What's worse than the guy you almost killed actually dying? The guy you almost killed coming back and giving a threatening I know what you did speech in front of your entire homeroom class.

Well, technically, I didn't almost kill him; it was my fifteen-year-old sister, Gia, who slammed the vase into his head, leaving him unconscious and bleeding out all over a motel carpet, but that doesn't matter, because Gia and I are always in it together.

"What's up, assholes?" Brandon announces from the front of the room after his grand entrance. "You miss me?" His eyes land on mine, and his tone changes when he says, "Because I've missed you."

I shiver as we stare at each other. A mixture of emotions runs through me with the realization that he's alive and well. On the one hand, Gia, Jason, and I won't be investigated for killing him, but on the other, he's alive.

"You were only suspended for a week, dumbass!" one of his friends jokingly calls out. "Next time stay away longer to give us more time to miss you!"

His other friends hoot and holler as Brandon throws them a cocky grin. "Is that any way to talk to your football captain and future pro quarterback?" he says, his large, muscular body taking up the entire aisle as he strides down it to secure his friend in a playful headlock.

I know his words weren't directed to the class. They were directed at me because he knows exactly what happened Friday night, and if I know anything about Brandon, it's that he's pissed, his pride is wounded, and he's out for revenge.

Someone taps my shoulder, and I drag my eyes away from the rowdy scene. Warren gestures to Brandon with his head. "He's always so dramatic. Why does he think he's God's gift to man?"

From the front of the room, Mr. Lewis tries to settle the classroom, but Brandon and his friends are dogpiling and wrestling with each other, and the rest of the class has erupted into their own small conversations.

"Let's see," I say, counting on my fingers. "He's popular, the quarterback, tall, very large and muscular, brags about how many people he can tackle, gets really good grades without trying so he's smart, has a lot of interest from college scouts, I guess is conventionally good-looking if you can look past the whole he's a disgusting asshole who forces himself on girls thing, and ... did I mention the he's very large thing?"

I know my friends briefed Warren about what happened between me and Brandon at his house before we were suspended, when he forced himself on me and then started rumors about me the next day at school, but we've never discussed it. We don't have that kind of friendship. Warren and I keep it light and fun.

Warren frowns, considering my words. "You think he's more popular than me?"

I laugh at his joke even though he kind of means it. "No one's more popular than you." I'll still never know why Warren bothers talking to me rather than to his other friends. I'm a nobody, the new kid.

"Good, that's good." Warren nods, leaning back in his seat and sending me a crooked smile. "You know I have a pathological need to be liked by everyone."

"Hence why you throw a party, like, every weekend." I smile back at him, letting him momentarily distract me from the fact that holy shit, Brandon's here.

"No." Warren points at me. "That is my intense hatred of being alone."

Before I can unpack any truth behind our banter, Mr. Lewis finally gets the class under control, getting the football players to release each other. The mood changes instantly as Brandon locks eyes with me and slowly prowls to his seat—the empty one right in front of me—like he's savoring thinking of new ways to inflict pain and torture.

I have to tilt my neck back all the way to look at him when he stops right in front of me.

How much does he know? What does he remember? What did he tell everyone when he woke up? Does he know the story we made up about what happened to him?

"Siena," he greets me coolly.

"Brandon," I say, matching his tone.

He throws a leg over his chair to sit backward in it, crossing his arms over its back and leaning toward me casually. In this position, he's practically leaning over me, so close that I can see the brown flecks in his green eyes, the dark circles on his skin under them, the healed scar through his left eyebrow.

Mr. Lewis calls out to him, but Brandon doesn't care, doesn't even bother turning around in his seat to pretend to care.

"I had an interesting weekend," Brandon starts, eyes scanning my face as I school my features into neutral disinterest.

"Is that so?"

Over Brandon's wide shoulders, Mr. Lewis sighs and gives up trying to get us to pay attention, telling the class to read certain pages and answer the questions at the bottom before he sits at his desk and plays around on his laptop. People shift and scoot their seats over to their friends' desks, and in my periphery I briefly notice Warren joining his friend across the room.

"It is," Brandon continues, popping his gum. He's so close to me I can smell the cinnamon. "One minute I was at the motel party celebrating my homecoming game win, the next I wake up in the hospital with a bunch of staples in my head." He turns his head to the side to point at his scalp, where the hair has been shaved shorter and a neat row of medical staples indicates where a piece of the vase was protruding.

"Wow, what happened?" I ask, my voice flat and showing no spark of concern at all.

