**** I would like to dedicate this chapter to my son who was a victim of bullying this week. If you or someone you know is a victim, please speak out. If you are a bully, please seek support to stop the violence. ********

The guy in front of me in the lunch line had a thick neck spotted with acne and buzzed hair. Football guy. He was joking with another guy about some house he had TPed over summer vacation and they jostled one another a couple of times.

The line inched forward and we were almost at the salad bar. I was starving. I had eaten early this morning to be on time for the counselor's appointment, and I was in the last lunch period, too. We moved forward a couple more spaces and the lunch room came into view from behind a wall.

Alicia was already sitting alone at our table in the corner near the end of the lunch line. She was staring off into the middle distance, sandwich in hand. The blond top half of her hair was still teased out bigger than a lead singer's of an eighties rock band and the darker under part snaked over her shoulders and on the table. Her face was hard and her lips curled in a snarl. I had to admit that with her expression and heavy makeup, especially her dark eyeliner, she was not someone to cross in a deserted street.

The school had rules about how much makeup was appropriate and I was fairly certain that if any of the teachers cared to apply those rules to Alicia, her parents would get a phone call about it. Rules didn't seem to stick to her like to the rest of us, though. She was always perched uncomfortably just outside of the group. Not necessarily a bad thing, I wasn't exactly a conformist myself with my Goth flair. But with Alicia, it was more a question of not understanding what was normal than choosing to follow her own ideas. She had no clue how other people thought or functioned, so she watched us from the outside like a scientist with a notepad. Or maybe like a paranoid maniac with a butcher knife. Even before she had been found beat up in the thorn bushes, her hold on reality had been tenuous.

"Ah, man, check her out! They never should have let her out of the looney-bin," the football guy said. He chuckled, nudging his friend. "Look over there. Should have locked her up for good, man."

"That is just freaky, dude. She was like in my history class last year. She sat like right next to me. It sucked."

I was already on edge, but hearing them make fun of Alicia was busting wide open the dam that held back my fears and anger from the morning. I clenched my fists and pressed my arms to my side.

"You know she had a major breakdown and stayed for like six months in the psycho ward? Yeah, and-"

I shoved football guy - not hard, but enough to get his attention. He caught himself and turned, red faced.

"What the-"

"You wanna mess with a girl who's smaller than you, then you mess with me," I said. He was twice my size and had a friend with him, but at that moment I didn't care. I didn't care about anything. I wanted a fight. I wanted to hit someone who was real and if I got hit back, at least other people would see that a real person had fought with me.

"Whoa, no we're cool. Hey, Brooklyn," the friend said, holding football guy. They were seniors. "We didn't, uh, see you standing there." He shoulder bumped football guy.

Football guy got up in my face. "Push me again, and I don't care whether or not you're a girl. My fist is gonna land in your face." He was still red and breathing hard, and several guys in the line snickered. Others shook their heads, though. In this town, guys didn't hit girls in public and get away with it.

"Talk about my friend again, and I'll do more than just push you," I said. It may have sounded overblown or like an empty promise, but I had been getting into fights for Alicia for the last five years, and as the boys got taller and heavier than me, I got smarter. My self-defense instructor loved and hated me for it.

The friend moved between us. "Just let it go, man. She's just a chick."

The line moved forward. Football guy and his friend went for the lasagna and I loaded up my plate with a sandwich and salad.

By the time I sat down with Alicia, the adrenaline had worn off and I was trembling. I tore the plastic wrap off the sandwich and started wolfing it down.

"Why do you do that?" she asked.

"Do what? Stick up for you?" I asked after I swallowed. Alicia must have noticed my little altercation in front of the salad bar. For some reason kids had always singled her out to make fun of her. Mostly, it was other girls who harassed her. Things had gotten worse the older we got, as if the fact that she wouldn't defend herself made it all right for bullies to get meaner.

"Do you think it matters what they think or say about me? These people don't even exist in my world." She glanced around the cafeteria as though it were empty and couldn't begin to fathom why I would try to fight nothing at all.

Her dismissal of the students there sent an uneasy shiver through my spine.

"Those guys were jerks. Somebody had to tell them."

"So what if they are jerks?" she asked.

"Listen, just forget it. Forget them."

"I already have," she said. She crunched into an apple, droplets of juice spraying outwards in the air. Her fingernails were done in a familiar shade of dark purple, and I remembered she had borrowed my polish two weeks ago and never returned it. "Feeling better after your weird hallucination?" she asked.

I paused mid-bite. What was she talking about? The memory rushed back in a wave - the soldiers and the mud, the feeling of choking and drowning. I hadn't thought about it since I left the nurse's station. "Yeah. I do. It's like..." I started to say, and stopped, gathering my thoughts. "Remembering it now, it's like those dreams you have when you first start falling asleep, but sometimes you wake back up. Distant, unreal. How weird that I almost forgot about it."

Everything around me slowed while I remembered the visions I had in the principal's office. Students chattering lulled to a buzz, the smells of lasagna and cleaning bleach faded and the even the lights dimmed some while I tried to recreate the scene in my head. Only two hours ago, I had nearly fainted and imagined that I had been held down and almost drowned in mud by Civil War soldiers, but since then I hadn't even thought about it. The tear between the two parts of myself felt wider than ever. I wondered if this was how Alicia always felt.

On the other hand, I had been thinking off and on the whole morning about my closet. This was not a good time to bring it up, however.

Alicia leaned closer, bringing me back to the cafeteria. "I wanted to give you this. I was going to give it to you tonight, but I think you should have it now." She took something from her pocket and set it on the table.

"It's a river rock," I said. It wasn't particularly nice or interesting. Trust Alicia to find the most boring beige-grey rock on a river beach and give it to me as a gift. It was completely unexceptional except for a hole eroded in it. There was a strip of leather threaded through the hole to make it a necklace.

"It's for good luck. I was going to give it to you tonight when we go, but I think you should have it now. You should wear it."

"You want me to wear this for good luck?"

"You need it."

"O.K.," I said. I put it on to humor her. "About tonight, why don't you go with me to see Sean and Levi's parents before we go to the farmstead? I think they would like to see you, and after all this time-"

"I think you're wrong. The Walters don't want to the see the girl who escaped but can't remember what happened when their sons were kidnapped."

"Alicia, I think they'd like to see you and I think you should face-"

"And I think you should keep your stupid ideas to yourself."

I could have smacked her at that moment. She was staring me down, daring me to make a move.

Then she dropped her gaze to her yogurt.

"Hi. Do you guys mind if I sit here?"

I turned on my plastic seat. Joshua was standing behind me, holding a tray. There was something deliciously carefree and warm about him. I couldn't help myself from wishing I could get up and run off with him away from Alicia.

For a split second, I thought about telling him to sit somewhere else. Not because I didn't want to sit next to him - I could really use the company - but because Alicia was having one of her moments. For all she acknowledged him, he could have been a figment of my imagination. I couldn't tell him to leave, though. I smiled instead and patted the seat next to me.

"Someone was saying you passed out in the principal's office, is that true?" he asked me. He sat the tray down and slid into his place. "Are you O.K.?"

"How do people hear about this stuff? I just had a dizzy spell, it's nothing."

"Great. I mean, if you can't practice tonight, it's no big deal. You just have to say the word."

I could see him looking at me from the corner of my eye so I turned to smile again to reassure him. My smile was frozen half-way, though. The way he was looking at me...

*******Thank you so much for reading and I hope you are enjoying the story so far!!!! Don't forget to vote and leave your comments or question below, that is the only way I know what you think! **********