Floren is not entirely sure why John was even more angry at her this morning than she probably deserved him to be.

She got a very early ride to school with Mr. Parker, the middle-aged widow who lives in the apartment below hers. He had an early shift at the factory, so it worked out well. She wasn't sure how she was going to get to school early again tomorrow since he was just standing in for someone today.

Well, that problem solved itself when she lost her balance while practising doing handstands and fell, knocking her wrist hard against the stacked equipment she'd been sure she was far away from. Each time her attempts to stand on her hands failed, she must've moved away from her designated spot a little bit more.

The coach was so angry with her! Floren doesn't regret getting hurt and ending her career as a tomb raider before it's even begun because she doesn't enjoy getting yelled at, and Miss Winkler yelled a lot.

John has every right to be angry at her. She messed up his morning, and she feels horrible about it. He is always telling her to think before she acts, and she always remembers that advice right after she'd already acted without thinking and mucked up everything.

She didn't really want to do gymnastics so that she could pretend to be Lara Craft. She just got the idea while playing Tomb Raider. Floren is sick of always feeling like a burden. She can never keep up with her taller friends, especially the boys. They're always carrying her on their backs and helping her over obstacles or onto the boulders in the cove where they like to hang out.

She feels like a child when she's around them. She'd thought that if she could stand on her toes, like Lara Croft, reach up far above her head, pull herself up by her fingertips, and do flip-flops over hurdles, John wouldn't always look so stressed when she was around.

Gymnastics seemed like the ideal way to learn the skills she needed. It was a terrible plan because, first of all, there are no beginners in the school's club. Most of the students there this morning have been doing gymnastics since conception, and to make matters worse, Floren finally had to admit to herself that she is an incurable clutz!

She knew that, of course, but she'd never officially admitted it to herself before. If she's not tripping over her own feet, she's tripping over someone else's. Being a burden has nothing to do with her size, which is just a little bit under average. It has everything to do with the fact that she has two left feet and no co-ordination.

And now she's hurt... again... which means that John is going to stress again. That is the direct opposite of what she was aiming for. It's good that she didn't decide to join the wrestling team or, worse... the fencing club! She could've really wiped herself out there.

The school nurse looked her over and agreed with Jared's diagnosis that it was merely a slight sprain. She rubbed some gel on Floren's wrist and had it strapped into a brace. She gave her the tube of gel to take home for more applications and told her to wear the brace for a couple of days and, if the swelling doesn't go down or gets worse, to see a doctor and have some X-rays done.

Floren's wrist still hurts, but not as much as earlier. The swelling has gone down a lot, but she is ready to go home now because the day is just dragging on and on. She is fortunate that her right wrist got injured because she writes with her left hand. Still, she didn't realise how often she uses her right hand to do things until now.

Relieved that the bell announcing freedom has finally rung, Floren hurries to the school gate. She definitely doesn't want to make things worse by causing John to have to wait for her after school, so she ducked out of class the moment the end-of-day siren - the bell - made it sound like they were about to suffer an air raid. In his current mood, John might even decide not to wait for her if he got to the gate before she did!

No, he'll wait, she's sure he will... mostly sure...

Then again... he is really angry and doesn't get angry often enough for Floren to accurately predict what he would do. The horrible thought of him refusing to feed her causes her to whimper softly. She's hungry, and John makes the best grilled-cheese sandwiches for an after-school snack.

That kind of revenge would be pure evil!

There's a chance that he might not even be angry anymore. She hadn't seen him all day, but during their last interaction, he'd carried her to the infirmary and tossed her on the bed as though she were a sack of potatoes. John is usually so gentle with her. Perhaps she was simply too heavy for him today.

Floren knows that is pure wishful thinking. John is very strong and he always says carrying her is like carrying a bag of air. He was undeniably angry. Still, he doesn't normally hold on to his anger for very long, so maybe...

"No, better not risk it," she makes up her mind and, pulling the strap of her schoolbag higher onto her left shoulder, she hastens her steps and hurries across the schoolyard to the gate.

Glancing down at her wrist, covered in a black brace made up of thick padding and adjustable straps, she almost drops the books trapped in the crook of that same arm when a comforting warmth slides along her heart and wakes up the butterflies sleeping in her stomach.

Jared put the brace on her wrist.

Floren was close to ecstatic when Nurse Kaur let him do it. He was so gentle yet precise, flashing her the sweetest smiles every time he confirmed that she was doing okay and the straps weren't too tight. Yes, she definitely did ask him to redo some of the straps a few times just so he would hold her hand a little longer.

Who can blame her?! His hands were so warm!

According to Floren, Jared has the prettiest, dreamiest, chalk-blue eyes and every smiling angel on every Christmas card ever made was inspired by his smile. She is sure of that.

Dreaming about Jared's smile, his dimples, and his dark-blond hair softly falling over his brow, she almost trips over a loose piece of the parking lot's crumbling paving. It startles her back to reality, and she hastily scans her environment to make sure she's still at school.

The school gate is looming in front of her, and as she nears it, her dreamy smile falls from her lips when she notices the two boys hanging around just outside it, watching her expectantly.

Wondering why they look so happy to see her, she forgets all about Christmas card angels and warm feelings as her heart leaps into her throat, trying to strangle her. She glances around, frantically searching for John. It might not be too late to run, not even for her, so she turns around mid-stride with an agility she never has when witnesses are around.