We're playing a game here, sizing each other up and seeing who will reveal what first. Maybe I'm a little intimidated by him, but I'm not scared of him. I still remember what happened the last time we were alone together, when he kissed me and basically told me I'd been asking for it, then told the entire school I was a whore before he, Jason, and technically me got in a physical fight in the school halls, which led to us being suspended. Plus he got Gia to meet him in a motel room last Friday night, saying he'd give her a fake ID, only to throw himself at her to the point she had to smash him over the head with a vase to get him to stop.

I can get past the rumors and lies he spread about me, and even get past him kissing me when I didn't want him to, but nobody fucks with my little sister. So, he might have been knocked unconscious and bled all over the place, and maybe I feel a little bad about him almost dying, but now that he's okay, I'm finally allowed to feel pissed.

"That's the interesting part," Brandon says, picking up my pencil and tapping the eraser side on my desk a few times. "I was told a bunch of kids from Comack Silver High were pissed they lost the game, so they crashed the party and jumped me."

That's the story Jason's brother, Jackson, made up on the fly. It's almost scary how well he did it too, how fast everyone started spreading it among themselves, even admitting to seeing that group of kids with their own eyes to officers asking for statements. It makes me wonder how many of the things we think happened actually happened, or are they just things we convince ourselves happened?

"I heard. A bunch of kids in black and one in camo. Crazy what kids will do these days over a stupid football game."

"So crazy," Brandon says, his tone still neutral, still testing. "Trashed the room and stole my phone too."

A phone with a hideous black phone case emblazoned with a large gold "B" on the back—a phone that's currently burning a hole in my desk drawer at home. The phone I can't open because he changed his password. I have to physically force myself not to bite my nails and give myself away.

"What a shame, and you had such a cool phone case too."

I'm being a brat now, I know. But he started it, and I'm not going to cower just because he's leaning over my desk and touching my personal belongings like he's entitled to them, like he's entitled to me.

His eyes narrow, and he taps my pencil against my desk again. "There's a problem, though."

"Oh? And what's that? The doctor said you're not allowed to force yourself on girls until your wound heals?"

His flared nostrils are a warning to stop poking the bear, but I don't care. I was so angry with myself while walking home from his house that day, because I wanted to say more. Well, I'm not going to hold back anymore.

"I don't do that."

"Don't you, though?"

His jaw clenches, like he's trying really hard not to scream at me. "Every girl I've ever been with has always wanted it, even if they didn't say it."

Anger rises in my chest, spreading through my limbs, making me clasp my hands together on my lap to stop them from reaching out, ripping the pencil from his hand, and stabbing him with it. "And what if they say, 'Hey, stop that, I don't like you like that'? Then what?"

He leans closer to me, and I force myself to hold my ground and not lean back to give him any more space. "Every girl wants me like that. Even you. You just don't know it yet, you frigid tease."

He called me that last time I turned him down, and it takes a conscious effort to use Anusha's breathing techniques to calm my anger, or that pencil really might end up in his eye. He knows he's gotten under my skin because his lip crooks up in a self-satisfied smirk, and he leans back, giving me some room again.

"As I was saying," Brandon continues self-righteously now that he thinks he has the upper hand, "there's a problem with the story they were telling me."

Shit. This is where he announces that he told everyone it was Gia who assaulted him with the vase and that officers are on their way to question her right now. My heart picks up. Gia's going to be freaking out, and I'm not there to protect her.

I swallow, still playing his stupid game of nonchalance. "And what's that?"

He points the pencil at me, sharp point first. "I swear I was meeting a certain petite, pixie-haired fifteen-year-old when I was attacked. Weird she wasn't the first person interviewed about what happened ..."

I snatch the pencil from his hand and slam it onto the desk. "Isn't it weirder that you're a senior meeting a fifteen-year-old in a motel room alone?" This time I don't hide the insinuation and venom in my tone.

Brandon places a hand on his chest over his heart in mock hurt. "You must really think the worst of me. If you recall, I was the one who ended up with glass in my head and nearly bled out." He points at his scalp. "A shit-ton of staples, remember?"

This coy dancing around each other is getting on my nerves. I want to come out and accuse him of cornering, threatening, and hurting my sister, but I can't do that without admitting she was there and ruining the story we created. Instead of telling him where to go, I shrug and say, "Maybe you deserved it."

"Now, now," he chides, leaning forward and picking up a chunk of my hair. "You might want to be a little nicer to me, sweetheart." He examines the fading pink color, then releases it. "I could destroy you, your boyfriend, and your little sister just like that." He snaps his fingers.

I know what he's talking about, he knows what he's talking about, but neither of us is going to come out and say it.

"And how would you do that?" I ask, trying not to hold my breath for the inevitable answer.

