Free Last Stand by Niki Burnham

boobs.”
     
    “Gee, thanks.” Good thing the hall’s empty except for the two of us.
     
    “Don’t mention it.”
     
    We enter the library, give the librarian a friendly wave—eat in the library? who, us?—as we pass her desk, then make our way to the table at the back of the stacks.
     
    Ginger’s already there. She looks up from her notebook as we approach and raises an eyebrow. “You two officially stalking me?”
     
    “No way. I was here first yesterday, and the two of you barged in on me,” Griff says. He jerks a thumb in my direction. “And he brought you Skittles. Not stalker behavior.”
     
    “Hand ‘em over and I’ll consider letting you sit.”
     
    I drop my backpack into one of the empty chairs, locate the Skittles, then toss them to her. She catches the bag in one hand and sets them in front of her on the table, then reaches down to the floor to pick up the Diet Coke she hid as we came through the stacks.
     
    “Can’t be too careful,” she says as Griff and I sit. “So how’s your morning been, Toby?”
     
    “Haven’t you heard?” Griff’s voice is filled with snark, which garners him a smile from Ginger.
     
    “Some.” She leans back in her chair and fixes her ponytail. She catches my eye, and it’s clear to me that she not only heard the gossip, she heard everything that went down in the parking lot—including Amber’s slut comment—loud and clear.
     
    “She actually witnessed it,” I tell Griff as he spreads out his lunch. “My most glorious moment.”
     
    “Had to ride in on my white horse to rescue his ass.”
     
    “Well, in a blue Toyota, anyway,” I explain to Griff. “She gave me a ride to Fair Grounds.”
     
    “That’s how you got there at mach speed,” he says between bites of his cafeteria-bought ham and cheese. “I knew you couldn’t run that fast.”
     
    I fake punch him. He smirks, then asks Ginger, “So was it gory? Amber beat the crap out of him and leave him for dead?”
     
    “Just about.” Ginger’s eyes are lit in amusement. “I swear, it was like watching Custer ride across the prairie. He went into the situation with no battle plan and no knowledge whatsoever of the strength of his enemy.”
     
    Griff elbows me. “You’d think a history freak like you would know better.”
     
    “Well, he got out alive and he acted with honor,” Ginger says. “Better than Custer did, on both counts.”
     
    How much do I like her right now? Not just because she called me honorable, but because she knows about the Battle of the Little Bighorn?
     
    “You guys realize I’m sitting right here while you talk about me, right?”
     
    “Yup,” they reply together.
     
    I crack up, then pull
Gatsby
out of my backpack. Have to read the last few pages before class. I haven’t been called on yet, which means I’m due. Just what I need on a day where everyone’s talking about me.
     
    Somehow, though, kicking back alongside Griff and Ginger, I’m feeling no pain. Like I’m looking back at my relationship with Amber from a decade in the future and seeing that I’ve lived and learned.
     
    Griff leans over to two-point his wadded-up sandwich wrapper in the trash can. As he does, Ginger winks at me. No squinching, no posing against a fence with a hand on her hip. Just a straight-up wink.
     
    “So you live to fight another day,” she says.
     
    I smile at her, then reach across the table to steal back a Skittle from the open bag. “You think?”
     
    She yanks the bag away before I can get one, but her lips curve into a smile. “Positive.”
     

About the Author

     
    Niki Burnham is the RITA-award winning author of over a dozen novels, including Royally Jacked, a
Teen People
Pick. Originally from Colorado, Niki spent her childhood traveling around the world thanks to her father’s military career. After attending high school in Mannheim, Germany, she graduated from Colorado State University and the University of Michigan Law School. Niki