My walls were up, and it showed.
I closed my locker, practically alone in the halls. Everyone had already made their way to their next class or to lunch if they had it this period. I didn’t need the map to find the cafeteria, thank God. It sat in the middle of the school; most of the halls eventually led to it, so even a blind person could find it.
My feet took me to the edge of the cafeteria, a big, wide-open space that held a tall ceiling, a wall of windows, and a bunch of stainless steel tables where the rich kids sat. Maybe it was stereotypical of me, but it was true. Only a kid born to parents who could afford to live in the area went to Midpark. I was the exception, mainly because my address was now the same as Ollie’s.
As I thought of him, my mind wandered back to what Bobbi had said. Celeste. What happened to her? Now there were more things that made me worry. Ollie had been her stepdad, which meant he’d remarried after his old wife.
Maybe Ollie was involved. She’d brought him up like he was a part of it. Maybe he helped to get rid of Celeste, and his old wife, and was able to use his connections to cover it all up. I…probably should let the conspiracy theorists think up things like that and stick to trying to survive Midpark.
My eyes scanned the cafeteria. I was mainly looking for a table, but a teeny, tiny part of me searched for Archer, the boy I’d met earlier. There were tons of cute guys here, but none of them drew me in quite like Archer. He seemed fun, and he seemed nice, which was more than I could say for a lot of these kids—tossing disgusted and curious looks at me like it was their damned job.
Ugh, this day could seriously not be over fast enough.
I didn’t see Archer’s cute blonde head, which was probably a good thing. Attaining a crush on my first day at Midpark would only end in disaster, honestly.
You know what freaking sucked? There was not a single table empty. Maybe it was because it was too cold outside to sit in the square courtyard—a little bit of nature in the center of the school—so everyone was taking up the tables.
God, that just made things extremely awkward, didn’t it? So I’d either sit myself in an empty chair, or…what? Eat in the bathroom like some kind of loser from an old eighties movie? No thanks.
I scanned the cafeteria again, spotting a table that was mostly empty. One boy sat there, but even at this distance, I was hesitant on calling him a boy. He looked more manly than anything, but maybe that was because of the thick black tattoos I spotted on his hands.
Looked like a loner, a stoner, someone who no one wanted anything to deal with—not the typical Midpark student, from what I’d seen today. Hmm. Even with the tatted-up hands, he was cute.
I must’ve been staring too long, for our eyes locked across the cafeteria, and he abruptly stopped fiddling with his food.
Well, I guessed my decision was made.
Chapter Four – Vaughn
Midpark lunches were not something you ate if you were smart. Most of the other students willingly ate the nicely-presented shit, shoveling it down their gullets as if they didn’t have a care in the fucking world. I supposed they didn’t. They weren’t like me. They would never be like me.
And I didn’t say that because I was of the I’m so different than everyone else because I listen to emo music and wear eyeliner variety. I meant it quite literally. I’d seen things in my eighteen years that these kids would never dream of seeing.
Maybe in their nightmares, but even so, their nightmares were merely my daydreams.
My eyes stared down at the tray on the table before me, and I moved around the pile of corn, pushing the small yellow kernels into whatever meat that was supposed to be. My hands were covered in ink. My family hated it the moment I came home with it, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was the only one in my family with tattoos.
Something in my gut told me I was being watched—which wasn’t unusual in and of itself, because I was an outsider here—and I looked up, scanning the nearby area. I sat near the windows at a table alone, my usual spot. Sometimes girls came up to me and tried talking to me; I didn’t know if they thought I could be the bad boy they worked to tame, but I never looked twice at them.
These people…I might come from money like them, but we weren’t the same. The money their family held was not like mine. We weren’t even comparable.
My dark gaze landed on a girl standing at the edge of the cafeteria, holding a rolled brown bag and looking quite out of place. She stared right at me, and I stared back, unabashed. I wasn’t one to back down, ever. If there was someone who didn’t know when to stop, it was me. I blamed my father’s genetics.
We were all a little…off our rocker, let’s just say.
Whereas some girls might blush and look away, she didn’t. She lifted her head high when our eyes met, as if mentally preparing herself before walking through the rows of tables to reach mine. She did not choose a chair next to me, or even across from me; she chose the one furthest from me, at the opposite end of the table.
“Is anyone sitting here?” she asked, cocking her head.
All I did was shake my head, watching as she pulled out a chair and sat down. She tried to act tough, and maybe she was. She was obviously new here, not knowing anyone else to sit by. I had heard the rumor that Midpark High had its first transfer student in a while, but I didn’t pay much heed to it because I didn’t care.
Suddenly though, I was a bit curious.
The girl keeping to herself at the end of the table had long, wavy black hair, its tendrils tumbling over her shoulders and over her chest. She wore an outfit most people wouldn’t be caught dead in here, and her eyes were almost as dark as mine. High cheekbones, a small button nose…she was pretty, probably one of the prettiest girls in Midpark.
Looks didn’t much matter, though. It’s what was on the inside that counted.
“So you’re the new girl everyone is talking about?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
She paused, midway in unrolling her bagged lunch, tossing those black eyes to me. Some people didn’t like dark eyes, but I did. When they were so dark you weren’t sure what the other person was thinking, when you couldn’t tell whether their eyes were dilated in desire or fear—those eyes were my favorite. Black, soulless, a void of emotion.
“I guess so,” she muttered, giving me the side-eye as she glanced at my hands.
“How do you like Midpark?” It was almost funny how normal I sounded. I could put on a mask like the best of them. That was something the rich were all too good at, not just me. When you had money, it became easier to hide the wrongs you committed.
“Oh, it’s great. I love feeling like an outsider and coming into the year half-done,” she rattled off.
“At least you’re new. I’m an outsider, and I’ve been here since kindergarten.”
She finished unrolling her bag, sticking one hand inside as she gave me an unimpressed look. It wasn’t the eager curiosity some girls had, nor the utter disdain the others wore as they looked down on me. She radiated defiance, feistiness.
She might make this last stretch at Midpark fun.
“Well, you ooze friendliness, so I have no idea why that is,” she deadpanned, lifting a single eyebrow as she pulled out…crackers.