called into Mr. Damarion’s office, “She’s here.”
He peered around the corner, ordering, “Get in here, both of you.”
Cally walked in and took a seat nearest the door and waited while the other girl sat a few seats down. She could see he wasn’t all that surprised to see her in here. “Ms. Hunter, what happened?”
Was he really asking her that? He saw what happened. He knew. She looked at the table and knew he was also giving her a chance to do something about it. If she got the girl suspended for fighting, then this would never end, but if she took the brunt of this, maybe they would lay off of her.
She looked him in the eye and lied. “We were talking, and I backed into the steps and hit my head.”
“Is that so?” he asked the other girl.
The other girl looked at her, surprised that she had flat out lied to save her. Clearly, she didn’t want to argue. “Yes.”
He looked at Cally and asked again. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir,” she said quietly.
He slid a slip across the table to the other girl saying, “Go back to class, and I don’t want to see you in here again.”
When it was just the two of them, he looked at her, wanting to know what had been said. “What did he say?”
“To deal with it and stop avoiding it.”
“How do you plan to do that?” he asked. It sounded like he was trying to gage her and what she was going to do.
Cally looked down and said, “I just did.”
“Fine, but I don’t want to see you in here again,” he warned as he slid her a hall pass.
She had missed most of that class and got back just in time to grab her things and head out as the bell rang without having to explain or deal with anyone else. That didn’t, however, stop her head from pounding the rest of the day. She ran into Savannah just before last period and knew this was the only chance she would have to ask her. “Savannah, I need a favor.”
She looked so put out. “What?”
“Can you drive me home? My head is killing me and I can barely see straight,” she admitted, hoping her sister wouldn’t say no.
Savannah looked like she was debating it but finally nodded. “Yeah, I’ll meet you at your car. Do you have to work?”
“No, I have off today.” Thankfully. She wasn’t sure how they had planned that one, but at least she could sleep this off on her own.
Her sister nodded and walked off.
Cally sat through last period with fear running through her. If they decided to attack her after school, she wasn’t going to make it. With her head this bad, she was sure she should have gone to the hospital, but that would have meant she had to admit that she couldn’t handle this on her own. Dakota was already doing too much by coming down almost every weekend, and she couldn’t let him keep doing this. She had told him that he didn’t have to come down this weekend, and he had argued a little but caved. Now she wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to come just because of this crap.
Cally looked up just as the last bell rang and grabbed her bag. She hadn’t even pulled a single thing out, and now she needed to get out of here as fast as she could without being stopped. She made it to her car without anyone stopping her and saw Hannah there waiting. She had just unlocked the door when Savannah walked up. “What in the world did you do?”
She threw the keys to her sister and got in the back, and Hannah asked, “What’s going on?”
She looked at them. “I hit my head and asked Savannah to drive us.”
With everyone in the car, they headed to drop Hannah off, and then she got up front and let it come out. “You’re going to tell me.”
“A few people are defensive because of the rumors and they confronted me at lunch. I hit my head on the underside of the stairs and have a bad headache. Ms. Rime said I was fine, and she called Dakota, and he’s angry at me. So there, anything else?”
“Who did this? I’m going to kick their—” Savannah said, getting defensive.
“I don’t know.”
“Bull, you know.” Her sister was riled up.
She closed her eyes and said softly, “I don’t know their names.”
Her sister clearly didn’t like that, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. “You’re going to show me who they are on Monday.”
She wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Fine.”
When they got back, Annalise was there. “What’s going on?”
She wasn’t in the mood to deal with them, so she went in and lay down as she heard Savannah start explaining it. She closed her eyes and didn’t know how long she was asleep for. At one point, she could have sworn that she heard Savannah saying, “She’s been asleep since we got back. Yeah, I’ll tell her.”
The next night, when Dakota called, it didn’t seem as bad. “How did it go?”
“I lied and somehow got us both out of trouble,” she told him as she stared at the pictures of them on the wall.
“How’s your head?” His voice was laced with concern.
She didn’t want him to worry. If she told him that her head was just as bad as when she hit it, she knew he would come down, but she knew he couldn’t be here all the time, so she lied again. “Fine, it’s just a little bump.”
“You know you have to do something about all this. It’s gone too far,” he started.
But she didn’t need this now. “I have it under control. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”
“What started all this?”
She could tell he needed something, but she didn’t want him to worry. “I told a couple of guys off. I had enough and snapped. I told them that I didn’t think anyone in the school was good enough for me and that they could all go to the devil. That had a few people furious, and they confronted me.”
“This wasn’t Seth and his friends?” She could hear him getting riled up.
“No, it was someone else. It’s not a big deal. I think by getting that chick off the hook, I might have calmed them down for a while,” she offered.
“Cally, what aren’t you telling me?” he asked, concerned.
“It’s just petty high school stuff, it’s no big deal. So what did you do today?” Anything was better than keeping on that track.
* * * * *
The next two weeks went easier. Savannah and Jay had a spat that weekend, and she forgot about the guys that came at her by Monday. They seemed to leave her alone, and she assumed that it was mainly because of what she did. But the rumors didn’t seem to stop. There were a few new ones that she was sure Seth and his friends had started.
The one that seemed to be adding fuel to the fire was that Dakota wanted someone to “shut her up.” A few people were saying that he had claimed not to know her, but when she asked him, he had said that he hadn’t talked to anyone down there for over a month. And none of that did anything to help her situation at all.
Cally just dropped it, and then after school, it happened. The rednecks were in full force as she headed out to her car. She was stopped just outside the gym, and this time it came to more than just a little shove warning her to back off. This time they were out for blood, her blood.
“You lying hooch. He don’t even know you,” one was saying.
She shook her head. She knew her husband knew her and wasn’t going to feed this bunch any more than they