“Thanks for looking out for me, Captain America,” I say, giving him a mock salute. “But I can choose my own friends, and last I heard, you were looking to get revenge on me, so I see no reason to trust any advice you give me.”
I push past Royal, but he grabs my arm and spins me around. “He’s involved in some bad stuff,” he says, his voice low.
“I know,” I say, yanking my arm free and smiling up at him. “Iamthat bad stuff.”
I turn and walk away before he can fuck with my head any further. Why is he suddenly acting like he cares, warning me about Colt? Is this just another one of his games, part of a mission to make sure I have zero friends?
That only makes me more sure that I’ve found an ally, one who isn’t into the Dolces’ twisted power games. If Royal doesn’t want me hanging out with Colt, there must be a reason. And since he hates me, and he apparently hates Colt, it seems only natural that Colt and I become… If not friends, then at least friendly.
What possible reason could Royal have for wanting to keep us apart? Does Colt know something about him that he doesn’t want me to find out? He shouldn’t care or even notice if a couple outcasts find each other. If I’m friends with Colt, that has zero impact on him. So, why is he threatened by it?
I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something, which pisses me off. I head to my next class, wondering who I can ask. Maybe I’ll have to wait until Monday and ask Colt.
As I head for my locker, I mull it over, because I’m an impatient bitch and I want to know now. I hate being the last to know. It puts me in a vulnerable position, and that’s not somewhere anyone likes to be.
I’m so busy thinking over whether I can ask Dynamo tonight, or if that violates the unspoken rules of the Slaughter Pen, that I almost miss the snickering behind me. I turn to see the Waltons and their equally pretty, equally white, equally indistinguishable friends standing there, six of them in total. They’re just watching me, laughing behind their hands.
A pit opens inside me, but I clench my teeth together and try not to show anything. These bitches don’t deserve a reaction. Still, I lean back just enough to let my back graze the locker because these bitches are just immature enough that they might think they could get to me by sticking a note on my back.
No paper rustles on my back, though, so they can’t be laughing at that. I don’t have my period, so I know I didn’t bleed through my jeans and hand them a reason to make fun of me even more. Deciding they’re just fucking with me, I turn back to my locker. That’s when I see it. Along the bottom of the polished wooden door, someone has carved the wordsWHITE TRASH. The grooves of the letters are deep, sharp and a little jagged.
I clench my teeth and finish turning the combination. That was carved by someone who wanted to do more than laugh at me. There is hatred in those slashed grooves, cut with a box cutter or a knife instead of just scratched into the varnish with a pin. Maybe they even imagined it was my skin as they slashed those letters into the wood. Someone here has a knife and wants to hurt me. Unlike Faulkner, there are no metal detectors here. Hell, kids even carry backpacks to class.
Guess it’s time I start carrying my own knife.
It had to be Duke, I think as I spin the combination. He’s pissed because I hurt not just his dick but his pride.
I pull open my locker. A squirming mass of black cockroaches covers my books. I yelp involuntarily and jump back. I’ve lived with my share of roaches, but that doesn’t make me like them any more than a Walton in a fancy mansion. And something deeper than that, a disgust as deep as the primal fear of snakes, coils in my belly when I see them. These ones are huge, as long as my fingers, their squirming bodies black and greasy looking as they scuttle over each other, letting out disgusting hissing noises.
One fat, black insect plops to the floor, missing my toe by half an inch. I jump back, blood rushing in my ears. All around me, I hear laughter and gagging noises and even a few shrieks, but I register them as if from far away. It’s not just the Waltons. It’s everyone. A crowd has gathered, all of them wanting to see me lose my shit.
I want to. I want to turn and run, away from the disgusting sight, away from the cruel laughter, away from this fucking school where I don’t belong and where a good education suddenly seems like the least of my worries. Pressure mounts behind my eyes, but I won’t cry. Not even when my throat tightens until I can barely draw a breath because it hurts so much just to keep breathing.
“What’s going on here?” asks a male voice. Mr. Harris, my science teacher, comes pushing through the crowd, past one of the Dolce boys.
Royal.
He stands there staring at me, not laughing with the others, but watching me with a cool smirk on his lips and burning hatred in his eyes. I swallow hard, wanting to look away but trapped in the paralyzing inferno of his gaze. Royal’s a closed book, and this is the first time I’ve seen any real emotion in his eyes.
Before I can tear myself free or think about the unwarranted hatred in Royal’s eyes, the teacher steps up on me, right in my face. “Are these my cockroaches?” he demands.
Of course they are. Where else would someone get a bunch of giant hissing cockroaches? I examined them in class with Royal just yesterday. And now, conveniently, they’ve turned up in my locker.
“What is this?” Mr. Harris demands, his voice rising with anger until he’s yelling at me and everyone else. “You think this is a joke? These are not for you to play pranks with. They’re rare, exotic pets shipped all the way here from Madagascar!”
“Are you sure?”
It’s Royal’s voice cutting through the hushed murmurs. The chatter stops, and everyone turns to see what their head thug has to say. “Those probably crawled into her backpack last night at her trailer park.”
“Yeah,” Gloria pipes up. “They probably live in her hair, too, like head lice. Do you ever even comb that mess?”
“I don’t live in a trailer,” I say. “And the only sneaky, disgusting little creatures I’ve seen lately are right here in this school, and they aren’t cockroaches.”
I give her a pointed look, and a few people murmur and shuffle their feet, excited to see what she’ll do next.
“Enough,” Mr. Harris roars. “Someone get me something to put these in. Harper, close your locker to keep them contained.”
“She probably stole them to sell on the black market,” Eleanor says, clutching her books to her chest and meeting my eyes with haughty triumph. “She’s poor, you know.”