Excerpt from A Step Toward Falling by Cammie McGovern, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Nothing else made sense. The last time I saw her, she was playing Little Red Riding Hood.

Then I realized the boy was Mitchell Breski, someone who'd been arrested once at our school and taken away in a police car. We never knew for what, but there were plenty of rumors, mostly about drugs. Knowing that much made the whole scene more frightening and, somehow, less comprehensible. Wait, I kept thinking. Wait a minute.

I should have screamed that, I know now.

I should have screamed anything to make it clear this didn't seem right. I knew Belinda, but my brain couldn't process what it was seeing: her pressed against the fence like that, powerless behind him. They couldn't have been a couple, couldn't have even been friends. I should have said her name. I should have called out, "Belinda, is that you?" even if I hadn't said hello to her once in the last three years. I didn't do that, though. I was struck mute in that instant and I remember very little after that. I know that at some point, a football player ran out from the locker room, which must have jolted me momentarily out of my panic. Maybe I thought, It's okay to leave because he's here now and will take care of this. I honestly don't remember.

I know I staggered out from under the bleachers to a roar of noise and light from the crowd. I know I found a teacher, Mrs. Avery, wearing a scarf and pompom earrings, screaming "DEFENSE!" between cupped hands, and I touched her elbow. "There's something happening under the bleachers!" I said. The roar behind us got bigger.

"WHAT?" she yelled.

"There's something happening. To a girl. Under the bleachers." My heartbeat was louder than my voice at that point.

All at once, everyone in the stands was up on their feet screaming. Later I learned, we'd made an interception and carried the ball for a forty-five-yard run. We'd taken a losing game and turned it around. Everyone was ecstatic— screaming and hugging and pounding their feet.

Then I saw the football player from under the bleachers jog onto the field and felt a great flood of relief. He took care of it, I thought. He stopped whatever was about to happen.

I sat for a few minutes so my heart could slow down. When it did, I walked back to the far end of the bleachers where I'd just come from and saw the f lashing lights of a police car pulsing red in the parking lot near the snack stand. I was surprised at first and then relieved by what it meant: Yes, the football player called the police.

I didn't sleep much that night, which meant my nerves were raw when I read the newspaper the next morning and saw a small article on the fourth page under the headline incident brings police to high school football game. Neither student was named, nor were many details given, but seeing the headline made me break down on the spot and confess to my parents what had happened. "I saw this. I walked in on it and—I don't know what happened—I froze. I didn't do anything."

My parents were quick to reassure me. "You were frightened for your safety, sweetheart. You were following your instincts. No one can blame you for that."

"Yes, they can," I told my mother. The more I thought about it, the worse my actions seemed. "I didn't help her. I ran away and let the other guy take care of it. It was terrible."

My mother tried to argue with me, but what could she say? I hadn't done anything. Finally she squeezed my hand and said, "Well, thank heavens that other boy was there. It sounds like the girl is going to be fine and it's time for everyone to put this behind us. It's okay, Em. Next time will be different."

It was impossible to know if Belinda was okay. I didn't see her in school, but then our paths hardly ever crossed, so maybe that didn't mean much. That whole week afterward, I looked for her at school, wandering past the Life Skills classroom where I assumed she spent most of her day. I never saw her, but I saw some of her classmates, joking around with one another, wearing aprons one morning. When one of them looked up and saw me, I asked, "Is Belinda here?"

Excerpted from the book A Step Towards Falling by Cammie McGovern. Copyright © 2015 by Cammie McGovern. Reprinted with permission of HarperCollins.