Hesitance backed the words, a caution like the teacher was speaking to an animal.
Or a dark prince.
With Blondie’s last name that seemed fitting.
Mr. Prinze lowered his hand and both of the teachers swallowed hard. They really seemed to be intimated by the guy. What the fuck?
The platinum blond, Wells I remembered, hooked an arm around the dark prince. “Dude, I don’t feel like hearing it from my dad today.”
“Right, bro.” The colossal-sized guy with the piercings shrugged his shoulders, casual about it. “You know my pops. Dude’s crazy. You know I don’t mind backing you boys up, but only if shit’s worth it.”
The guy jutted a chin in my direction and, apparently, today’s match wasn’t worth a brawl with whoever his father was.
The others seemed to share the same sentiment, even Wolf who raised his hands.
“Whatever,” Wolf said, backing off, and once Blondie did too, the teachers visibly relaxed. The four boys ventured back, but it was Blondie who pointed at me.
“See you around, Noa Sloane,” he said, obviously having gathered enough intel about me to know my name. With a smirk, he proceeded to toss the ball back and forth with his boys.
“Ms. Sloane, back to volleyball with the others,” my teacher said. Suddenly, his balls had been restored. He left with the other teacher without a response from me. Eventually, I did make it back over to my class, but it was hard to play with the watchful eyes clearly behind me.
It lasted the rest of class.
Chapter Six
Sloane
The next few days, I attempted to avoid the dark prince and his boys. This was made gratefully easier since we managed not to share any classes. Even that gym class we hadn’t shared. Our classes had just both happened to be outside that day.
That fucking day.
It’d been truly fucked up and nothing I’d ever experienced. Bru and I had gone to the absolute worst schools, but even the guys and girls with attitudes there didn’t fuck with the teachers. They’d rather not come to school than deal with any disciplinarians.
But these boys…
They were in a different breed, clearly. Especially that dark prince. I hadn’t made any friends yet at Windsor Prep, so unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to get any information about him or any of them. I needed to know what I was dealing with here.
I needed to know exactly who I’d pissed off.
Bru and I were still at odds, so besides passing each other in the halls or around the house over the next few days, no information was being gotten there. That was of course if he had any information himself.
I was aware his new guide was named Wells, but I wasn’t exactly sure if that was the same Wells from the dark prince’s friend group. In any sense, the odds of my brother telling me anything about the guys I’d pissed off were slim. He’d want me to stay out of trouble.
Bru and I shared a lunch period, but talking to him about anything there was a dead end too. Right from the jump, he started taking his lunches into the computer lab, claiming it was easier to study with the quiet. He was trying to catch up after we’d enrolled late, and respecting that, I started eating lunches by myself. I usually slept or drew through them. I had an art class both before and after, so lunchtime proved to be good for something.
“Oh, Sloane. Hey!”
As well as avoiding the little rabbit.
This was the nickname I’d given Rainbow Reed, aka the little rabbit, since she both walked and talked a mile a minute. She and her pep fortunately only had the one class with me, but she was still acting as my personal stalker everywhere else. She met me both before and after each one of my classes, hot on my heels the whole way. When I wasn’t trying to get to my classes super quick and avoid any unnecessary confrontations, I was attempting to dodge her and had managed it a time or two.
She talked my ear off.
I guess one could call me a bit of a loner. An introvert, I kept to myself and liked it that way. Bow Reed was making me not be an introvert and times like lunch were usually pretty easy to avoid her. For starters, the lunchroom was broken up into two sections, not to mention the outdoor courtyard. I’d never gotten that far, but I knew about it.
Needless to say, blending into the sea of many faces had been easy, but today, the little rabbit found me in the lunch line.
I actually chose to eat lunch today, in the lunch line at Windsor Preparatory Academy like a bougie salad bar at a restaurant. These people had actual menus, options divided up by what part of the world you wanted to eat at for the day. This afternoon, I chose Chinese, and Bow caught me at the fried rice.