“See, that’s the problem,” he says. “School’s not my thing, especially there. I hated it—sitting and listening to useless shit all day. I didn’t want to go anymore.
“But my dad . . . he wouldn’t let me drop out. He kept giving the school money to let me stay, even though I hardly showed up. The dean couldn’t stand me. So then I had all these pricks telling me how grateful I should be that I was still allowed to attend. Like I owed them something when my dad was the one paying for their library.”
Cameron rakes his fingers through his hair as I wonder what the going rate for a library is. He shakes his head.
“When I started hanging out with the ‘scholarship kids,’ as they liked to call them, the administration dragged me into a meeting. Talking about bad influences. Telling me that I was looking for trouble.”
“Were you?” I like that he doesn’t care. I like that he’s not sorry.
He nods. “Maybe a little. But they had no right to tell me who to hang out with. They even rearranged my schedule. It was total bullshit. Then the dean, or as I called him to his face, Captain Douchebag, said if he saw me with Marcus and them again, he’d suspend me.”
“Could he do that?”
“He did.”
That’s unfair. Why do they have the right to tell Cameron who he can be friends with? Then I realize that I’d be one of the people he was supposed to stay away from.
“So you got suspended?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“Bastards,” I say. His eyes are intense, and we’re both breathing quickly.
“Bastards,” he repeats softly as if he thinks it’s cool that I said it.
If I lean toward him, will he kiss me? He’s looking at me like he might. But maybe it would just turn into one of those really awkward, slow-motion moments of horror. A hug-kiss. A misunderstanding of signals. Oh, hell. I’m overanalyzing again.
“Then what happened?” I ask, trying to get him talking again. “What made you decide to trash the school?”
“I wanted out. I tried to tell my dad, have him yank his money from the place. But he wouldn’t. He was convinced it was a good school. But screw that. I got mybad influencesand we broke in.”
“Weak-willed,” I say.
“I guess.”
“Hundred thousand?”
“Yep. Ransacked the administrative offices, broke shit, and destroyed their files.” He looks in his lap. “Pissed in Captain Douchebag’s coffeepot.”
“Gross.”
His eyes flick to mine. “You probably didn’t need to know that part.” I nod in agreement. “We were just angry,” he adds.
“I think I can relate to angry.”
He smiles. “I think you can, too.”
“You did sort of overreact, though,” I mention.
“This coming from the girl who used a pencil to stab someone.”
“I had a good reason!”
“I did too.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It seemed like a great idea at the time. If I could go back, maybe I’d have handled it differently. Maybe I wouldn’t have busted up the place. But I definitely would have still pissed in the coffeepot.”
