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That was a human voice. A human person.

Claudia was there, with a bunch of her friends. Rebecca and Maya were next to them. All eyes were trained on where I was holding Cassian’s hands.

Claudia laughed, loudly, cruelly. “You really are fucking ’em both?” Her gaze went to Lee’s sweatshirt. A mean gleam coming over her. “You’re nothing but a skank, Cunt.”

I saw red. “What did you just call me?”

“Don’t act as if you didn’t want a reaction. You’ve been standing here, holding his hand forever. I’m shocked the guys haven’t run a train on you yet.”

Fury exploded inside me. Those words couldn’t ever be taken back. She said them. They were out. Others would remember them. They would repeat them, even if they knew they weren’t true. They’d want to repeat them. I’d be gossiped about as a slut from now until I’d never see these people again. I saw my solitude, the slight one I’d had and I’d enjoyed since moving here, even if it was in loneliness, it went down the drain.

I’d never get that back, because of her.

Because of me.

Because I was wearing Lee’s sweatshirt and holding Cassian’s hand.

I had no more words.

I only had one need running through my veins. That was to hurt her back.

I lunged.

29

They put me in their in-school suspension.

I didn’t even know that existed, but apparently it did. I was distracted when the principal was lecturing me. I kept replaying the fight in my head and one of the two ghosts I’d not met was in the corner watching me. He wasn’t saying anything. He was just there. Being quiet. Observing.

Was he judging? What kind of ghost hung out in the principal’s office willingly? A past principal.

He was totally judging.

But I was mostly in shock so it hadn’t fazed me.

I hit Claudia.

I hadn’t just hit her. I lunged at her. I grabbed her hair. I yanked her head down. I brought up my knee. I slammed her head into my knee. And I hadn’t been done.

She grappled for me, but it was so easy. Scarily easy. I shoved her down to the ground. She crumbled.

I got on top of her.

It’d been so easy to use her hair to lift her head up. She was trying to claw at my face. She was missing. She kept getting blocked by my arms and the hits that got through hadn’t fazed me either. Her nails were like mosquitos. So easy to swat away.

An arm wrapped itself around my waist. I was plucked off, lifted and carried away. It wasn’t even Cassian who pulled me off. It was some other guy. Cassian was fighting Nimrod, who’d been trying to pull me off Claudia. Ethan was fighting Jason Emcee.

When the teachers waded through all the fighters, stopping everyone, Claudia rebounded back. She was shrieking how she was going to kill me. By that time, the ghosts got alerted and were on the front of the school. The other ghosts and spirits all stopped on The Witching Line.

Everyone was watching.

I was mortified until I remembered what Claudia did, and it wasn’t just her calling me a whore. It was her being that girl. If she was in my position, she’d be lording it over everyone. She would brag about it. But it was me, the school’s new girl and therefore an outcast, who was holding Cassian’s hand and wearing Lee’s sweatshirt. That meant something. She knew it. Everyone knew it, but she still decided to be that girl and try to knock me down.

Talk about a small-minded bitch.

And I was back to how easy it had been to hurt her, push her down, hurt her again.

I could’ve killed her.