Chay has on a full face of sparkly makeup, she’s prancing around in a brand new pair of knee-high white leather boots, and she streaked her hair bubblegum pink over the summer. She looks like Jem from the Holograms.
“GOOD morning!” she chirps, dropping a tray loaded with an obscene amount of bacon and sausage down onto the table.
“Chay. . .” Anna groans. “Inside voice before nine in the morning, please.”
“Is that what you’re eating?” I ask Chay, eyeing her pile of protein.
“I’m on keto.”
“You’re gonna get scurvy,” Anna tells her, sleepily stirring several teaspoons of sugar into her coffee.
“And you’re going to get diabetes,” Chay replies sweetly.
I see Cat hovering uncertainly over by the chafing dishes. I wave to her so she can see where we’re sitting. She hastily fills a plate with fresh fruit and scrambled eggs and comes to join us.
“This is Anna Wilk and Chay Wagner,” I tell Cat, as she sits down beside me.
“Hello,” Cat says shyly.
“You’re so little!” Chay says cheerfully. “I thought you’d be tall like Zoe.”
“No,” Cat says, blushing. “I’m not.”
I can tell she’s embarrassed, because honestly, she looks like a little kid compared to everybody else at Kingmakers. It doesn’t help that Cat always leans toward oversized clothes that drown her petite frame. She looks like she’s wearing hand-me-downs even in her brand new uniform.
“Doesn’t matter!” Chay adds quickly. “I’m pint-sized myself. I still hold my own. Puts you right on level to give somebody a good punch in the balls if you have to.”
“Great,” Cat says weakly. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“You’ll settle in here soon,” Anna says kindly. “Everybody is intimidated their first week.”
“Really?” Cat says, eyeing Anna with disbelief.
Anna does not look like she has ever experienced intimidation. Even just rolled out of bed, she has that indefinable air of no-fucks-to-give. Maybe it’s her inch-thick eyeliner, or her icy stare, or her low voice that always sounds mildly threatening, even when she’s trying to be nice.
“Really.” Anna nods. “I wanted to come here all my life, and I was still overwhelmed at first. You’ll settle in. Zoe will be here to help you. We’ll all keep an eye on you.”
She smiles at Cat across the table. I feel a warm flush of gratitude that I have a clique of ready-made friends for Cat. It’s the least I can do, after getting her into this mess.
That lasts about five seconds until Rocco sits down next to me, with Dax Volker and Jasper Webb right behind him.
Dax and Jasper are his favorite henchmen. Dax because he’s a nasty brawler—thickly muscled, with a square, blocky head and a bulldog jaw, and Jasper because he’s almost as cruel as Rocco himself. He’s tall with a slim build and long, dark red hair. Beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt, I can see tattoos running down both hands, mimicking the bones beneath like a skeleton superimposed on the skin.
Rocco sits right next to me, while Jasper drops down beside Chay and Dax flanks Cat, so all three of them hem us in like a Bermuda Triangle of assholes. There’s no need for any of them to share our table—there’s plenty of open space in the dining hall. This is obviously Rocco’s first foray into expanding our “intimacy” at Kingmakers.
The temperature at the table drops twenty degrees, and the friendly conversation amongst us girls hardens into stony silence.
I hate having Rocco next to me, but I’m even more conscious of Cat’s discomfort as she cringes against me, trying to shrink down to nothingness so she doesn’t accidentally brush up against Dax’s melon-sized shoulder or the tree-trunk thigh straining the bounds of his trousers.
“Thanks for saving me a seat,” Rocco says to me. He gives me a thin, chilling smile.
I can’t describe the antipathy I feel every time he invades my personal space. Every cell in my body screams at me to get away from him. There’s something so off-putting in the way he moves—either holding too still or making swift and unpredictable movements that make me want to jump out of my skin.
However, unlike Cat, I refuse to move away from him. I hold perfectly still, trying not to let him see how much his proximity bothers me.
“I didn’t,” I reply.
Rocco makes a disappointed tsking sound.
“Oh, Zoe,” he says quietly. “I thought we discussed this. Is this really the attitude you want to take as we begin another year of school?”
Jasper leans his elbow on Chay’s shoulder, his skeleton fingers dangling down just above her breast. Chay has no problem staring him down even with their faces inches apart. She went to boarding school with both Rocco and Jasper, and she is well familiar with their tactics.
“Nice breakfast, biker bitch,” Jasper says to her. “I always knew you liked sausage.”
Chay picks up one of the brats in her fingers and takes a ferocious bite off the end, chewing loudly in Jasper’s face.
“I only like big, thick sausages,” she says coolly. “From what I hear, you’ve barely got an Oscar Meyer weenie.”
“Big enough to choke you when I shove it down your throat, you fucking whore,” Jasper hisses, his nose almost touching hers.
“Fucking try it and see what happens,” Anna says furiously from Chay’s other side.
Rocco’s hand closes like a pincher on my upper thigh, squeezing so hard that his fingertips dig into my flesh.
On the other side of me, I can feel Cat tense up as if it’s her leg in a vice grip. Her eyes are big and round, and I think she’s scared to even breathe, caught in the middle of this sudden conflict that blew in like a hurricane.
“Are these really the types of girls you should be associating with at school?” Rocco says to me, looking coldly between Anna and Chay. “An incestuous goth and the school bicycle? What would your father say . . .”
His fingers are tense as steel. They feel hard enough to punch right through my skin. It takes every ounce of strength I possess to sit stiff and upright, while my thigh is shaking with pain.
“He’d say there’s nothing in our contract about who I’m allowed to have as a friend,” I hiss at Rocco through gritted teeth. “So kindly fuck off and leave us alone.”
Rocco’s fingers clench all the harder, until I can barely keep from crying out. Then he abruptly releases my leg.
“You disappoint me, Zoe,” he says quietly. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“We have nothing more to discuss,” I say.
“Oh, my love,” Rocco says, reaching out his slim, pale hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “That’s not up to you.”
He stands up from the table, slipping out of his seat with unnerving grace. Dax follows him.
Jasper lingers a moment longer, still engaged in his silent stare-down with Chay. He cracks his knuckles single-handed, using his thumb to pull down each eerily-flexible joint. Chay winces at the off-putting sound. At last Jasper gives a slow, lazy blink, like he never cared at all, and pushes away from the table as well.
Only after they’re all gone can I let out a full breath.