Laughter and talking came from the tables near me. The murmur echoed off the walls. A tray slamming on the table made me look. It was one guy that was always around Blake.
The cheerleaders were in their uniforms. The guy hadn’t taken a seat yet, just stood with his hands resting on the table, speaking to Chloë. Blake wasn’t around him. He wasn’t in the cafeteria at all.
The ding of the cash register was the sound that moved the long cue forward as a ladle full of lasagna plopped down on a plate.
A whiff of floral scent reached my nose, and I looked in the direction it came from. Chloë almost reached me and when she saw me, she gasped as her eyes grew. Her shrilling laughter escaped her lips. “Is that shit on your face?” The top part of her lip curled up.
I touched my face, and my finger felt the paint.
“No, it’s—”
“The geek has shit on her face,” she yelled to the entire cafeteria, and laughter followed.
I stepped out of the row, plopped the tray back down on top of the other trays, and ran out of the cafeteria to the bathroom. I couldn’t help that Blake liked me, I had no control over that.
Chloë knew it was paint. She wasn’t that stupid.
I opened the bathroom to the girls’ toilets and saw the brown smear right across my cheek. It looked like a shit stripe.
I opened the faucet and let the water heat first as tears stung my eyes. The warm water splashed on my face as I rubbed the brown paint off.
I had told him to leave me alone. A tear rolled down my face and I wiped it away.
I tried everything, and I hated this school. I wished we could move.
The entire lunch I stayed in one cubicle as the tears spilled down my cheeks.
Why wasn’t he at school today?
The bell rang, and I opened the cubicle, washed my face and went back to class, trying to ignore the pointy fingers, sniggers, and shit face comments as I walked to where I had to be.
BLAKE
Jace was goingto come by later to drop off my homework and other things that I asked him to get for me today. Everyone said he was great at being stealthy. The subjects on this side were so boring. I missed transformations, aviant, and art of war. These idiots would probably get a heart attack if they knew what I could do with a weapon.
I found the perfect song, well, almost perfect, and played with the words to fit my situation. I listened to the cords over and over and even downloaded a music sheet to write the tune.
I wished I had my guitar, but the school’s instrument had to be enough.
Jace and Carlos knew what I had in mind and they paid the serenade boys a few bucks to back me up. That I could sing shocked them and they were dying to hear me play.
I might not get close to Elena, but she could get close to me, and it was up to Jace to bring her to me.
The furiousness that she didn’t know about our world, her world, still pressed on my gut and Dad had thought it was best to stay home and calm down. I couldn’t believe that she didn’t know about our world, no idea that dragons existed and what she had to do soon.
I felt sorry for her. I wished I could tell her as my father’s words of the ‘bond comes first’ kept playing through my mind.
She was going to be pissed off with me for not telling her about it sooner.
That shit could scar a bond, and I didn’t know how much time I still had left before the human part of me was going to resemble the dragon inside of me.
The knock finally came, and I jumped from my bed, rushed down the stairs and to the front door.
I opened the door by the second knock, and Jace, Carlos and Mike waited.
My eyes landed on the guitar that was in Jace’s hand. “Nicked it from the music room.”
“I told the group to meet you tomorrow morning at eight in the music room,” Carlos added. He had dark raven cropped hair, with dark tanned skin. His brown eyes and bushy, dark eyebrows rounded off his complexion. Mike’s red hair was almost the same color as the freckles that dusted his crooked nose, the result of way too many broken noses.
