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But I turn away, grabbing a tray as I try to hide the lump rising up my throat. Is he seeing someone?
Waiting in the lunch line, I take a hamburger in a paper sleeve, moving for the carrots. The chatter starts picking up again, whispers mostly.
“Keep your voice down!” someone shouts behind me. “She’ll hear you!”
Laughter rolls across the cafeteria, and my back feels like it has a target on it. I exhale.
“Oh, don’t point at her like that!” another voice booms.
“Hey, hey, hey, Baby Trent,” a guy calls out.
Then others whistle.
I ignore it. I don’t like it, but I do like that Hunter is hearing all of it. He can’t escape my presence, whether he looks at me over the next two weeks or not.
I move down, taking an apple from the young woman on the other side.
I meet her eyes. “Thank you.”
“I’m good at it,” she says in a snide voice. “There’s nothing else for me, right?”
I hold her gaze for a moment, aware too late of the person stepping up and hacking up some spit before he drops it right on top of my hamburger.
I freeze for a second.
I guess my little monologue this morning has spread through the school.
“Rebel-lious for life,” the girl behind the counter taunts.
Farrow shows up at my side, laughing and pushing the guy away. He tosses my hamburger and grabs me another one. “Come on, guys,” he says. “We gotta keep her strength up. Let her eat.”
He puts an arm around me, but I shake him off as I follow him through the lunchroom.
“How was your morning?” he asks.
“Piece of cake.”
“Your hair is blue.”
It is?
Someone must’ve put something—or sprayed something—in my hair, although I don’t know how that escaped my notice. I’ll go to the bathroom and look later. Not now.
We stop, and I drop my tray on the round table next to Hunter’s. All the guys that were in my kitchen this morning loiter around, and I recognize the girl from the office—Codi.She sits to the right of Hunter, Mace and Coral in the chairs next to her. I sit on the table, facing Hunter, and stick my apple in my jacket pocket.
Picking up the new hamburger, I peel back the paper sleeve.
Hunter stares at me.
“Is it satisfying,” I ask him, “seeing me with no allies and you with all of them?”
“Why do you think that would satisfy me?”
Farrow drifts between us, reaching around Codi to grab a football.
“It was never that you didn’t have friends at home.” I take a small bite and then lift my eyes, staring straight at my cousin. “You just let Kade take them all.”
No one around is looking at us, but they’re quiet. Listening.
