Page 13 of Braving the Valley

AVERY

Inibble on a green bean that tastes like butter and metal had a gross, overly cooked baby. The stalker sits next to me, and he's too close, sucking up my air, his knee brushing against mine every so often as he watches what I do.

What the hell is wrong with him? He's staring at me with those unholy black eyes of his, his head cocked, his expression brutally cold. He looks like he could be modeling or planning my murder, and it's even odds on both.

How does he do that, turn off his blinking?

Don't his eyes sting?

Lord help me, but I think I misjudged him. He's not a demon with a soulless stare. He's a flesh-covered robot, and somebody forgot to program his manners.

I can't take it anymore, him staring at me, assessing me. I'm not sure I'm up to passing whatever test this is. I look away from him and down at the table. I go through everything remaining on the white plastic tray in front of me.

One piece of plain bread, eighty calories.

A disturbing version of Salisbury steak, which appears to have previously been canned, three hundred calories, with a hefty helping of a gelatinous gravy, that adds at least another hundred calories.

A red Jell-O-looking substance in a plastic cup, seventy calories.

The remaining overly cooked green beans, forty calories, but there's a yellow, buttery liquid leaking from them, so I better add another fifty for good measure.

An applesauce-looking substance that probably—most definitely—does not contain any actual apples, seventy calories.

I could do this in my sleep.

When you spend most of your childhood and all of your awkward tween years consumed by thoughts about how fat you are, you either slit your wrists or develop a world-class eating disorder. I'm too chicken for the first option, so anorexia it was.

Yay me.

Calorie counting is easy. It gets hard when you have to figure out how many more miles you can run and still walk the next morning. If I didn't feel like such a steaming pile of crap right now, I'd probably take the silicone knife thing that came with the stupid tray and attempt to stab the King of All Creeps beside me, but I'm still a level eight out of ten on the wooziness scale. If I even managed to do it without falling out of my chair, I don't think I'd manage a decent slash.

It doesn't help that he isstill, many minutes later, all up in my space, sitting next to me, crowding me, and breathing my air. He has one hand on my thigh, just above my knee, hot and heavy over the itchy tights that come with the girls' uniform. His grip isn't tight enough to hurt, but it stays there, unmoving without so much as a single finger twitching. I know what it is. It lets me know he's there, always paying attention and putting me back in line.

He watches me,studyingme like I'm something to figure out, and I really wish the robot would learn a new trick and fucking blink.

Across the table, a blond Norse god with the face of a homecoming king cuts his icy blue eyes from his friend, looks at me, and says, "Why'd you have to bring a stray into our space, Gabe?"

The creep—Gabe, I guess—shrugs, and finally looks away from me to the Norse god.

"Saint gets his pet," my stalker murmurs, "and I get my Firefly. It's only fair."

I wish he would stop calling me that. I don't want to be his Firefly. I don't want to beanythingto him and especially nothing to do with fire. The blond one scrunches his nose and curls his upper lip in disgust.

"Ugh, fine, but I can smell the death on her." He leans against the table, his elbows hitting either side of his tray as he stares at me. I swear that if there was a person who looked as though God accidentally forgot to give them a soul, it would be this guy. Well, he and the guy next to me and probably also the one farther down the table who looks about two seconds away from going completely unhinged and committing mass murder as he strokes the hair of the girl beside him. I can only deal with one psychopath at a time, though, and I meet the blond one's stare and don't blink either.

There's absolutely nothing in his blue eyes, no spark, no compassion, no anything, except arctic, deadly cold. He looks like he could murder me and not even remotely care. It makes me shiver.

He says his words to the weirdo beside me, but he continues to stare at me.

"I know you can smell it too," he says finally. "The death."

I'm losing patience with the fuckwad telling me I smell like a damn crypt, and I really want to lob my tray at his face. The only thing stopping me is the knowledge that if I do, there's an almost certain chance that the weirdo beside me will make me lick the contents of the tray off of the blond guy and the floor. I'm not a germaphobe by any means, but if I have to lick wannabe Thor or clean up the literal floor with my tongue, I might actually prefer being set on fire.

The emo-looking one at the end of the table hooks an index finger around the ring of a girl's collar and reels her in, kissing her fast and hard. I don't even think she was done chewing, and it's kind of gross.

Ew, nasty.

How many calories are in spit anyway?

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