Ronan dismissed us to the lockers to get changed.
The only thing I hated more than gym class was changing for gym class. I frowned, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. Locker rooms horrified me. Mortified me. Where else could a girl suffer the torments of her peers while also braving an encyclopedia of fungal infections?
I’d once learned the hard way that sneaking into a bathroom stall to dress was a magnet for harassment. So I resorted to my usual survival drill. Pick a corner locker, face the wall, change as fast as I could.
It wasn’t fast enough.
I sensed Lilac’s approach. Felt her hovering. Heard the tittering girls who already orbited her like a bunch of dim-witted moons.
Shit. Of course I was naked, but for my bra and granny briefs. My cheeks flamed.
“Oh, Charity! How cute they were able to find a training bra for you. ”
“How cute that they let a bunch of seventh graders in here,” I grumbled, not risking turning around to face her. Instead I pulled the plain navy T-shirt over my head as quickly as possible.
“As if,” she snapped. “Hey, they gave us razors, you know. You may want to shave before you make the rest of us vomit. ”
“That’s the best you can do?” I stepped into the matching shorts. They were made of the same navy T-shirt material, and the whole outfit hung on me in the most unflattering way imaginable. I tucked in my shirt, hoping to give myself some shape. Plucking at the waist, I feared Lilac was right; if anyone needed a reminder of how small-chested I was, all they needed was to see me in this thing.
I sensed movement but was unable to flinch away in time. There was a quick whish-whish sound, and then Lilac’s towel rat-tailed the backs of my calves.
It stung, but not as much as the locker room full of laughing girls.
I turned. Lilac’s posse was staring me down, with her at the forefront. I wanted to show them all. “You’ll regret that. ”
Lilac stood defiantly, her shoulders back in a way that showed off how well she filled out her uniform. With a flip of her maple hair, she lifted her chin. “Bring it, bitch. ”
Then it hit me. As much as I wanted to escape, I wanted more to beat her. To show up Lilac and her stupid clique.
“Sure thing, von Slutling. ” This time, I was the one to let my shoulder bump hers as I stormed out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A few weeks passed. Twenty-three days, to be precise. More than five hundred hours in which to get used to the image of Ronan in swim trunks.
And yet there I was, headed to the natatorium (the vamps couldn’t just call a pool a pool), girding myself for yet another one of our private studies.
I had no choice, of course. Lilac was out for blood, and I’d do whatever it took to beat her. Which meant learning to swim.
I’d thought nothing could be worse than the sensation of water whooshing into my ears, but that’d been before I’d withstood the indignity of dog-paddling to Ronan with only my faded yellow noodle to support me. Serious humiliation time.
But, oddly, after a few weeks of lessons, the sharp spear of panic I knew at the smell of chlorine began to blunt. I still hated to swim, still couldn’t swim, still couldn’t ever imagine myself a swimmer, but neither did I think each dip would result in my certain and instant death.
I think it was the blood that did it. Drinking vampire lifeblood was gradually eroding my inhibitions.
It was making me stronger.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t making me any more social. I still kept mostly to myself, not branching out from my friendship with Yasuo, whom I hung with between classes and in our rare free time before curfew. And there was always Ronan.
Always it came back to Ronan. And those damned swim trunks. They had a dangerous way of making me forget he wasn’t to be trusted.
I reached the natatorium, slamming my hip as I always did against the long metal bar that opened the door. “Ow!” The door hadn’t budged. Rubbing my side, I tried again, this time pushing with my hands, but no luck. Someone had locked it. “What the . . . ?”
I ran my hand over my neck, trying to maintain calm. I had to meet Ronan at the specified time . . . or what? Somehow I doubted they had detention on this island. But how could I make class when the door was locked? I groaned. For all I knew, this was some bizarre new test.
I leaned in to try once more when a burst of voices alerted me. I ducked aside just as the door swung in and a crowd of Initiates bustled out. Immediately I felt their jangly, nervous energy, hearing tension in the subdued murmurs of the usually cocky older girls.
Two steely-eyed Tracers followed, whisking an awkward, canvas-wrapped object from the building. Unless it was some sort of rug—a large, lumpy, heavy rug—I knew it was a body they were disposing of.