“Well, good.” She brightens, reverting to what I guess is her natural state. “Just give me a minute.”
She pops her head out of the bathroom door as the toilet behind me flushes and a girl in uniform dashes out, washes quickly at the sink and scurries around me like I’m a plague rat.
“All clear,” Dee reports back as the girl flies out the door. “Ready for class?”
Nope, but I nod and push away from the sink anyway.
* * *
I spendthe rest of the school day expecting to see Zach around every corner. My heart thrums so rapidly in my chest I’m surprised my fellow pupils don’t stop to enquire at the sound.
But Dee was right. He’s wagging. The common room remains remarkably Zach-free as I curl into a corner chair and pretend I don’t exist. All my skulking behind other pupils in the corridors goes to waste.
My free period is spent trying to catch up on the lessons I didn’t pay any attention to during the day instead of studying to get ahead. Despite Margot Warren’s statement that my results didn’t matter as much as my adherence to timetables and attendance, I would like to move onto university with some hope of keeping up with my preferred courses.
Most of my school days have been spent in a permanent state of catch-up. In the nine months I have left, I’d like to position myself in the main pack grades-wise, even if there’s no hope of me reaching the front.
“Talcum powder,” Dee calls out as I slope from the room, heading for my last lesson of the day. She stands beside Em, and I don’t really want to return the greeting, but she was nice to me when she didn’t have to be. It’ll make me feel like a heel to ignore her.
“Hey,” I say, nodding as I reach the pair. “Just heading to calculus.”
“Dee tells me you know my boyfriend.”
Always the best way to get to know someone. Having a shared history with their nearest and dearest that I can’t possibly disclose. “Not really. We only met once.”
Her gaze rakes over me about as gently as her inch long nails would. There’s something hard in her face and it’s not just the expression of disdain as she takes in my shabby clothing, worn shoes, and ten-dollar haircut. If I were to pick the girl I’d least like to get on the bad side of, Em would come top of the list.
Just another visit from the karma fairy and boy do I wish that bitch would lose my address.
The bell rings, triggering a Pavlov stampede along the corridors. “Catch you later,” I say, using the excuse to hustle far out of reach. I slip into the classroom just before the second bell goes, having a choice between a seat in the front row or—coincidence?—another seat in the front row.
Mr Simmons taps my desk twice. “You’re new.” His bushy eyebrows are so lush I’m amazed he can see enough through them to notice me at all.
I nod, caging the sarcastic response that desperately wants to break free. “Just moved into the district this week.”
He moves back to his desk, pulling a large manila envelope from a pile of the same, with my name written on it. “Here. This is everything we went through in the first term. Let me know if there’s something you don’t understand.”
The gesture is nice, and something I’d welcome in my other classes, but I’m not sure how much use it’ll be since the pages contain a writing style I’d label as professional doctor script. I nod my thanks and tuck them under my exercise book, shrinking low in my seat as the class begins.
I stare out the window as the lesson progresses. Although I’ve absolutely forbidden it, my mind drifts to thoughts of Zach. Now the shock of seeing him has diminished, I move on to other considerations.
He didn’t notice me. At least, not that I saw. Perhaps Dee coming after me tipped him off somehow, but there was enough of a pause that I was out of sight before that happened. Given the way his eyes had been glued to the hem of Em’s skirt, I doubt he noticed either of us.
For some reason, that troubles me just as much as the opposite.
I feel his fingers as he drags down the back of my t-shirt, exposing the knobs of my spine. The touch was so gentle, so at odds with the scene playing out in front of him. My cheeks heat at the memory.
No. Nope. Definitely not.
Throughout the months I’d targeted, located, and tracked Robbie and his mates, I’d learned enough to know they were bad news with a capital B. Not the usual type of bad boys who scraped along in the education system until the world greeted them with a backhand of reality. There were things I now knew about them that catapulted them into the ranks of the truly evil.
Boys without morals who’d graduate to become men without limits. If they’d been poor, that would have restricted them to the point of troublesome, but add in their wealth, and the prospect became truly terrifying.
Just look at what happened on the night I don’t want to think about. Zach had shot Robbie with less compunction than I’d hang up the phone on a robocall. He hadn’t even glanced in the boy’s direction as his shoes beat out a death tattoo on the cold concrete.
And that was hisfriend.
What would he be capable of if a stranger crossed him? Unthinkable cruelty. Yet my poor brain nags and nags until I set it free to think about him.
