Glass Houses

He still didn’t look at her. She couldn’t think of anything to say. After a while, he walked away, into the boys’ bathroom; she dashed into the girls’, waiting impatiently for the line to clear, and came back out to find him nowhere in sight.

Oh, crap.

But when she went back to the lecture hall he was sitting right where he’d been, this time with his iPod earbuds in place.

She didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

It was the longest lecture, and the least enjoyable, that Claire could remember.

Physics was in the same building; if Monica was waiting out in the wilting sun on the Quad, she’d be getting a really good tan. Shane sat like a statue, if a statue wore headphones and radiated angry coiled tension that made hair stand up on a person’s arms. She felt like she was sitting next to an unexploded bomb, and given all of the physics she’d had, she understood exactly what that meant. Talk about potential energy….

Physics crawled slowly by. Shane broke out water and Twinkies, and shared. Chemistry was in the next building, but Claire made sure that they went out the side entrance, not through the Quad. No sign of Monica. She suffered through another hour and a half of chemistry and tension. Shane gradually unwound to the point that her nerves didn’t jangle like sleigh bells every time he moved, and ended up playing on his PSP through most of the class. Killing zombies, she hoped. That seemed to put him in a good mood.

In fact, he was positively cheerful during chem lab, interested in the experiment and asking so many questions that the teaching assistant, who’d never had to come to Claire’s table before, wandered over and stared at Shane as if trying to figure out what he was doing there.

“Hey, man,” Shane said, and stuck out his hand. “Shane Collins. I’m—what’s the word I’m looking for? Auditing. Auditing the class. With my friend here. Claire.”

“Oh,” said the TA, whose name Claire had never learned. “Right. Okay, then. Just—follow along.”

Shane gave him a thumbs-up and a goofy grin. “Hey,” he said in an undertone, leaning close to Claire. “Any of this stuff blow up?”

“What? Um…yeah, if you do it wrong, I guess.”

“I’m thinking about practical applications. Bombs. Things like that.”

“Shane!” He really was distracting. And he smelled good. Guy good, which was different from girl good— darker, spicier, a smell that made her go all fluttery inside. Oh, come on, it’s Shane! she told herself. That didn’t help, especially when he shot her that crooked smile and a look that probably would kill most girls at ten feet. He’s a slacker. And he’s—not that smart. Maybe he was, though. Just in different places than she was. It was a new idea to her, but she kind of liked it.

She slapped his hand when he reached for the reagents, and concentrated on the details of the experiment.

She was concentrating so hard, in fact, and Shane had gotten so engrossed in watching what she was doing, that neither of them heard footsteps behind them. The first Claire knew about it was a searing, burning sensation down the right side of her back. She dropped the beaker she was holding and screamed—couldn’t help it, because God, that hurt—and Shane whirled around and grabbed somebody by the collar who was backing away.

Gina, the Monickette. She snarled and slapped at him, but he didn’t let go; Claire, gasping in pain and trying to twist to see what was happening on her back, could see that it was taking everything Shane had not to deck his prisoner then and there. The TA came rushing over and other students started realizing there was something wrong, or at least more interesting than lab work; Claire slipped off the stool at the table and tried to look at what was happening to her back, because it hurt. She smelled something terrible.

“Oh my God!” the TA blurted. He grabbed the bottled water out of Shane’s backpack, opened it, and dumped the contents over Claire’s back, then dashed to a cupboard on the side and came back with a box of baking soda. She heard it sizzle when it hit her back, and nearly passed out. “Here. Sit. Sit down. You, call an ambulance. Go!” As Claire sank down breathlessly again on another, lower stool, the TA grabbed a pair of scissors and cut her shirt up the back, and folded it aside. He cut her bra strap, too, and she just barely had the presence of mind to grab hold before the whole thing slid down her arms. God, it hurts, it hurts…. She tried not to cry. The burn was easing up a little as the baking soda did its work. Acid has a low pH; baking soda has a high one…. Well, at least she’d retained some grasp of chemistry, even now.

She looked up and saw that Shane still had hold of Gina. He’d twisted her arm behind her back and made her let go of the beaker; what remained of the acid she’d splashed on Claire was still in the glass, looking as innocent as water.

“It was an accident!” she yelped, and stood on her tiptoes as Shane twisted harder. “I tripped! I’m sorry! Look, I didn’t mean it….”

“We’re not working with H₂SO₄ today,” the TA said grimly. “You’ve got no reason to be walking around with it. Claire? Claire, how bad is the pain?”

“I—it’s okay. I’m okay,” she said, though truthfully she had no idea if she was or not. She felt lightheaded, sick, and cold. Shock, probably. And embarrassment, because God, she was half naked in front of the entire chem lab, and…Shane…“Can I put something on?”

“No, you can’t let anything touch that. The burn’s through several layers of skin. It’ll need treatment, and antibiotics. You just sit still.” The TA turned to Shane and Gina, and leveled a finger at her. “You, you’re talking to the campus police. I will not tolerate this kind of attack in my classroom. I don’t care who your friends are!”

So he knew her. Or at least he knew enough. Shane was whispering something in Gina’s ear, something too low for Claire to hear, but it couldn’t be good, by the expression on the girl’s face.

“Sir?” Claire asked faintly. “Sir, can I have a makeup on the lab work and—”

And she passed out before she finished saying, and I’m sorry for the mess.

Chapter 9

W hen she woke up, she was on her side, and she felt warm all over. Sleepy. There was someone sitting next to her, a boy, and she blinked twice and realized that it was Shane. Shane was in her bedroom. No, wait, this wasn’t her bedroom; it was somewhere else….

“Emergency room,” he said. She must have looked confused. “Damn, Claire. Warn a guy before you do a face-plant on the floor next time. I could have looked all heroic and caught you or something.”

She smiled. Her voice came out sounding lazy and slow. “You caught Gina.” That was funny, so she said it again. “You caught Geeeeeeeeeena.”

“Yeah, ha-ha, you’re high as a kite, you know? And they called your parents.”

It took her a little while to realize what he’d just said. “Parents?” she repeated, and tried to lift her head. “Oh. Ow. Not good.”

“Not so much. Mom and Dad were pretty freaked to hear you became a lab accident. The campus cops forgot to mention the part where Gina deliberately threw acid on your back. They seem to think it was just one of those funky accidents.”

“Was it?” she asked. “Accident?”

“No way. She meant to hurt you.”

Claire plucked at the ugly blue hospital gown she was wearing. “Killed my shirt.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Shane looked pale and tense. “I’ve been trying to call Michael. I don’t know where he is. I don’t want to leave you alone here, but—”

“He’s okay,” she said softly, and closed her eyes. “I’m okay, too.”

She thought she felt his hand on her hair, a second of light, sweet pressure. “Yeah,” Shane said. “You’re okay. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

She nodded sleepily, and then everything faded into a lemon yellow haze, like she was lying in the sunlight.