Broken Hill Halo (Broken Hill High 2)

He presses his lips together before cringing at the pain in his fat lip. “Maybe,” he grunts.

I leave it at that, knowing if he’s like Nate, that he’d prefer not to include any authority figure. He’ll I’m sure he told his parents that he doesn’t know what happened.

Nate grows fidgety beside me and now that he’s checked on Puck, I realize that he’s more than ready to get this shit handled. He looks across to Jesse and then to Max before turning to Ty.

Puck groans. “I know that look,” he says.

“You’re good if we go?” Nate says with a cringe. “We’ll stay if you want.”

“No,” Puck sighs. “Go. I want to know who did it and I want him to pay.”

Nate nods and a moment later, the boys start heading for the door. “I’ll be back.”

With that, the boys disappear and we spend the afternoon entertaining Puck and getting to know his parents while we wait to hear from the boys, though it gets well past nine at night when Puck’s parents send us all home without any clues as to who was behind it.

Chapter 20

We walk through the door of Noah Meedy’s party and I instantly start looking around. Noah is a racer like Nate that goes to Haven Falls Private. He’s pretty much the in-between guy for the two schools. He’s friendly with everyone. Popular enough to remain relevant, is known in all the groups, and is generally a pretty cool guy. Well, at least, Nate seems to think so, and so far, I’ve never known Nate to be wrong when it comes to his judge of character. Besides, the guy has a Camaro of his own and the way he drives it, I know Nate respects it.

As we walk in, people seem to stop and stare, though it’s not the usual stop and stare that accompanies the Ryder brothers. This is different. This is the stop and stare people give when they know something is about to happen.

Puck was released from hospital yesterday after three horrible nights stuck there. All he has wanted is to get out and knock some heads together, but unfortunately, doctor’s orders have him stuck in bed and his mom is not budging, not even a little. I sympathize with him though, after being stuck in bed myself after the whole appendix situation. I know all he must want is his freedom back.

By now, everyone from both schools know all about it, and unfortunately for us, we still don’t know who’s behind it, though, we have a good feeling about this party tonight. After all, Nate, Jesse, Max, and Ty have made their way around our school and we’re pretty confident the culprit goes to Haven Falls, so someone here tonight will know something.

“Hey, man,” Noah says, walking confidently up to Nate, unlike so many others. He holds out his hand and they do the half hug, shoulder clap bullshit that guys like to do. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” Nate replies with a grunt as he looks around at all the partiers.

“Look,” Noah says. “I’m going to be real with you. I’m glad you’re here, but I’m not looking for any trouble. We’re just trying to have a good time.”

Nate looks him square in the eye. “I can’t make any promises,” he says. “If the fucker is here, I’m not letting him get away.”

Noah presses his lips together and looks over Nate’s shoulder at the rest of our group. “Yeah, ok,” he says with a sigh. “But, at least, do me a solid and take it outside.”

“No problem,” Nate says as he holds out his fist.

Noah brings up his fist and bumps it against Nates. “Thanks. Hey, listen. I heard about your Camaro. It’s a shame. It was a nice one.”

“Sure was,” Nate says with a grin. “Whooped your ass plenty of times.”

“Hey, now,” Noah says, feigning offense.

“Hey, Noah,” someone calls from somewhere deeper in the house.

Noah looks over his shoulder, nods, and waves before turning back to Nate. “Duty calls,” he says.

“Yeah, ok,” Nate says. “Hit me up if you need some spare parts for that low class Camaro of yours.”

“I’m going to remember you said that,” Noah says as he turns away before looking back over his shoulder. “Keep your shit outside.”

“Well,” Jesse says with a laugh. “That went about as well as we could have hoped.”

“No shit,” Nate grunts.

We head on into the party and Nate takes me by the hand, keeping me close as most of the Haven Falls guys are a bit rough, and no doubt, Josh is probably here which is a whole different can of worms that I don’t feel like touching on tonight.

Nate helps me to a drink and takes me somewhere to sit down, while Brooke goes off with Max. Courtney decided not to come tonight as she’s been playing nurse to Puck the last few days, though, so far, I can’t tell if he likes it or not. His mom though, she loves it. She thinks the sun shines out of Courtney’s ass. So, Courtney not being here also means that Brylee isn’t here, as they’re sort of a package deal.