On Monday morning,I arrive at school to find Trent and a coterie of sycophants scrubbing my locker door. When they pull back, I see why. The word WHORE, accompanied by a large pink cock and balls, decorates the otherwise dingy green metal. The team have already dislodged most of the paint, but enough remains to read the message.
“Just leave it,” I tell him, giving him a peck on the cheek in greeting since he was kind enough to try. “Whoever is doing it will just try again.”
“That’s what we’re hoping for,” he says in a slippery voice that turns his narrowed eyes into a threat. “Once we catch someone in the act, we can stop it once and for all.”
It’s obvious that he doesn’t need my permission to do just that, and I’m not sure whether he would obey if I asked him to leave it alone again. So, I load in the textbooks I don’t need for my first two classes and let him drape an arm around me as he walks me to the senior common room. Inside, he waits to see that no one approaches to taunt or tease before he leaves to go back to supervising the removal work.
The couch empties of other students as I sit there, opening my book to revise ahead of my lesson. Even with Zach’s tutelage, I still wouldn’t know a metaphor from a simile if it attacked me in a dark street with a knife, but I keep trying.
Maybe there’s a magic formula I’ll stumble upon that will make it fit into the correct slot in my brain. Leaving that aside, sheer repetition should stand me in better stead for the forthcoming assignment, even if I understand almost nothing about what I’m doing.
“Aren’t you letting Zach pay someone to do that for you, yet?” Caylon asks, slithering onto the other side of the sofa and somehow making the resulting image look sexy, even with stuffing poking through a seam near his elbow.
“Some of us prefer to learn.”
“Yeah, but are you?” He tips up the textbook to read the title. “Pretty sure that’s the same thing you’ve been struggling with since you first arrived.”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Jesus, is it that long?” He shakes his head and lets his head tip to the side, polishing off his sleepy-eyed and rumpled look to perfection. “Feels like you’ve been here forever.”
A nervous twang runs through my belly. Not so much at his words as to what they imply—I’ve overstayed my welcome. Not that there was much of a welcome at all.
“What’s Trent doing?”
I sit up a little straighter, pulling my legs onto the couch so I can hug them to me. With the thick textbook in front of that, it offers a reasonable shield. “Someone messed up my locker.”
“Again.” His hooded eyes give nothing away. “And here I thought you were becoming more popular.”
“Do you want something, Caylon?”
He shrugs. “I want two things. Since the others have taken their turn, I thought it’s about time I stepped up to the plate.”
My eyes widen despite my best efforts to hold a poker face. “And what do you want?”
“A secret.” He leans forward, catching my knees and holding them while he stares intently into my eyes. “You’re working tonight?”
I incline my head, my voice disappearing under his hypnotic glare.
“There’ll be a client in attendance. I need his wallet. Pass it to Trent before nine and I’ll have it back within fifteen minutes.”
My throat clenches so tightly it feels like someone’s choking me. “I can’t steal from the customers. There’re cameras.”
“If you know where they are, you know how to avoid them.”
“I-I can’t. I’m not…” I lick my lips, but there isn’t enough saliva in my mouth to wet them. Sandpaper on stone. “That’s not something I’m good at. I’ll get caught.”
“Figure it out.” He pats my knees and stands, looming over me like a monster that’s somehow found its way out from under the bed.
“Can’t you just ask Stefan?”
“You want me to ask my boss to shit where he eats? Not likely.”
A cold wave washes over me, sending shivers in its wake. “He doesn’t know?”
“Do it properly and no one will.” Caylon stalks from the room before I can protest again.
My English assignment is forgotten. Instead of poring over words and deciphering deeper meaning, my poor brain runs through a long list of everything that can go wrong tonight. Getting caught in a thousand different ways, triggering a thousand different reactions. All of them penal.
