She raises a perfectly trimmed brow, waiting for an answer. The longer he takes, the more her curiosity grows.
I give her an empty but fulfilled smile in the meantime. She doesn’t welcome it, jaw tightening in place.
Finn’s hand grips the edge of the locker. That split second of uncertainty washed away with the blink of an eye. Plastering on the cockiest of smirks. “Jealous you couldn’tbuyyour way into the one next to Cole’s?”
Crossing her arms in a huff, she meets his expression, tapping her foot. Was she buying this?
In my peripherals, I spot two people approaching. By their sizes alone, I knew it was Cole and Eli. I force my eyes not to roll, just what I needed,morepeople to join this little social circle.
If Finn senses them, he doesn’t show it. Slamming the locker with more force than necessary. He sneers, but it’s hollow.
“Stop looking for problems that don’t exist,” Finn hisses.
Her lips curl. A tautness brewing between them.
I burst out into the fakest, most atrocious bark of laugh I can manage. It hurts my own ears. “Guess you’re stuck next to me the rest of the year.”
I was such a scam.
It worked though. She bought it.
Heels clicking down the hallway at her annihilation. Her strategy backfiring.
“You’re such a freak,” Finn mumbles with pure disgust.
“How’d you manage that one?” Eli beams, angling his head in Madison’s retreating direction. While Cole’s scowl only deepened. The expression not directed at me, eyeing my still open locker.
Not answering him, he storms off. Cole following in his overconfident swag.
“What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I grumble, offering him candy. Declining, I add them to my stuff.
He is the second person to reach into my locker without permission today. Pulling out a scrap of folded paper I hadn’t seen until now.
Eli’s upper lip thins out, scanning over its contents, handing it back. “You suck at replying.”
The handwritten words sit neatly in the predawn lines of the notebook sheet.
Pizza or burgers?
fifteen
Rory
Thewoodiswarped.Permanently swollen with a slight bubble, showing its age on the rusted brass hinges.
It groaned, the sound familiar now. Someone was entering my glasshouse.
The lush overgrown greenery obstructing my view. I liked how freely the plants grew. Interlocked with one another, coating the room in nature’s graffiti but now it put me on edge.
My pulse picked up. Thrilling and scaring me at the same time.
I heard a branch snap, followed by a muffled curse. Whoever was in here getting closer.
“I-I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Abram says, spotting me around a thicket of ferns. His eyebrows shooting to his hairline. Guess he wasn’t the only one not expecting company.
The sweet scent of flowers evades my nose, raising my head from the plush sofa.