Free When We Were Us (Keeping Score, #1) by Tawdra Kandle Page A

stalked over, ready to yell at Abby for getting in the middle of that, when she turned and spotted me.
    “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.  “Didn’t you see what was happening?  They were going to hurt Nat!”
    “I—I was—“ I looked at Nat, my eyes pleading for some back up, but he was just staring off into the distance, beyond Abby, beyond me. 
    “I was heading over there,” I finished lamely.
    “Yeah, by the time you got there, they would have pushed him down and gotten in some good punches.  What were you waiting for?”
    “I don’t know.”  I pushed a hand through the hair my mom had so carefully combed an hour ago.  “It just happened so fast.  I saw it was Nat, and then before I could even get in there, you ran past me.”
    “It shouldn’t have mattered who it was.  They were big kids, picking on someone smaller.  You should have stopped them no matter who it was.  But then when you saw it was your friend—“ Abby glared at me meaningfully—“your best friend since before you were born, you should have run to stop them.”  Like I did .  She didn’t say it, but I could read it loud and clear in her eyes.
    “Nat.”  I could see I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Abby, so I turned to the small boy hunched between us.  “What happened?  Why were they ganged up on you?”
    He shrugged, still not meeting our eyes.  “Mom dropped me off early,” he finally answered, softly.  “I asked her to.  I thought I could get in here and look around, be ready when you guys got here.  I was just sitting on the bars over there.”  He jerked his chin toward the rainbow climber, now covered with kids.  “But then I saw there was an empty swing, and I thought I would grab it for Abby.”  At last he looked up at her.  “I know you like to swing.”
    Abby sighed, the merest breath.  “I do like to swing.  Thanks for thinking of me, Nat.”
    He nodded and continued.  “I was just trying to get across the playground to them, and then this one kid grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, they were all standing around.”  He swung his eyes up to me.  “Matt was there, too.  Did you see that, Jesse?”
    I nodded but didn’t say anything else.  Matt Lambert had been in our class last year, and he had hung around with Nat and me.  I would’ve said we were friends.  I hadn’t seen him over the summer, but that wasn’t unusual; his family lived on the other side of town and belonged to the community pool, which was where he spent most of his days between school years.
    “Why do kids act like that?”  Abby stomped her foot against the concrete and winced.  I tried to hide a smile, but she looked at me and rolled her eyes.  Abby had a tendency to strike out physically, forgetting that hitting hard surfaces hurt.
    “They’re just. . I don’t know.  Stupid, like you said, I guess.”  Nat still seemed far away, and I gave him a light punch on the shoulder to get his attention.  He turned his bright blue eyes to me, and I flinched at the pain there.
    “You okay, Nat?”  Abby stole my line and laid a tentative hand on his arm.  To my surprise, he shrugged it off.  I hadn’t ever seen Nat rebuff Abby’s affection—not ever.
    “You shouldn’t have gotten in the middle of it,” he said in a low voice.  “Now it’s only going to be worse.  They’re going to think I’m a wimp, that I have to count on a girl to protect me.”
    Abby raised her eyes to mine.  She was surprised and not a little hurt.  “I’m sorry, Nat.  I thought. . .I didn’t want you to get hurt.”  She bit her lip and added, “I know if it had been me they were picking on, you would have stopped it.”
    “That’s different.  I’m a boy.  I’m supposed to do the defending.” 
    Abby stepped back, looking even more lost.  “Since when does that matter?  I thought friends stuck up for each other, no matter what.”
    “We’re not babies anymore, Ab,” Nat said, more