Free Broken by A. E. Rought Page B

and sours the subject.
    “Can you believe Alex was talking to her ?”
    “What does he see in Emo Emma anyway?”
    “She’s nothing but a speed bump. He’ll be mine.”
    The last voice is Ally Rhodes. The snide tone gives her away—not that she’d want to hide. She’d staked claim on Alex when she dragged him to the In Crowd’s table. A short, hot flash of anger rips through me, and an image of Ally as a speedbump under the wheels of Alex’s hybrid floods my mind. I’m wearing a dark smile when I walk around the corner and toward the peach, brown, pukey-salmon tiled Ugly Room of lockers and nasty attitudes.
    The vicious words slither from my approach, silence spreading in a wake of downcast eyes in front of me. Doesn’t matter. I know what I heard.
    My gym locker is more accommodating than my regular locker. It opens with a few spins of my left hand. Getting out of regular clothes and into gym clothes is worth points on a callisthenic workout. By the time I’m done, there’s only a minute left before I’m tardy. Outside the locker room, the line of students stretches across the gym, girls to the right, guys to the left. According to our strutting Drill Sarge and his shiny whistle, today is going to be a free gym day. Chests sink in a collective, gym-wide sigh of relief.
    I stand with my immobilizer in front of me, my hair loose because I can’t whip it into a ponytail.
    “Gentry,” Mr. Ashford grunts, “I see you’re injured.”
    Pretty obvious, I think with a thick layer of snark. Plus Mom c a lled the office…
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Walking the track is easy,” he suggests.
    I nod, and set off at a leisurely pace. Sadly, two laps in, a horde of harpies jogs behind me, their breaths puffing in between their gossip. Ally Rhodes and Josie Cummings discuss the Halloween Dance between their plodding steps, Josie oo-ing like a mindless groupie with every suggestion Ally huffs out.
    “We can go as Barbie and Ken,” Ally says.
    “Cuuute!”
    “Or we could go as Zombie Honeymooners.”
    “Love it!”
    “Or Hansel and Gretel.”
    Then Josie surprises me. “I can’t picture Alex in lederhosen.”
    One, lederhosen is a really big word for Josie. Two, Ally’s “we” supposedly includes Alex Franks. Why does that idea set my teeth on edge? We have nothing between us but coffee and a pain in my butt locker. He does look at me like I’m more than new to him, and his touch sends tingles through me, but who is he to me? The guy who unsettles me with eerie similarities to Daniel. The guy with a scary father.
    I slow and let the harpy squad jog past, out of hearing range.
    The Alex Franks topic continues in the lunch line, Bree included. I roll my eyes and groan. I’m tired of him and I’ve hardly seen him today. Chewing on my frustrations, I stalk past the entire lunchline without a sideways glance. My best friend accuses me of being grumpy and I can’t argue.
    “Food. Juice. Pain meds. Then I’ll be more social.”
    “Make it quick,” Jason Weller says from the Thespian table and holds out his can of soda.
    “So self-sacrificing of you, Jason.”
    He smiles, and strikes a ridiculous pose, one hand held aloft in the air. “Leading men know the meaning of self-sacrifice.”
    I’m too busy negotiating flavorless macaroni and cheese onto my spork to fuss with a retort. The crawl over my skin announces someone watching me. Hopefully my handicapped eating amuses them. My pain meds follow a couple spoons of macaroni, then I take up Jason’s offer and chase the pills with lemon-lime pop.
    Sudden pain flares across the top of the arch of my foot, driven there by Bree stomping it hard enough to make me wince. Passing Jason’s soda back, I whip a glare at her. Drama Queen Bree pretends innocence, but gives me a cheeky wink. She inclines her head in the direction of the In Crowd tables, where Alex follows Ally to a pair of empty seats. He sinks with his hood pointed at me until a football player draws his