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  Mina sucked in her breath when she saw where his eyes lingered. She, too, began to remember their kiss, but she remembered a different kiss, their first kiss on the school stage, a kiss that he would never remember. Her heart began to pound, and her lungs screamed for air at the intensity that was building to a crescendo.

  He reached out and touched the top of her hand, and Mina jumped in her seat, causing her notebook to fall off the desk and onto the floor. He moved his hand from hers and bent to pick up her notebook. She felt a loss as soon as he moved his hand, and he didn’t put it back when he handed her the notebook.

  “Well, I thought at least we were close enough—” he began.

  “No, Brody…we’re not. We won’t ever be close, because my best friend means the world to me.” Her emphasis on the word “friend” left him no room to argue.

  The spell was definitely broken, and she needed to get her heart under control. This was no longer her boyfriend.

  “Does Nan know that we…?” Brody gestured between the two of them, referring to their kiss.

  “That night at the hospital? No way…not if I can help it. You’re not going to tell her, either…right?” She gave him a pleading look.

  “Uh, no,” he said quickly. He seemed tense, like he was upset that she hadn’t told Nan.

  It took every ounce of Mina’s willpower not to do a face plant into the table. That wasn’t exactly what she was hoping for, and now she was dying for the bell to ring.

  Thankfully, he turned around and began talking to one of his water polo friends. When the bell did ring, she was up and out the door first, despite being in the corner. She was surprised to see that Jared was already outside the door, waiting for her, and put his hand on the small of her back to lead her to the side of the door.

  “How was it? Think you can survive five more periods?” he asked softly.

  Brody walked out the door behind Mina and saw the placement of Jared’s hands on her. He scowled.

  A squeal could be heard down the hall, followed by the pattering of running feet. Mina was bombarded by blonde hair, strawberry perfume, and the blubbering crying form of Nan Taylor, who clamped onto her neck. Nan’s long blonde hair was in a side ponytail, and she wore a teal lacy shirt and denim shorts, a zillion colored bangles on her wrists. Her cute nose and eyes were red from crying.

  “I-I-I can’t believe it. He can’t be gone.” She started to cry loud and hard, and Brody looked uncomfortable and unsure of how to comfort his girlfriend, since she was wrapped around Mina’s neck.

  No one understood Charlie like Nan. The two were the best of friends and had a dynamic brother-sister relationship, teasing and name-calling included, that Mina envied. Nan was an only child and treated Charlie like her own brother. Mina was feeling really guilty now for not finding a way to get hold of Nan when she was in New York at drama camp.

  Mina felt her eyes start to tear up, but she held them back and comforted Nan. Students stopped and stared, and quite a few made rude comments, but Jared’s and Brody’s stern looks kept them at bay, giving the girls time to confer.

  There were a few girls who didn’t take the hint. Savannah White and Pricilla Rose—both girls stopped and rolled their eyes. Savannah used to date Brody at the beginning of last year, and now she had it out for anyone who stood between her and him. She looked killer in her designer skirt, lace tank top, and bejeweled flats. Her white-blonde hair was in its signature high ponytail, and her lips had enough gloss you could almost see your reflection in them. Pri wore a similar but toned-down version of Savannah’s outfit.

  “So I heard on the news that the Tard died and your house burnt down. I bet secretly you’re relieved you don’t have to live with him anymore in that dump.”

  The whole commotion in the hallway immediately stopped, as if her words had been spoken over the intercom. It became so quiet that you could hear Mina’s and Nan’s sharp intakes of breath. Mina wasn’t prone to violence and was about to think of something mean to say back to Savannah, but she didn’t have a chance to, because Nan Taylor, perky, happy-go-lucky Nan Taylor, pulled back her fist and punched Savannah in the face.

  Savannah wasn’t prepared, and fell to the floor. Nan stood over her shocked face and yelled, “No way was he handicapped, or different. He was the most special, coolest, and smartest kid ever. And the world is a much sadder place because he’s not here. And don’t you ever, EVER, insult him again!” Nan shook with anger.

