I pull the pack of smokes out of my back pocket as I step outside and slip behind the athletic wing. Smoking isn’t permitted on campus, and it’s actually one of the rules they enforce.
Like I care.
I slip a cigarette between my lips and light it with a flick of my Zippo.
“Can I bum one of those?”
I whirl, then do a double take.
Fuck me.
Okay, they’re not twins, but she looks freakishly like the cheerleader princess I just ignored inside. Sort of. I frown. Eh, maybe it’s just their faces.
The girl looking at me—expectantly, like she’s already so sure I’ll give her a cigarette that she’s annoyed she doesn’t have it yet—is another freshman. She’s petite, with a build that screams athlete.
“I dance,” she says flatly. “Ballet.”
I frown. “What?”
“You were checking out my legs.”
“I…wasn’t.”
She smirks. “Yeah, you were.”
I totally was.
“I dance ballet.”
“So you said,” I say dryly.
She sighs. “So…where we at with that smoke?”
I snort in spite of myself, taking a slow drag as my gaze drifts over her.
She’s cute.
Scratch that. She’s fucking stunning. But she downplays it in this arty-punk way. The blonde hair, with a few light blue and purple streaks. The anarchy symbol painted in…is that White-Out?…on the side of her Mary Janes.
“Here.”
I take the cigarette out of my mouth and hand it to her.
Fuckin’ smooth, self.
She takes it with a small nod. “Thanks.”
I nod back, lighting a new one for myself.
“A little young to be smoking, aren’t you?”
“Aren’tyou?” She winces overdramatically. “Oh, sorry, unless you’re twenty-one and repeating the eleventh grade for like the fifth time?”
I smirk, nodding my chin at her hair. “They’re going to nail you to the wall for that hair, you know.”
“Really?”
“Really. Welcome to Thornfield, where fun goes to die a painful death, dressed head-to-toe in Brooks Brothers.”
