Rising Fears by Michaelbrent Collings Read Free Book Online Page B

woman who now looked down her nose at her.
    Lenore leaned in close and whispered her secret to the cheerleader: "You leave this boy alone right now, or I'll tell everyone why you never cheer at the swim meets."
    The sentence had the desired effect: Sarah's mouth opened, then shut again. The girl's perfectly tanned face turned a shade lighter as the blood drained from it. Then she mumbled, "I'm not very hungry now," and left the line, pulling her cronies from the cheerleading team along with her.
    Lenore turned to tell Albert he could go to the front of the line. It would be paltry repayment for the constant humiliation he had to stand at the hands of people like Susan, but it was what Lenore had power to do.
    Albert, however, was gone. She cast her eyes around, looking to find him, and saw one of the nearby doors - the opposite side of the cafeteria from the one that Sarah had gone through, thank goodness - swinging shut as Albert went through it and disappeared.
    Lenore hurried out after him, managing to catch up to him in the school's "quad" - the common area that was directly behind the cafeteria and in which the students tended to congregate after eating their lunches.
    "Hey," she called. Albert didn't so much as pause. If anything, he sped up, as though afraid that Lenore would be the one to bring the next round of bullying into his life. She had to physically grab his arm to arrest his movement.
    "You okay?" she asked.
    Albert tried to look sullen and tough, but all he could manage was a visage of half-veiled fear. "They're all out to get me," he said.
    "Sarah's just a teenage girl," Lenore said, even though the "just" was a stretch. Sarah was the most stereotypically nasty teenage girl she had ever had the misfortune to encounter. "Teenage girls can be difficult sometimes," she continued.
    "It's not just them," responded Albert. "It's everyone." He blinked back tears, clearly trying vainly to hold onto whatever perceived dignity he might be retaining.
    "Come on," said Lenore. "I'm sure it's not everyone ."
    "It is," insisted the student. "It's everyone."
    Lenore touched Albert's arm. She smiled, trying to make a connection with this sad, lonely boy. "Not everyone," she said. "Not me."
    Albert looked at her, and Lenore was heartened to see what looked like a smile trying to break through his expression of dismay.
    "Why won't she cheer for the swim meets?" he asked suddenly.
    For a moment, Lenore's gentle smile faltered. She didn't know if she should tell what she knew. She had found out the information when in the school office one day: one of the school's two counselors had left a file open on one of the tables, and Lenore had happened to see a notation inside it, so she didn't know if it would be any kind of a breach of confidentiality to talk about what she had seen.
    But then she decided: she had made no promise to keep the contents of the file secret. It had been an accident that she had found out. Besides, if revealing the information would keep Albert safe from future attacks, then it would be worth it.
    "She's afraid of water," said Lenore. "Like, really afraid. She won't even get near a pool."
    The smile that Lenore had seen fighting to emerge from Albert's expression was just millimeters away from seeing daylight now as he practically inhaled this wonderful bit of information as to his nemesis' Achilles heel.
    But then, in the instant before the smile could emerge fully formed, like a butterfly from its chrysalis, Lenore's own expression changed from reassurance to horror, and she screamed as Albert's eyes started to bleed .
    Only no, it wasn't blood. Instead it was some kind of viscous black fluid that was dripping now from his eyes, his nose, and had begun spurting from the boy's ears.
    Lenore screamed again, backpedaling wildly, tripping over several nearby students and bringing all of them down in a heap.
    Silence reigned in the quad as she regained her feet.
    She slowly looked back at Albert, prepared to