Oh, It's On

Chapter 9

I stare blankly at Jace. “I did what?”

He glares at me then releases himself from the propped up position, lying flat on the ground. “You – broke – my – nose.”

“So I didn’t score?”

I hear Alicia laugh from behind me. “Nope, it didn’t go anywhere even close to the net.”

The door to the gym teacher’s lounge opens and out tumbles a frazzled and excited looking Ms. Stone. She takes one look at Jace and one look at the rest of us and goes into supersonic ultra mega freak-out mode.

“What the hell happened in here?!”

Mr. Rockwood follows her out and I catch him almost slip his arms around her waist before he stops himself.

What the hell happened in there? I think to myself.

I guess I did screw it up for them. It hasn’t even been a full 5 minutes since they went in the lounge and they had to come back out.

Rachel giggles. “Stella broke Jace’s nose, miss.”

Ms. Stone turns to gape at me. “You did what?”

“It wasn’t intentional, I swear!” I defend myself, glaring at Rachel.

“Whether it was intentional or not, you might have done permanent damage to Mr. Matthews’ face.”

Jace sits straight up at the sound of this and stares at Ms. Stone in horror. “Permanent…damage…my…face…?”

“Stella, please take him to the nurse’s office,” Ms. Stone orders. “The rest of you, back to the game.”

Her and Mr. Rockwood slip back into the teacher’s lounge within a second and everyone stares at me and Jace.

“Well,” I say to them. “You heard her.”

As the basketball is resumed, I walk over and hover over Jace. “Alright, get up you cry baby.”

Jace stretches out a hand for me to help him up, which I don’t take. “Cry baby? You broke my nose!”

“When I was 7, I broke my arm and didn’t leak a single tear. Get over it.”

I head for the gym doors, not caring if he was following me or not. It’s his broken nose. Why should I care if he just lays on the gym floor like a whiny kid and gets trampled? I shouldn’t. So, I don’t.

Jace catches up with me in a few seconds. “Did you really not cry?”

“Nope.”

It’s a lie. I bawled like a baby the entire way to the hospital. Then I bawled like a baby my entire stay at the hospital. Then I bawled like a baby on the way back from the hospital. I think I cried more those few days then I have ever done in my entire life. But, in my defense, getting your arm broken hurts like a b-i-t-c-h. I’m not going to go into how I got it broken. It’s quite an embarrassing story.

Then walk to the nurse’s office is quiet. Jace trails behind me, occasionally moaning and calling for me to help him. I just walk ahead, occasionally stopping to roll my eyes and not help him.

When we get to the nurse’s office, we sit in the waiting area by the wall. The room is very unlike a nurse’s office. The walls are painted a nice lilac, and the counter in the middle of the room is made of a light brown wood. In the waiting area, the big sofas that we’re sitting on are made out of white faux leather (because there’s a sign on the wall that says so) and there’s a neat scatter of GLAMOUR and US WEEKLY magazines on the coffee table in front of us.