She’s a cheerleader and we don’t talk much but it’s not because she’s shy. She has too many friends. I don’t understand it, why she’d want them.
We don’t talk because I’m nothing like her and the bubbles floating around her perfect world.
I don’t know why the fuck she’s staring at me right now.
She glances at Milton in my hand. “Did you read it? For Mrs. Thurston’s class?” Her voice is different than it usually is. Low, kind of raspy, and when I search her eyes, they seem a little red. Like she’s been crying. Maybe she broke a nail.
“No.”
She nods once and crosses her arms over her chest. “Unsurprised.”
Fuck off.I don’t say it though. I don’t want to go to class, and I don’t want to be left alone. Not that I would ever confess it out loud, and certainly not to Sloane fucking Stevens.
Aside from being a perfect princess, there’s not much I know about her. A few random facts here and there. She has a lot of siblings; three, maybe, which to me, an only child, is three too many. One is a genius, I’ve been told. Caspian Stevens. He’s in college but I’ve heard a lot of girls giggle about him and how hot he is.
If he looks anything like Sloane, I’m sure he’s exquisite.
“All is not lost. There’s still revenge,” Sloane says under her breath, but she’s staring up at me.
I frown, drawn in despite myself.
“Paraphrasing,” she says, then she sniffs, and I know she’s definitely been crying. What could she possibly fucking have to cry about? I have this wild urge to grab her by her slender arms and shake her, to pour into her brain what I saw this weekend. Make her understand the gravity of tears.
But for once, I am strangely calm.
“For when Mrs. Thurston asks why Satan was still so chill about being cast out of heaven. He had reasons to go on,” she explains.
We’re not in the same class, but there’s only one English teacher for our grade.
She shrugs, her lips pursed. “You’re welcome.” Then she flicks her eyes up and down me before they settle on the gold chain around my throat. “I like your necklace,” she says, nodding toward it. “Is it real gold?”
“Are you made of real bones?”
She rolls her eyes. “You are completely unsurprising, Storm Leary.” Then she marches past me and shoulder checks me as she does.
And despite myself, a smile curves my lips as I turn to stare at her hips sway while she heads to the bathroom.
Unknown
You might be in trouble, Wolf.
I stareat my screen as I walk through the woods in my backyard. Well, not technically my yard anymore, considering how far I’ve wandered. I’m sure I’m past that oh-so-important invisible property line. But Cortland is at home with Remi and the baby, and while Lyle is sleeping and my best friend and his fiancée aren’t loud or annoying and we have an entire house to ourselves, sometimes I need to get out. Otherwise I start acting twitchy and everyone thinks I’m on coke again and maybe a few months ago I would have been but…
Not now.
And when I get texts like these, it doesn’t fucking help things.
My first instinct is to call my dad.
Not for help.
For answers.
But he could help, too. After all, he fucking owes me.
A memory flashes in my mind and I stop walking.
It’s the smell. It never leaves my brain cells.