That cocky smirk is back. He's enjoying this. He loves the cat and mouse game. Maybe he thinks it's some kind of twisted foreplay and has forgotten that the last time he tried something with me, I bashed him over the head with a heavy math textbook to get away.

"When I woke up and they told me what had happened, I told them I couldn't quite remember, everything was ..." He waves his hands in front of his face and blindly gazes past me, dramatically illustrating his point. "Hazy." He drops his hands. "Amnesia isn't uncommon with head trauma, after all. They told me to stay home from school, but I just had to come and see if something would"—he eyes me pointedly—"jog my memory."

"But you already know what happened. You were jumped by party crashers."

"Was I? Maybe something will come back to me that'll prove otherwise. Maybe your boyfriend lied about walking in on the tail end of everything. Maybe he was protecting someone."

He raises an eyebrow and makes a face like we both know exactly who Jason was protecting, but still I admit to nothing. Brandon doesn't mind my silence, though, because he's in the middle of making whatever point he wanted to make when he sat backward in his seat.

"When they asked me and my parents if we wanted to press charges, I said no, I didn't want to press charges when I didn't remember what happened. However ... if I were to suddenly remember what happened, and the story was different from what we were led to believe ..."

He's always scheming, always conniving ways to make things swing in his favor. Even when all the evidence pointed to him, he managed to make all the adults in my life think I was harassing him and wasting police resources trying to frame him for Lily's disappearance over a personal vendetta I had against him. And he made them all think I was somehow involved in the school break-in. So I know all this back-and-forth is leading to something, and I'm not going to like it.

I'm not stupid, I know exactly what he's threatening. And while admittedly it's what actually happened, and to him we're the villains, Gia was just defending herself, and we're already in too deep to not face any consequences.

So, instead of breaking down and giving in, I do the only thing I can and double down. "And then it will suddenly be your word—the guy with the head injury and memory loss—versus all the witness testimonies?"

He smiles, and I realize I've said the thing he's been baiting me toward.

He leans over to his backpack on the floor and pulls out his shiny, expensive laptop, placing it on my desk and opening the lid. "Maybe, maybe not," he says, clicking around on his computer. "Maybe I happen to find texts, synced to my laptop from my phone before it was stolen. And maybe these texts are proof of me setting up a meeting with a certain girl, and maybe they also place her with me only a few minutes before your boyfriend called the ambulance, with that girl nowhere in sight."

He turns the computer around to show me his screen. It's a messaging app with a number at the top instead of a saved name. The number is Gia's—I'd know it anywhere—and I read the few lines visible on the app. The first text is from Brandon.

<I'm in room 114. Come now./>

<I'll be there in 5./>

<Are you alone?/>

<Yes. I'm here./>

The date and time indicate that they were sent just before Gia called me panicking that she had accidentally killed him. It places her there at the time Brandon was supposedly jumped, and if he shared this with anyone, I'm not sure how we could talk our way out of it. I have a fleeting thought of snatching the laptop and whipping it at the floor, then jumping on it over and over again until all that's left are smashed bits of aluminum alloy, but like he was following my train of thought, Brandon snaps the lid shut and tucks the laptop safely back in his bag.

Keeping my voice steady, I say, "All that proves is that you're a predator, intimidating a young girl into meeting you alone in a motel room."

He shrugs, crossing his arms and placing them against the back of the chair. Casual. Relaxed. In control. "I did nothing illegal. Your sister, on the other hand ..."

This is the first time he's come right out and blamed Gia without any insinuation, and my hackles rise. Sick of the little game, I ask, "What do you want, Brandon?"

His smile is neither genuine nor comforting. It's the smile of a man who craves power over people, who enjoys watching you squirm.

He keeps me in suspense, not answering immediately, and the bell rings, signaling the end of class. Chairs scrape across the floor as people around us stand and gather their things, but Brandon and I don't move from where we sit staring at each other.

The friend Brandon put in a headlock calls out to him, "Hey, asshole! We gave you enough time to hit on your girlfriend! It's time to go!"

The others hoot and holler and loudly gossip about how Brandon just banged her a couple weeks ago and how I must already be begging for a repeat, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying something that'll get me suspended again. Brandon breaks the stare-off first, standing up.

"I want my phone back," he states, all conniving playfulness gone. "I know you took it. Give it back to me, and I'll consider keeping the amnesia. You have one week." He doesn't wait for my reply, instead swinging his backpack over his shoulder and joining his friends, getting rowdy all over again. They very loudly head out from the classroom, patting one another on the back and generally acting like they're entitled to all the space and everyone else can move out of their way. I sit frozen in my seat, watching them. Just before he exits, Brandon looks back at me with an intimidating glare, then he disappears from sight.