CHAPTER 4
ELSIE
Next to come is a splash of hydrogen peroxide from a little bottle at Brett’s side.
I watch him clean off the scraped skin, his eyes pausing from time to time to look up at me.
"Am I hurting you?" he asks.
"Not much."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"You're sure you're not just saying that?"
"Okay, now I'm thinking that you want a different answer to the one that I just gave you."
He smiles at me, reaching for a bag of cotton balls. "You're tough. I'll give you that. These months away from Riverside High must have made you into a hard-hearted, city girl. Or maybe you already were, and I just didn't notice before..."
"Me? A hard-hearted city girl?"
"Yes, you," he says, his eyes shifting back to the scraped skin as he applies a soaked cotton ball gingerly. "You rolled you
