This time, the two girls approached her at the same time, and flanked her. One on the left and the other on the right. They held her arms and took her upstairs.

“Come on. She arranged a surprise for you up there!"

“Let go of me! Do you want me to hurt you?" And that was when Erica knew that Julianna had fooled her.

Having gone out to buy milk tea, Hyatt noticed with some consternation that the rain seemed to be growing heavier by the minute. He decided, then, to go back and ask Erica to make an appointment with Julianna for some other day.

He made it back to campus without incident, except that the rain soaked him, since he had no umbrella. The building was quiet and for the most part seemed deserted-but when Hyatt was just around a corner from where he'd left Erica, he heard her speaking to someone. Her voice was angry, but there was a trace of panic in it as well.

"Tell Julianna," she was saying, “that if anything happens to me today, she's dead meat!”

“Shut up!" someone retorted.

“Lenora, if she doesn't want to go upstairs, just have the others come down. No one's around, so the ground floor's as good as anywhere else.”

There was a girl's voice-Lenora, presumably-speaking into a phone.

"You guys can come down now. This bitch won't go upstairs!"

Rain beat against the windows. Dripping and shivering, Hyatt carefully stuck his head around the corner. Not far down the hall, he saw a small group of young men and women. Two of the latter had grabbed Erica by her arms. Squinting, Hyatt realized with a start that he recognized the assailants-he had seen them while out on his errand!

As he stared, five more people, about the same age, emerged from a stairwell nearby.

Erica now had a dozen people surrounding her.

Dread overwhelmed Hyatt's mind; now his shivering had nothing to do with being wet. His limbs felt weak, and his knees wobbled.

‘What are they going to do to Erica? What should I do? What should I do?' Panic fogged his brain, and he struggled to get ahold of himself.

Suddenly the group was moving-Erica's captors were shoving and dragging her toward the door to a bathroom, which was between them and Hyatt. As they came closer, he heard them more clearly.

“I heard that you could be quite violent to your schoolmates," taunted one of the men-a boy, really.

"Come on, show us what you can do!"

"She doesn't look tough to me," said someone else.

“Look at that delicate skin-she must be a really rich, dainty lady. Doesn't Look like a bully at all."

Erica stubbornly kept her head high.

"Did Julianna tell you to come here?" she demanded.

They didn't deny it. In fact, one of them confirmed it-a young man with short, rather stupid-looking spiky hair.

"Yeah, but we don't really have anything else to do anyway. We may as well just have some fun with you!"

Water flowed from Hyatt's thick hair and down his cheeks. Every inch of his skin felt cold and clammy.