“Is that Rae?”
“Holy shit, she filled out over the summer.”
“The fuck’s she wearing, though?”
Marina rolled her eyes. “Why can’t someone teach that poor girl some decent fashion sense?”
I cracked open my soda and swiveled around in my chair. And when my eyes fell onto her, I grinned. Rae Cleaver. Loser extraordinaire. Came from the wrong side of the tracks, and her clothes boasted of it every single fucking day. She was the pet project of the school. Well, one of them. For some reason, the county felt the need to draw redistricting lines among the suburbs in order to get some of the city scum into better schools. And the only reason I knew that was because my parents rallied hard not to let that happen. I mean, why the fuck did our education have to be ruined simply because we had money and they didn’t?
Sucked to be them, but life wasn’t always fair.
Even I knew that much.
Marina sighed. “She looks pathetic. Can someone go over there and tell her brown doesn’t go with black like that?”
Roy slapped her ass. “Why don’t you do the honors, sexy?”
Marina yelped, then playfully swatted Roy’s shoulder. Yet another gesture that made my eyes roll before they went back to sucking on one another’s faces. I didn’t know how the hell they breathed through all that. Or how he tolerated that girl’s wide-ass tongue filling up his face.
To each their own, I guess.
And as I picked up my tray to carry over to the trash can, Rae brushed through my peripheral. I turned my head, watching her a little too long as she sat off in the corner. She was sitting there, waiting for those two dinky little friends of hers. The preppy, uptight bitch and the boy who probably sucked dick with his butthole. She had a pathetic excuse for a lunch, too. Soup and a bottled water. What the fuck was up with these girls and not eating? Did they think that shit was attractive? Because if Rae thought that was her selling point, then she obviously didn’t understand the appeal of decent clothes. I mean, with her dirty black shirt and her faded brown pants, she looked like something out of a horror novel. Surrounded by us, she looked completely out of her league. Tease her hair out and she’d look like actual white trash. Like someone from an actual horror film. Like that creature underneath a child’s bed that only came out to play if the child’s foot slipped over the edge.
Looks like I found my fun for the semester.
Then again, Rae Cleaver was always entertaining. Especially because she didn’t take jokes very well.
3
Raelynn
I sighed as I sat down at the corner table where we always sat. The first couple days of school were always stupidly long and boring. We went over the syllabus for every class the first day, then the second day was used to recap things we learned last year. They were the only two days of school where I never felt bad for zoning out. Where I never worried about falling asleep or missing something the teacher was saying.
“Only three more periods to go,” I murmured.
I looked down at my lunch and sighed. It was all I could afford until I got paid this weekend by the grocery store. Soup and a bottled water. Even though I was fucking starving. I slipped the top off the soup and picked up my spoon. Thankfully, it came with a mound of crackers. I crunched them up and poured them over the top of the soup, making the liquid mess a little more solid. It didn’t look appealing to the eye, but it sure as hell would feel good once it got to my stomach.
I saw something move in my peripheral and was relieved to have my friends show up.
It wasn’t until I looked over, however, that I saw it wasn’t them at all.
“You know, we really should have coordinated our schedules more so we could’ve…”
I traced my eyes up those faded jeans. Up that worn leather jacket. The figure plopped down into the seat next to me, where Allison usually sat. I wrinkled my nose as his face came into view. Clinton Clarke. The high school asshole and overall ‘pump and dump’ station.
The boy was a regular manwhore, and he owned every bit of it.
Barf.
Clint grinned. “We really should have coordinated our schedules. I’m gonna miss having you in English.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What do you want?”
I put my spoon down, refusing to eat in front of him. I watched his eyes follow my movements, and something crossed his face. Disgust? Confusion? Neither of those would’ve shocked me. If Clint wasn’t absolutely freaked out by the way I ran my life on a daily basis, my general presence was probably confusing to him. I mean, really? A girl that didn’t want to jump his bones at the drop of a hat?
It probably confused the hell out of him.
And the thought made me giggle.