Yes. No. Kinda?
Before I could say something stupid, Juliet swooped in and rescued me. “She’s riding home with me, Colton. BB is my bitch now.”
Juliet set her tray down across from my backpack and glared at Colton. She never liked him. For starters, I’d kind of forgotten she existed after he and I started dating. I just started riding the bus home with him every day instead of her—a dick move, I knew, but I was fourteen, and he was my first real boyfriend. I was pretty sure “first real boyfriend” would be accepted as just cause for a temporary insanity plea in a court of law. But Juliet also hated him because I’d kind of blabbed to her about how hard he’d been pressuring me to do stuff with him. I would have given in, too, if he hadn’t told me he was moving. I was not giving it up to somebody who was just going to leave in a few weeks. Besides, I was saving myself for Lance Hightower.
Colton glared back at her for a minute. Then, he smiled and asked, “Can I watch?”
We all laughed, even Lance, who was watching the show with piqued interest. When I sat back down next to him (and away from the pheromone cloud that was Colton Hart), I let out a shaky breath and stared straight ahead at Juliet, thanking her silently. Lance, who had resumed his conversation with Colton, reached under the table and gave my thigh a reassuring squeeze. He left his hand there, and I prayed to every deity I’d ever learned the names of that he would slide it up a little farther. He didn’t, but he did absentmindedly lace his fingers through the holes in my fishnets as he spoke, causing me to stop breathing long enough to almost actually fucking die.
My mind was sufficiently scrambled when August, whom I hadn’t even noticed, spoke to me from the spot next to Juliet.
I had been friends with August Embry since first grade, when we wound up in the same first grade class. Back then, he was a shy, pudgy little thing with no friends, and I was a bossy, talkative little thing with no friends, so we’d just clicked. I loved him like a brother.
August was still a shy, round little thing. He hid his warm chocolate-brown eyes behind a curtain of dyed black hair, and every night, he painted his fingernails black to match. Of course, every day, he would pick them clean again—leaving little black flecks behind, like a trail of breadcrumbs everywhere he went. August was the sweetest, most sensitive person I’d ever met.
I could tell from his body language that August wasn’t exactly happy to see Colton either. He and Lance had become kind of close since Colton left. They both liked the same terrible music and competed over who had the best, rarest punk records in their collections, so Lance getting his best friend back didn’t bode well for August.
“Hey, A!” I cheered, trying way too hard to sound like a girl who didn’t have a boy’s fingers stroking her inner thigh at that exact moment. “I didn’t know you had this lunch period too! Are you growing your hair out? I love it!”
August just smiled and looked down at the food on his tray, which he suddenly decided needed rearranging.
I turned to ask Juliet if I could ride home with her and Tony, but she was gone. Her stuff was still on the table though, and I thought I could hear the sound of her voice. As much as it killed me, I moved Lance’s hand so that I could peek under the table. There she was, sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking on her cell phone, which was strictly forbidden at school. There was only one person she could possibly be talking to.
“Juliet,” I whispered.
She looked up, annoyed. “What?”
“Ask Tony if he minds giving me a ride this afternoon.”
She winked at me and whispered into her brick-sized Nokia, “Hey. BB’s gonna ride home with us this afternoon, okay?” She gave me a thumbs-up after hearing his response.
Cool.
Just then, I felt Lance’s hand press down on the back of my head and saw his crotch rise up to meet the side of my face. I screamed and tried to sit up, causing my head to smash Lance’s hand into the underside of the table. Laughter erupted from the cafeteria as I emerged, red-faced, looking like a girl who’d just eaten a punk rocker’s cock for lunch.
I glared at Lance, trying my best to look angry, but his eyes were shut, and he was laughing so hard, he wasn’t even making noise. Just the sight of that giant, Mohawked motherfucker smiling ear to ear had me reduced to a puddle of swoon juice in an instant. I burst out laughing right along with him and anxiously glanced over at Colton.
He was laughing, too, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Guess he didn’t appreciate the entire lunchroom thinking his girlfriend was giving his best friend a BJ under the table.
In that moment, I knew that Colton wasn’t going to be a problem. Lance had just established, with dramatic flair and in front of everyone, that I was his girl.
All the hope and hormones had my insides on the verge of spontaneous combustion, so I barely noticed the loud slam that came from somewhere behind me. I hardly felt the resulting shudder that rippled down the length of the lunch table. And I didn’t turn to look for the source until the faces of all my friends fell and glanced anxiously over my shoulder. Swiveling around on my stool, I followed everyone’s gaze to an empty seat at the end of the table.
Um, anyway. Where was I? Oh, right. Planning my spring wedding …
That afternoon, I fought against the current of teenagers fleeing the building, dragging my swollen backpack behind me by one strap, in search of my new locker. According to my homeroom teacher, my old one had to be torn out over the summer to make room for the new science lab. She had given me a little slip of paper with my new locker number and combination on it, saying only that it was “somewhere over on C Hall.” I couldn’t wait to find that shit so that I could finally offload a few of the ten-pound textbooks I’d been given that day.
Clutching the piece of paper with my new digits on it, I scanned dozens of identical metal doors until I found the one I’d been assigned. It was almost at the end of the hallway, of course, near the exit doors that led out to the student parking lot. I felt relief wash over me immediately.
My first day of tenth grade was a wrap, and overall, it had been a smashing success. I’d smoked with the coolest of the cool kids; wound up with the same lunch period as Lance, Juliet, and August; got a bunch of compliments on my fishnets and new haircut; and now, I had a new locker on the same hall as all the seniors. Okay, so maybe it took me a few attempts to get my code to work, but once that shit was open, it was glorious.
As I bent over to take the last load of books out of my straining backpack, I stopped short, paralyzed by the sight of two black steel-toed boots with blood-red laces planted just inches away from my face … and pointing directly at me.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Not him. Anyone but him.
I took my time gathering my stuff, hoping that ignoring him would make him magically disappear. When I finally stood up, arms full of books, I mustered all the courage I had and looked him in the eye.
Zombie eyes. God, his irises were such a pale, pale gray-blue that his pupils looked like two endless black holes in contrast. Two black holes that were sucking me in.
Speak dumbass!
“Um, hey,” I said in a voice that didn’t sound like it belonged to me.
He didn’t reply. He simply cocked his head to the side and studied me with those cold, dead eyes. It was the same way he’d looked at the kid in the parking lot, right before he smashed his face into the ground.