I don’t need to hear the snickering to know who it is. It’s a group of four girls who’ve taken a special dislike to me.
My roommate, Elanor, is one of them.
She doesn’t say anything to me, only glares with her big dark eyes when I enter our shared room. So I spend most of my time either with my girls in the common room, at the library or out on the grounds up until the last second before curfew.
“So riddle me this,” one of the girls says with a snicker and a wiggle of her blonde eyebrows. “How much of a reject do you have to be that your own guardian sends you to the reform school she’s the principal at?”
The second girl, who’s also a blonde, joins in. “Yeah. What’d you do, Salem?”
Right.
Very funny.
A fuck-ton of snickering happens at this.
I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’m not averse to making scenes – not me – but I don’t want to fight right now. God forbidMiller sees us in the hallway – her office is only a few doors down – and gives me more things to do. My back has been killing me all week from cleaning her stupid apartment. I don’t think it can take more abuse.
I’m not going to lie though. Scrubbing her toilet and bathtub is at least keeping me busy enough that I don’t think about all the crazy, wretched things I’ve done. Namely on the night when we snuck out to the bar, which was four days ago.
And him.
Yeah, it is keeping me busy enough that I don’t think abouthimeither.
Well, who am I kidding? Of course I think about him.
I think about him all the time and maybe that’s why when I hear his voice coming up from behind me, I think it’s magic.
I think I conjured him up.
“Can I help you ladies with anything?” he says, and I freeze.
Ladies.
He saidladies.
All the girls have smiles on their faces because of that polite little word. Even I’m blushing and not slightly.
The first blonde girl who called me a reject begins, “No, we’re just –”
“Are you going to pick that up?” Arrow cuts her off.
I fist my hands at his tone. I don’t have to turn around and look at him to know that his jaw is ticking. Or that there must be a dark glint in his blue eyes.
I know all that. I can see it in my head. I can feel it all too.
He’s like a wave of heat at my spine.
The second girl goes, “Well, these aren’t our books, Coach.”
The third girl in the group, who’s a brunette like my roommate Elanor, says, “They’re hers. She dropped them.”
And I jump to say, still keeping my back toCoach Carlisle, “Yes. I’m just gonna –”
“No, you won’t.”
His curtly worded response directed at me makes all of us jump. The girls have their eyes wide and stuck on him and I’m fisting my skirt now, needing something to worry and crush between my fingers as his heat rolls down my spine in the form of sweat.
“You,” he says and the girl who called me a reject stiffens. “You’re the one who tripped her up, correct?”
