The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys 1)

My watch beeped incessantly, and my leg muscles were starting to feel like sand. I tried to push past him once more, knowing it was futile. Usually, in a fight with Frankie Dowd, I gave as good as I got, but right now, I could hardly stand.

“Get the fuck out of my way.”

“I’m good right here,” Frankie said, crossing his arms. “Kinda curious about what’s going to happen next.”

His friends shifted and glanced around.

“Hey, Frankie, he really doesn’t look so good,” Mikey said.

Tad nodded. “Yeah, and he’s got that alarm…”

“Nah, he’s alright, aren’t you, Stratton?” Frankie clamped a hand around my neck. “You still wearing that little machine stuck in your guts? What would happen if someone took it out? Just to get a better look?”

“Dude,” Mikey said.

“That’s sick, man,” Tad added, though neither moved to help me.

I mustered what strength I could, balled my hand into a fist, and swung it upward, striking Frankie under his chin. His jaw snapped shut with a clack, and he fell away from me, sputtering and cursing.

“You fu-ther!” He spat a wad of red. “I fu-thing bit my thung.”

He came at me a second later, readying a blow I didn’t have the strength to dodge. Suddenly, a rough hand shoved me aside and a fist struck out, whacking Frankie full in the nose with an audible crunch of bone and cartilage.

Except for Frankie, who was gasping and cursing, the group went silent, staring at the big, dark-haired guy who’d appeared out of nowhere. He wore torn jeans, scuffed combat boots, and towered over all of us by a good three inches. His faded T-shirt revealed tattoos inking his biceps and one forearm. He looked like an escaped convict, instead of a high school student.

Maybe he is. One of Frankie’s dad’s arrests is here for some payback.

But I could see the youth in the guy, buried under muscle, tats, and the flat, gray eyes that stared coldly at Frankie. Power coiled and hummed in him, ready to rumble.

Vice Principle Chouder had a sixth sense about trouble on his campus; he materialized like a ghost behind us.

“What’s all this?”

“Fu-ther broke my nose,” Frankie said, his voice nasally and muffled behind his hand.

Chouder pursed his lips disdainfully at the blood seeping through Frankie’s fingers. “Go see the nurse, Dowd.” He fixed his gaze on the new guy. “Mr. Wentz. My office. The rest of you get back to class.”

My beeping watch finally drew his attention. He sized me up and down.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh sure. Never better.”

I pushed myself off the pole I’d been sagging against and managed to make it to my locker and raise my blood sugar before falling into a fucking diabetic coma, wondering where in the hell that guy came from.

I didn’t have to wonder long. Gossip spread quickly that a new kid had clocked Frankie in the face. By the end of the day, I’d learned that Ronan Wentz moved here from Wisconsin two weeks ago. He had ditched the first few days of school and was now suspended.

I ditched the rest of my classes, too, to wait for him to get out of Chouder’s office.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” I said, falling in step beside him as he headed down the front walk of the school.

“I didn’t do it for you,” Ronan replied. His voice was low and deep, his gaze on the road in front of him.

“Then why?”

He shrugged in his worn-out jean jacket with the fake lamb’s wool on the inside. He dressed like me—in distressed clothes—because they were in distress and not ripped on purpose like the current fashion. I didn’t understand why rich kids wanted to dress like poor kids if they were just going to bag on poor kids for being poor. But that’s high school for you.

We continued down the street together; he was headed toward my neighborhood that I guessed might be his neighborhood, too.