  The hall was full of students and teachers, and one by one they started to clap. The clapping got louder, and Nan’s hands went to her mouth in shock. She looked at what she had done, and her face grew red.

  She turned and threw her arms around Mina, and spoke quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That was wrong of me. I’m probably going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but it was worth it. No one insults our Charlie.” She pulled herself away and walked toward the principal’s office, her head held high. Savannah, during the commotion, started screaming and crying, and was sniveling about Nan being a “bully, brat, and jealous of her good looks.”

  Mr. Ames was trying to hide the smile on his face as he helped up Savannah and led her to the principal’s office right behind Nan. The second bell rang, and no one was heading to the next class. They were all right where they’d stopped, talking and texting about the altercation.

  It was Mrs. Colbert, with her short hair and blue wing-tipped glasses, who put her fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly, causing those nearest her to cover their ears.

  “That’s enough chitter chatter. Get to class, or you’ll all have detention!” she yelled loudly.

  Brody took off, heading to his next period. Jared looked a little scared at the sight of Mrs. Colbert, and ducked behind a group of students and disappeared. Mina was left alone and out of sorts, but she was able to make it to her next class. She was a zombie the entire time and was pretty sure the teacher called on her a few times, but she was useless until lunchtime. Jared met her after fourth period and walked the lunch line with her. When Mina went to grab her tray of pizza, cut carrots, and chocolate milk, Jared swiped it up and carried it out the main lunchroom and down the hall.

  “Hey!” she called after him, while trying to catch up with his longer legs. He didn’t stop, but turned and headed out a side door that led outside. Finding a comfortable spot under a tree, he finally placed her tray down and waited for her to sit.

  She should have been upset by his actions, but after looking around outside at the lack of students, and the quiet calm shade the tree provided, she actually felt grateful. It was still incredibly hot out, but she could put up with that in exchange for solitude. Or almost solitude.

  Mina took a bite of her pizza, which tasted like paper covered in cheese. She forced it down and then took to breaking her carrot sticks into miniscule pieces.

  “What did those carrots ever do to you?” Jared joked.

  “Charlie hated carrots, so he used to do this to them to make it look like he’d eaten them, or make them small enough to hide under the mashed potatoes.”

  “Smart kid.”

  “Yeah, he is…or was.” An awkward silence rose between them, and Jared looked like he had something bothering him.

  “Look, Mina, you can’t let his death affect you like this. You need to move on. Prepare yourself for whatever crazy scheme the Fates will send your way.”

  “I know. I’m just not sure that I have the heart for it anymore.”

  Jared’s cheek ticked in anger. “I know you lost your brother, but you can’t give up so easily.”

  “Why do you even care?”

  “I care! I thought for sure since you figured out the tie between the Grimoire and me that you would at least summon me or talk to me. But you ignored me the whole summer. I was angry with you!”

  “And I was confused and hurt. I’d lost my boyfriend…again.”

  “Get over the human. It’s obvious that you two aren’t meant to be together.”

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; “Well, maybe we could have a chance if the Fae stopped interfering with my life.”

  “We just saved him the trouble of dumping you after he realized how close he came to being saddled with you and your emotional baggage,” Jared fumed.

  “I don’t have emotional baggage,” Mina whispered, choking on the pain his words caused.

  “Yes, you do. You’ve got enough emotional baggage that you could open up your own airline.” He began to tick the items off his fingers. “Let’s see: abandonment issues, low self-esteem, jealousy issues…and you’re obsessive.”

  Mina was stunned and shocked at his assessment of her. Whether he was right or wrong, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that he was talking down to her.

  “I don’t have to take this from you. Maybe I was right all along to not talk to you. It’s obvious you have no compassion or understanding of a human’s feelings. Which are completely normal for a teenager who was unjustly saddled with a curse that’s destroyed her whole family. I’m sorry if I have the emotional stability of a teeter-totter right now, but that’s better than you, who has the emotional maturity of a rock.”

