Jesse and I waited on the side of the school in silence until a shiny, gray Mazda pulled up. Inside was a man with jet black hair and brown eyes. He rolled down the passenger's window and stared at his brother. "What the hell happened?"

"I'll tell you on the way, Miles." Jesse sighed as he opened the back-seat door, although he was standing by the passenger's seat door. He was opening it for me. Miles pinched the bridge of his nose.

"No, Jesse." Miles said with a shake of his head. "Whitney is a guest. Back-seat, stupid."

"But I was about to get into the back-seat!" Jesse objected. 

"No you weren't, Jesse." Miles said, rolling his eyes. Jesse shot his dark brother a look before shuffling over to the front seat of the Mazda and opened the door, glancing at me and shooting me a smile that read 'get in.' 

"Hi, I'm Whitney." I introduced myself. Miles began driving again when Jesse got into the back-seat.

"I know, Jesse told me a lot about you." Miles said, briefly turning and sending a wink Jesse's way. I listened with a grin as Jesse groaned and leaned back in his seat.

"Did you now?" I grinned, looking back at him. Jesse huffed and looked at the window behind Miles, not making eye contact with me. His face was flushed. 

"There was a shooter-thing going on." Jesse said from behind me.

"A shooter thing?" Miles echoed, concern rooting deeply in his voice.

"We are, in fact, on our way to the hospital." Jesse said to his brother. Miles scoffed in response.

"Winnie?" Miles glanced at me. Jesse stiffened and covered his face with his hands. "Did you get hurt there?"

"It's Whitney." I reminded him hastily, knowing that I looked similar to Winnie. His face drained of color for an instant, but he didn't turn to glance at me. "And yeah, I got skimmed."

"That's not as bad as it could have been." Miles said stiffly, though bumping his speedometer up by eight miles an hour. "And you, Jesse?"

"Yeah, they got me too. I think the used a lesser degree of bullets. None of them went through." Jesse said. I remembered seeing a dark bruise on his chest.

"Come on, man, put on your seat belt." Jesse's brother said in exasperation. Jesse made a big, dramatic show of clicking his seatbelt into its place. "So, Whitney," Miles said smugly. Even though he was addressing me, he seemed to have been speaking to his brother. "What do you think of Jesse?"

"Miles!" Jesse said sharply, sitting up straight and staring daggers at his older brother.

"Hey, I am just making conversation!" Miles said sharply. "She doesn't have to answer!"

"You know, I like him a lot." I said to Miles, causing a grin to shift his facial expression

"Hear that, Jesse?" Miles said. 

"Whatever!" Jesse said breathily.

The rest of the drive was in a fairly comfortable silence. At some point, Jesse reached forward to turn on the radio, but Miles slapped his hand away. We were both ushered to cots in the emergency room the instant Miles pulled up to the ambulance port. 

"Hello, my name is Dr. Harris." My doctor said, introducing herself. "Your chart says that you were a victim of a school shooting?"

"Yep." I said. Dr. Harris let out a gust of air.

"Are you in any pain?" She asked, looking me up and down. 

"Yeah, actually, one of them skimmed me." I nodded, exposing the wound. Without a second thought, Dr. Harris drew a curtain around my cot, leaving just her and I in semi-privacy.

"If you don't mind, please remove your shirt." Dr. Harris said with a sympathetic tilt of her head. "Nobody was see you, I promise."

I complied and pulled my shirt off, allowing Dr. Harris to have a closer look at my gash. 

"You sure were shot." She nodded slowly, gathering a few supplies. "I'm sorry Whitney, this isn't an urgent enough injury to allow me to administer anesthesia, so this is going to sting a little bit." I braced myself as she cleaned it up and slapped—not literally—a bandage on my shoulder. "Good news, it's definitely not as deep as it looks."

After I put my shirt back on, Dr. Harris pulled the curtain back. Jesse and Miles were standing together at the front desk, waiting for me. As soon as they saw the curtain move out of the way, they joined me to hear what Dr. Harris had to say.

"Now, it is one-hundred percent going to scar." She told Miles. "It should heal very quickly. On the bright side, your daughter can brag about how she's survived a gunshot."

"Thank you." Miles said, clearly stifling a laugh at the mistake. Jesse's mouth gaped open in shock and I bit back a grin that would have been caused by Jesse's reaction. After the momentary joke died down and Dr. Harris went to treat other patients, Jesse got into a conversation with a younger doctor about why dermatology is both disgusting and pleasing.

"Jesse talks about you a lot, you know." He told me quietly while they talked.

"He does?" My eyes widened, though not thoroughly shocked that I was singled out, due to the fact that I'm closer to him than any of our other friends are.

"He talks about those other kids too, but mostly you." Miles said, looking back up at his brother. "Jesse, we're going to be in the car."

"I just spend the most time with him." I said after we both got into the car. "We went to the game together because all of our friends were busy. What does he say?"

"You sure you want to know?" Miles asked, turning to face me.

"Not if it's bad." I said jokingly.

"No, all good things." Miles smiled. "He's said that you're smart, funny, pretty, brave, and things like that."

"Interesting." I said, doing my best not to allow a beaming smile to shine through my poker-face.

"I don't think our parents would mind at all if you joined us for dinner." Miles said. "In fact, they told Jesse to ask you, but they failed to remember that he's a coward."

"Dinner tonight?" I whipped my head to the side to face him. At this point, it was 11:00 at night.

"No, not tonight." Miles laughed. "Maybe tomorrow. I'll have Jesse text you."

"Okay." I said, waiting for Jesse to join us. He eventually found the car.

"You know, Miles, you could have told me where the car was." Jesse said gruffly, getting into the car.

"My car's still at the school." I told Miles. He nodded and began driving.

"That movie your sister and mom went to should be over by now." Jesse said, cooled off from his short spat with his brother.

"What about your dad?" Miles asked with a twitch of his black eyebrow.

"He's dead." I sad, looking out my window.

"Oh. I'm sorry." Miles said quickly

"I've made my peace." I said. Jesse nodded slowly.

The school was still swarming with police cars when I retrieved my own vehicle. We decided that Jesse would ride with me and Miles would follow behind us.

"You have a key, right?" Jesse asked when we walked up to the front door of my house. 

"I do." I nodded as I reached into my tiny backpack to retrieve the key and glowsticks, handing him the glowing bundle. "Here."

"Thanks." He smiled, taking the glowsticks. I shoved the key into slot and creaked the door open. As soon as I got inside, I turned on the light that was just in front of the top of the doorframe so I could see Jesse's face. My heart was racing at this point. It wasn't that I was  nervous, I just really wanted to go to sleep. 

"Thanks for a lovely night at the hospital." I said with a joking smile.

"Technically, it was Miles who took us to the hospital." Jesse laughed quietly so as to not awake Charlie and my mother.

"Then tell him that I said thanks." I said, examining his facial features. His eyes looked very gentle and the goofy quality had returned to his voice. 

Jesse smiled warmly before continuing, "you're probably tired. I'll let you go. Get some sleep."