He throws up his arms. “Because I really, really don’t want to get caught in the crossfire, okay?” he says. “You think you’re the only person who was looking forward to reinventing themselves once they got here?”
All the heat in me dies.
“Oh.” I guess I hadn’t thought about that.
“You’ve got to get it out of you head that all boys are dumb brutes,” Rafael says, after a moment. “If you’re going to be one of us for the next year, that’s a good place to start.”
“I guess so.”
My stomach growls, a reminder that I haven’t eaten anything since the crap airplane food earlier this morning. Absentmindedly, I reach for a welcome basket of snacks sitting on top of the desk closest to me.
As soon as my fingers touch the plastic, Rafael smacks it out of my hand.
“And the next thing to do,” he says, his eyes dropping down to stare unabashedly at my chest, “is to make sure you don’t give those puppies any extra ammunition to make a sudden appearance.”
I gape at him in horror and move to cross my arms over my chest. “You’re a monster.”
“Sorry, bro,” Rafael says, teasingly. “But for once … you should feel lucky the boob gods haven’t seen fit to bestow their blessings yet. And if you want that to last,” he says, smacking the hand he catches sneaking back towards a pack of licorice, “then you’re going to have to learn how to live with being hungry.”
Of all the things—cutting my hair, smoking cigarettes, chewing my nails down to a painful quick—this is the first thing that makes me pause and wonder if any of this is actually worth it at all. I turn to stare forlornly at the basket of goodies, and after a long moment, pick it up and carry it slowly over to the trash and drop it in.
“Hold up!” Rafael snaps, bounding over and snatching it immediately back out. “Just because you can’t have it doesn’t mean I can’t.” He pats his flat stomach appreciatively and grins. “Papa’s gotta shore up for winter. Rumor has it, it’s going to be a long one.”
Chapter Five
Aside from starving myself, potentially giving myself lung cancer, cutting my hair to look like an escaped prison-inmate, and having to learn this thing called the “ball shuffle”, there isn’t too much else Rafael instructs me to do.
Ha. See what I did there?
I lied. Mostly to myself.
Because according to my new gender-swapping sensei, pretending to be a boy is going to be a whole lot harder than Amanda Bynes led me to believe.
It also doesn’t help that according to Rafael, I need to be checking around every corner and keeping an eye out for dark shadows for when The Brotherhood finally decides to strike.
“So, there’s three of them. Jasper, Beck, and Heath. Jasper’s the ringleader, which you’ll soon find out. The other two … oh, wait … don’t look now, but they’ve already claimed the table closest to the door.”
Naturally, now that I’ve been told not to look, I have to look.
I i
mmediately recognize my mistake. As soon as my eyes lift to the table at the front of the dining hall where we now find ourselves—I look straight into the blonde one’s eyes.
“Look away, now!” Rafael hisses, and this time I obey. Just for a second. My gaze keeps flickering over to them and then away so quickly that I start to feel dizzy. “Were they looking? Please tell me they weren’t looking.”
“What do you think?” I whisper back as Rafael leads us as far away from them as possible, then mulls for a good five minutes over which two seats at the end of the table are going to give us the best advantage.
I, meanwhile, just keep working on perfecting my “ball shuffle”.
“Stop it,” Rafael snaps at me. “You look like you’ve got crabs.”
“Maybe that’ll help with the locker room situation,” I chirp all-too-cheerily as I’m finally allowed to sit in Rafael’s perfectly curated seat selection. I can tell he’s immediately regretting his decision from the way sweat beads on the top of his forehead as he stares worriedly at the empty seat to his right.
“I could sit there instead, you know,” I say, leaning forward from across the table. The wooden tables are so wide I have to practically lean my whole body across it to keep my voice low enough to keep it from carrying down the entire table. This is not going to be a good place to have any kind of secret discussions. Not unless you want them to be overheard.
“No thank you,” he says, curtly. “I think my level of association with you is already far too much.”
“Suit yourself,” I say, flopping down in my seat and pushing it back so it leans onto two legs. “But the other one … I think it really might be better.”