  She squeezed her carton of chocolate milk so hard that a chocolate fountain spewed out the top to run down her hand onto her jeans. Mina’s eyes opened wide in shock, and she dropped the carton on Jared’s lap. He jumped up faster than lightning and began to dance.

  Mina looked at Jared’s shocked face and her messy lap, and began to laugh and couldn’t stop. She laughed so hard she snorted, and then laughed some more because of it. Jared looked at her strangely and started to chuckle as well. He knelt down with napkins and dabbed at her jeans in the most awkward way. Mina swatted his hands away and grabbed the napkins from him. It wouldn’t matter; she would once again have an embarrassing chocolate milk incident to write in her notebook of Unaccomplishments and Epic Disasters—if she still had it. Maybe she needed to start a new one.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, not looking her in the eyes.

  “I’m the one who spilled milk on you. I’m the one who should be sorry.” She still couldn’t catch her breath.

  Jared had sobered up pretty quick. “No, you know what I mean. I didn’t really mean any of those things.”

  “Then why would you say them?”

  “You were burying yourself so deep in your misery that you were becoming numb to your surroundings, which leaves you vulnerable to an attack. I was trying to break you out of it, and was aiming to make you feel a different emotion. I figured anger would have been the easiest one to get you to feel, but I completely disregarded joy. I forgot how easy it is to make you humans laugh.” He stood back up; a large chocolate stain ran down his pants. His face kept shifting from utter disgust at the milk on his clothes to remorse for hurting her.

  She couldn’t help it—she started laughing again. Even though his reasoning behind being rude to her was terrible, the laughter did help her the rest of the day. She was even able to raise her hand in class and answer two questions. She didn’t believe it, but Jared’s attempt at caring by pretending not to…worked.

  Sara even noticed a slight change in her when she picked her up from school.

  “Did you have a good day, honey?” she asked while frowning at the brown stain on Mina’s pants.

  “No, it was awful. The worst first day of school ever,” Mina answered with a huge grin on her face.

  Chapter 8

  Nan was rightfully suspended from school for a week. Which left Mina completely defenseless against Ever’s constant French-fry thieving. The pixie had a serious thing for French fries. But it also put her right between Brody and Jared.

  Lunch period was painful and awkward. Whenever Brody tried to ask Mina a question, Jared would interject and turn the subject back to Nan. Ever, frustrated by Jared’s lack of attention, turned to tossing food in the air and catching it in her mouth. It wasn’t until Ever almost choked on one of the French fries that the boys calmed down their feud and turned to helping the girl not choke to death.

  For once in her life, Mina was thankful for the pixie’s interference. Now, if she could only interfere and find a way for Mina to get out of her Tuesday/Thursday P.E. class.

  Mina was terrified of gym class, and tried hard to stay out of the way of the more athletic students. She also hated gym because she was forced to change into stupid gym shorts, and she always thought her legs were too skinny, like a chicken or duck. The other girls wore their gym clothes like they walked straight off the runway. Mina’s gym clothes, no matter how she folded them, always looked like they came out of a hamper. She was hoping today was a running day instead of something like baseball or basketball. She actually liked running the mile on the school’s track. There was less chance of her injuring herself or others.

  But today was not going her way at all. It wasn’t a track and field day. It was worse. They were playing flag football. It used to terrify her to have the football and have the more aggressive boys shoot right toward her, intent on ripping her flags off.

  A few times last year she was bowled over in the process, and once she even ripped off her own flag and threw it on the ground in front of T.J. when he was about to tackle her. This made her a very unpopular teammate. So her goal for this year was to stay out of the way.

  Mina was late because somehow her shoelaces were in incredible knots. She threw her shoes over her shoulder and ran out to the field in her socks. Once there, she plopped on the ground behind the girls and desperately tried to untangle the knots in the laces to get her shoes on. The team captains were chosen, but she didn’t even notice.

