“Tell me!”
NO.
“I want this to stop.”
IT WON’T. YOU ONLY BARGAIN ONCE.
Two
THEN | SISK
“Pitfire!” I don’t know what I was thinking arguing with Sarah. Actually, that’s a lie—I know exactly what I was thinking. For once, I believed merit might actually mean something in this cursed city. I believed the one spot in the Corps de Ballet—the one I’ve bled for since I was ten—wouldn’t go to some girl whose mother pulls strings at the front office. But Sarah didn’t get it. Why would she? She gets new pointe shoes delivered in boxes while I’m still dancing in the ones I had to stitch back together myself.
So I did what any rational person would do when faced with blatant injustice—I lost my damn mind in the middle of the hallway and earned myself a detention slip.Now here I am.
The classroom is a wreck. Desks are shoved every which way, papers are all over the floor, and the chalkboard still has half a lesson on it that someone couldn’t be bothered to finish erasing.
I have no idea how this is supposed to work. I’ve never been in detention before—not because I haven’t had reason, but because I’m usually better at keeping my rage with the world under wraps in public. Sarah simply hit the wrong nerve today.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who lost it though. I glance at the two guys in the room. They couldn’t be more different if they tried.
My book bag hits the floor with a thud that makes both of them look up. I shove a stray strand of hair back into my bun and straighten my shoulders.
One guy is impossible to miss—Jax St. Clair, Tar City’s unofficial king of hallway swagger. Everyone knows him. Everyone wants his attention.I definitely don’t.
He’s lounging in his chair like detention is his personal throne room. His hair is perfectly messy, the kind that takes way more time than actual neat hair. He’s in a plain white T-shirt that fits just right and wearing a watch that could probably pay my mom’s medical bills for a year. Those gray-blue eyes of his are annoyingly distracting, not that I’d ever admit it out loud.
It’s not even the way he looks that bothers me—though that definitely doesn’t help—it’s what he represents, and how that puts us on opposite sides of everything.
We’ve been in the same school for years. He’s the guy who shows up late, smirks his way through class, and still gets the best grades. I’m the girl who’s at the studio before sunrise, practicing until her feet bleed, and still gets told she doesn’t have theright lookfor the lead. In Tar City, some people are born with a key. The rest of us are just picking the lock.
We aren’t friends—I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I exist. But I still notice him every time he walks past in the hall, every time he slouches into the back row like he owns the school. He has this gravity that pulls my attention whether I want it to or not.
He stretches, lifting his arms over his head, and his T-shirt rides up just enough to reveal a strip of skin. My eyes betray me and follow before I snap them away. Heat creeps up my neck, and I mentally curse myself for noticing.Damn him.
The other guy is a complete mystery. Tall, skinny, pale—looks like he lives in a basement and only comes out at night. Freckles scattered across his nose, half-hidden behind glasses that keep sliding down while he hunches over a game controller he’s taken apart. His desk is a crime scene of tiny screws and tangled wires, like he performed an autopsy on the thing.
Neither of them acknowledges my existence.
“Hello?” I try again, louder this time.
I march over to the skinny guy’s desk and slam my hands down on it. A couple of tiny pieces go flying off the edge and hit the floor.
That gets his attention.
“Be careful!” he snaps, then actually looks at me for the first time. His face turns beet red. His mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water, totally forgetting how words work.
“Sorry,” I mutter, kneeling to pick up the pieces I knocked over.
Behind me, Jax pops his gum so loud it sounds like a firecracker.
“What’s your problem?” I spin around.
He shrugs, not even bothering to look at me. “Didn’t say anything.”
“Since I have your attention—shouldn’t there be a teacher in here?”
Jax grins and another bubble forms between his lips, pink and perfect before it pops.
