“What do you want, Katrina?” Eva spoke with all the self-confidence she could muster.
“I think you know that,” Katrina smiled an evil smile. The two faces surrounding her remained expressionless.
“I really don’t,” Eva tried to tell her.
She really had no idea. She hadn’t even seen her the past two weeks, and she’d considered herself lucky for it. Now, it turned out that she wasn’t as lucky as she had thought.
“Don’t play games with me!” Katrina shouted so hard that the windows shook a little in their frames. “You might come to regret it.”
“I swear, Katrina, whatever I did, I didn’t do it to piss you off,” Eva tried to reason with her, even though she knew that bullies rarely tended to believe reason.
“Oh, you didn’t now?” she laughed, and, as if on cue, the two faces around her laughed.
It was a weird symphony of dichotomous laughter, which eventually stopped, and everyone seemed to wait for Katrina’s next words.
“It came to my knowledge,” Katrina walked slowly over to Eva, speaking so that she accentuated every word, “that you seem to have feelings for someone way out of your league.”
Eva swallowed heavily. Who did she refer to? And, how come she knew Eva liked someone, when Eva herself wasn’t sure of anything?
“I don’t understand…”
“Dorian, you idiot!” Katrina was losing patience. “I’m talking about Do
rian!”
Eva wanted to laugh, but she managed to restrain her laughter, as it would only make things worse. Katrina was obviously pissed because she thought Eva was moving in on Dorian, whom she considered her own rightful property. Eva wondered if Dorian knew about this. Not that it mattered, really.
“What about Dorian?” Eva played dumb.
The last thing she’d do is admit she had feelings for that guy, especially to Katrina. She’d obviously started something that might prove to be too much drama for her taste.
“He blew me off and said we’re done.”
“So?” Eva shrugged her shoulders, knowing full well this would piss her off even more but she didn’t care. She was starting to have fun.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“I saw you with him at the cafeteria!” Katrina hissed again.
“Frey was there, too,” Eva rolled her eyes. “If Dorian and I were on a date, what makes you think we’d need a third wheel?”
Katrina was caught off guard for just a second but she was damned if she was going to let it show. Furious, she grabbed Eva by the hair, swung her violently towards the sink, then slammed her head down. Straight away, Eva felt a surge of pain travel from her lip up, following the line of her jawbone. It ended somewhere at the back of her head.
She then felt Katrina’s hold of her hair loosen up, and she lifted her head. There was a coppery taste inside her mouth, a warm liquid which had no business being there. Eva knew, even before she had looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, that Katrina had cracked her lip. She pressed her hand against it. It was warm and pulsating.
“You are the only third wheel I see,” Katrina kept on going and Eva noticed that the two girls weren’t to her sides anymore.
Now, they were holding the door. Eva wondered whether it was to prevent someone from getting in or her from getting out. The headache was getting stronger and Eva knew she had to see the nurse. She’d come up with an excuse. She wouldn’t rat on Katrina. That would only make things worse. She coughed a little, and bent over. The pain was increasing.
“Stay away from Dorian, bitch,” Katrina spat in her ear, “otherwise, I might break something else, too.”
Eva didn’t look up to see them go. She only heard the door open, then it was closed again. She was alone, really alone this time. Her fingers were shaking. She was cold. The adrenaline rush was gone and she was left cold, scared and in pain.
Chapter 13
Eva rushed out of the school grounds. In the end, she decided not to seek a nurse’s help, but just to go to her room and rest for the day. Mr. Maslowski, her Latin teacher, gave her a permission slip and even though he advised her to go to the nurse first, he didn’t insist, when he heard the lame excuse she gave him as to what had happened.
“I slipped in the bathroom and just fell,” Eva shrugged her shoulders, pressing a cool compress on her cracked lip.