  Briefly she stopped and tried to get a head count to see if there would be too many players and she could sit out. Or better yet, next time she should try to get a doctor’s note that read, “Mina Grime is unable to participate in any sports due to the hazard to other students’ health.” The teams began their draft; Mina knew her name wouldn’t be called anytime soon, so she continued attacking her laces. She was wrong.

  “Mina!”

  It wasn’t hard to miss his golden voice calling her name over the crowd of students, loud and clear, and she froze in her spot on the grass. When she didn’t immediately come forward, he called her name a second time. Mina attacked her laces with a vengeance and finally stuffed her foot into the last shoe. The girls around her parted, and everyone saw her scramble up from the ground and wipe furiously at the grass clinging to the back of her shorts. She took a deep breath, carefully tucked her ponytail over her shoulder, and walked toward the voice that had called her name.

  Her face turned bright red again when she walked over to Brody. He smiled widely; she frowned at him and took her place on his team. She could see the glares she was getting from half of the girls and the incredulous looks from all the boys.

  What was the most popular boy in school doing, picking the slowest girl to be on his team? Once again, the whispers followed, and she could make out some mean-spirited name-calling. But she didn’t care. She raised her chin proudly and swore to herself she would try hard, and not let Brody down. As long as she didn’t get the ball, she would try to pretend she knew what she was doing.

  The infamous flag football draft continued with the rest of the boys being picked, followed by the girls. Mina watched as Tiffany was placed on the red team, followed by Pricilla Rose on the yellow team. One by one the girls were divided. Wide-eyed with disbelief, Mina was flabbergasted that Brody purposely avoided picking Savannah White for his team. As mathematical fate would have it, she ended up on the opposing team as the last girl standing, a spot that was usually reserved for Mina.

  It was an awkward moment, but not for long, as Savannah threw Mina her renowned mean-girl glare, which meant stay out of my way. After the kick-off, the yellow team received the ball and made it to the forty-five-yard line before losing a flag. When they lined up for the second down, Savannah placed herself opposite Mina.

  She couldn’t help but compare herself to the extremely fit cheerle
ader and knew that Savannah was out to embarrass her. This only fueled Mina’s fire, and she was going to take her down and not humiliate herself in the process. Well, easy enough—as long as Brody didn’t pass her the ball.

  But that wasn’t what the hot, sweet, sensitive guy did. He added fuel to the flame by placing the ball in Mina’s hands.

  “Are you crazy?” she hissed.

  “Run!” He laughed and slapped her on the back.

  Mina stared at the ball in her hands and looked up at Savannah’s face, which turned downright ugly as she ran straight for Mina’s waist and came away with two yellow flags only seconds into the play.

  Mina was humiliated, and she had to go retrieve the flags from the place where Savannah snottily threw them to the ground. She reattached them and decided it was going to stop here and now. The bullying, the name-calling. She couldn’t let Nan fight her school battles for her. She was a Grimm, wasn’t she? She’d fought bears, dragons, Reapers, but she couldn’t handle a single mean-spirited girl?

  Mina gritted her teeth, dug her heels into the ground, and reached deep within herself to a hidden place that she didn’t know existed. She was only just learning the capabilities that came to all Grimms when they repeatedly dipped into the Fae power.

  Her feet began to tingle, as if they had fallen asleep, and her hands grew warm. She could have sworn that she could even hear better. Her breathing picked up as her muscles flexed, and a maniacal grin formed on her face. Is this what it’s like to actively touch the Fae power?

  Savannah frowned when she saw the confident look on Mina’s face, and when the third play began, she was still standing there, confused, as Mina flew around her. Like the wind, she turned, twisted, and dodged around Savannah, and took off running toward the end zone and Brody. He was running, and she was keeping pace with him. Someone on the red team reached for him, and she screened him. It felt good to protect the guy she liked.

  She wasn’t even winded as yard by yard she stayed dead even with him and interfered again as another player came to steal his flag.