After sustaining a concussion from the rugby ball, Shannon spends the night in the hospital and takes a week off from school. She expects to return to school with everyone mocking her. However, over the next month, the incident is never brought up again. She can’t comprehend how something like that could go unmentioned, but she has a feeling that Johnny is responsible.

She begins to look forward to going to school, a drastic change from her previous feelings. She sees it as a “safe place”—a badly needed refuge from her father’s abuse. She feels that she has friends for the first time in her life.

Shannon gathers all the information she can about Johnny, learning that her classmates perceive him as popular, arrogant, and aggressive. However, she struggles to reconcile the man that they say he is with the one who was so gentle with her and sat with her outside the office. She gives the money he left in her locker to her mother but keeps the envelope under her pillow.

After Shannon returned to school, Johnny was called to the office and told by several administrators that he needed to stay away from her. Shannon’s mother brought him his jersey and “mumbled” an apology, and Johnny angrily stalked away intending to ignore Shannon.