I want to smack you in the face."

I grinned. "You want to kiss me? In front of everyone?"

"I'm serious, Justin. Don't ever pull that kind of stunt again. I'm a big girl. I can take all the idiocy these morons dish out."

I shrugged. "Fine. I won't wear my shining armor to school anymore."

Nyte and Crye's eyes suddenly widened. A hand gripped my shoulder.

"Come with me, boy," said Mr. Barnes.

Every instinct told me to dive headfirst through the cafeteria window and make my escape. My next instinct was to break Mr. Barnes' hand and throw him through the cafeteria window. Common sense told me to plead ignorance. So I stood and followed without a single word. We went into the main office where the secretary looked up at me with a knowing frown. I was sure she'd practiced it a million times in the mirror so students would know just how badly they were about to get it.

I returned a vacant toothy smile, the one a village idiot might give to the townsfolk as he's being led to the gallows. I saw my reflection in the mirror hanging behind her desk and realized even this attempt looked freakish and crazy. I really needed to practice my facial expressions. Maybe take acting classes. This was just sad. As an aside, I was glad to see I still had a reflection. Whatever horrific but undeniably cool STD I'd been given by Stacey had not—yet—turned me into a creature of the night. If that had happened, then I'd probably go pants-on-head crazy on Mr. Barnes and to hell with the consequences.

I had never been to the principal's office. Mr. Barnes directed me to a seat in front of a scarred and worn wooden desk that had probably been bought second hand, then closed the door and left me alone while he ostensibly went to get the principal. Lee Perkins, the principal, was every bit the football stooge Ted Barnes was. They were both grand poobahs of the Quarterback Club and the things I'd heard about the club's underhanded activities made the mafia sound like a bunch of angels.

Mr. Perkins stepped solemnly into the office. He looked a lot like Colonel Sanders after eating a few tubs too many of fried chicken. Mr. Barnes followed close in his considerable wake. I gave them my best innocent look.

"I hear you've been up to all sorts of no good," Mr. Perkins said in his old-school and somewhat genteel southern accent. "I got half the school demanding your head on a silver platter, boy."

"Why, whatever for, sir?"

Mr. Barnes slapped his hand on my armrest. "You don't take that tone with us, boy." His redneck twang made him sound a touch inbred.

"Now, now," said Mr. Perkins. "I'm sure we don't need to tell young Mr. Case how to act before his superiors." He winked at me. "Do we?"

I decided to play it safe and shook my head.

"We got several eyewitness accounts that you assaulted Nathan Spelman in the lunchroom today. That's assault and battery, boy. I've got some good friends down at the police station. Some of those good old boys could educate you on the formalities involved with those charges."