Page 56 of Always: A Legacy Novel

She didn’t turn to see who they belonged to, though.

Catherine closed her locker up just as Trisha slid in beside her.

“Okay, this sucks,” her friend said.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve had a locker next to one another for two years, and I’m three halls down now. This blows.”

Catherine shrugged. “Bring your stuff over to mine.”

Trisha’s nose scrunched up. “You’re kind of a mess, though.”

“Fuck you, too, then.”

“It’s true!”

Catherine laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

“You wanna come to my locker?”

“Ms. Katlin is a bitch about being late,” Catherine said of her homeroom teacher. “And this hall is way closer.”

She learned just how much of a bitch her homeroom teacher could be about being late that morning. One might think—given it was the first day of school and the tenth graders were still learning the upper Academy’s halls—that the teachers might be more sympathetic to those who couldn’t find their goddamn classrooms.

Not Ms. Katlin.

Catherine lost her first thirty minute break to detention.

On. The. First. Day.

“Well, boo you, whore,” Trisha said half-heartedly.

“Catherine!”

At the sound of her older cousin’s—Liliana—call of her name, Catherine turned in just enough time to brace herself for the impact of an unexpected embrace. Liliana had already been in the upper Academy for a whole year.

Stepping back, Liliana smiled widely. “I didn’t see you this morning. Why didn’t you ride with us?”

“Ma wanted to take me,” Catherine explained, “and talk the whole time.”

“Fun.”

Catherine lifted one shoulder. “It wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow, though?”

Liliana nodded. “For sure. I’ll get Ma to let my enf—”

Her cousin stopped just in time before she blurted out a word that was off-limits anywhere outside their homes and immediate family. Enforcer. A guard, her watcher, driver, or whatever else the guy needed to be. Catherine had an enforcer that occasionally followed her, and sometimes even drove her to things if something was going on, but that was about it.

Her father said things were quiet.

Things—just like that.

Their families didn’t need constant protection and surveillance when things were quiet. But sometimes, when stuff needed to be done, a random man would show up to pick Catherine up and take her to dinner, or a family function, because that was his job.

Whatever the hell he was told to do.

“Anyway,” Liliana said, shooting Trisha a look.