Another boy has fallen into step behind her, and she has no idea where he came from. She only realises that he's there when she crashes into him, the books she was carrying slipping from her grasp to tumble to the ground between them.

"Careful, you don't want to hurt yourself..."

Floren winces when he digs his fingers into her shoulder hard enough to bruise while he pretends to steady her. There is nothing comforting or friendly about the gesture. She nervously glances up into his hazel brown eyes, peering at her through strands of dark hair in desperate need of a trim.

"Sorry," she mutters, crouching to free herself from his grasp and awkwardly tries to retrieve the books scattered at her feet. They are thick library books on art through the ages and didn't fit into her school bag. It would be such a shame if their pages, containing hundreds of beautiful images, were to be damaged.

It would also mean a hefty fine.

"Oh, no! Let me help you with that!" someone says behind her, and Floren hastily rises to stand when a pair of much stronger hands suddenly undermine her efforts to pick up her books.

The boys from the gate hurried over while she was distracted, and one of them, tall, lanky and dark with his unbuttoned shirt blowing in the wind and a head covered in short, partially bleached dreadlocks rises from his crouched position, to tower over her, holding her books in his arms.

The other boy, stone-faced, with most of his highlighted hair shaved close to his scalp, grabbed her schoolbag, slipping it off her shoulder while his friend was picking up the books.

"Thanks," she whispers, feigning ignorance of their true intentions. Her heart is beating so hard and fast that she is certain that they must hear it trying to break out of her chest.

At times like these, Floren resents Ranger a little bit.

Nearly all their enemies were created by him. He has an almost magical knack for rubbing people the wrong way, and there are always aggressive boys seeking revenge on him for one thing or another. He knows just how to pick the worst people to make angry.

Floren only knows the boys surrounding her by their reputation. They are habitual troublemakers and have been suspended from school more than once. These cowards don't have the guts to take on Ranger or any of his male friends; they're the kind who would stoop to hurting weaklings like Floren to get revenge on him.

John is going to be even angrier now.

The boys expertly steer Floren towards the gate and out of the school grounds, and she lets them, desperately trying to think of a way out of the sticky situation. She's had plenty of experience in dealing with nasty men, but right now, she was at a loss as to what she should do.

She wonders if screaming would help, but she doesn't think she can scream now, even if it would help. Her brain, her voice, her face... every part of her has stopped functioning properly. The only reason she's not falling apart yet is that fear has numbed her flight or fight and other instincts instead of triggering it.

Floren regrets her rash decision to storm out of class in such a hurry. She should have waited for her friend Glenda and the other girls. The guys are always warning her about wandering around alone, and she generally listens; she just really didn't want to make John wait; besides, she'd always been safe within the schoolyard.

She is confused and shocked by the boys' boldness to corner her openly like this; surely they didn't think they'd get away with it. Other students are starting to trickle out of the gate too.

Sometimes, Floren wants to shake herself hard enough to make her teeth rattle. She only wanted to be at the gate before John to make up for at least some of the inconvenience she'd caused him this morning.

Well, she had no idea that she was going to be set upon by a bunch of bullies with a bee up their butts, so, technically, this was not her fault. Still...

After leaving her home this morning, she realised that if John weren't aware that she wouldn't be at breakfast, it would throw out his routine. She also regretted waking him. She needed her book because she still had a bit of homework she wanted to finish before class started, and when she saw that the bridge was down, she was afraid of pulling it up from where it was hanging in the dark. She was scared that something would come up with it.

They shouldn't have watched that horror movie last night! It's John's fault! He wanted to watch it! She wanted to watch Ten Things I Hate About You... again.

Still, Floren wishes that she could teach herself to stop and think before diving headlong into some stupid endeavour or another... and bothering John.

Gymnastics! What was she thinking?! She can barely walk upright without running into errors!

The school should have a common-sense club that teaches kids to use their brains while making important decisions and how not to do stupid things. If she survives this afternoon, she's popping a note in the school's suggestion box to start a club like that.

She is so pleased with her idea that she momentarily forgets that the arm around her shoulders doesn't belong to one of the guys she trusts. It belongs to a mean slimeball who definitely left bruises on her skin.

"Thanks, I'll take it from here," she says in a strange, hoarse little voice, trying and failing to reclaim her possessions from the boys when her brain returns from its detour and she remembers that she is in serious trouble.

The other kids leaving the school grounds are ignoring them.

They are either unwilling or too afraid to get involved in an altercation with the school's notorious gang of bullies – Floren doesn't blame them for that. It is also very possible that, at first glance, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong here.

Four more unsavoury boys join their three friends, completely surrounding her and blocking her from view. Floren's natural optimism is evaporating fast and she is really scared now.

She watches enough Korean and Japanese school dramas to know that boys are always taking girls like her hostage to force their friends to allow themselves to be beaten up by them! She's convinced she has stepped into exactly that kind of scenario, and not even Ranger could laugh at her theory this time.

She squeaks in pain when they're a few meters away from the school, and a boy she often sees smoking in the alley beside her home suddenly blocks her path and grabs her injured wrist.

Cade Russell!

The sound of her voice gives her the hope that she might be able to scream now, but will that help or simply aggravate the increasingly tense situation?

Apparently, Cade didn't realise that she was injured because he immediately dropped her arm, frowning down at the brace as if it bit him. After a few seconds of clenching and unclenching his jaw, he lifts his olive green eyes to look at her face, his brown hair, also in need of a cut, stirring in the breeze.

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