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“Absolutely,” she says. “You should wear purple.”
“I don’t…wear purple.”
“Red, then? With your black hair, it would look niiiiiiice.”
“Black,” I state.
But then she eyes me, her pink lips wet from licking the hummus off her cracker. “With red underneath?”
Her tone is soft and tantalizing, and awareness makes the hair on my arms rise. She’s flirting.
“Maybe.”
Chloe is pretty and she wouldn’t hide me. She would be easier.
I look over my shoulder, seeing Clay surrounded by her friends at a table, hovering over an assignment she’s trying to finish before class. Her eyes lift to mine, as if she already knew exactly where to find me, and all I can see anymore is her wet and on top of me in the shower. The perfect girl with her perfect hair, and her little secret.
Chloe would be much easier. But even if I’d met her before I started with Clay, I still wouldn’t have been able to resist Clay as soon as I saw her. As soon as she spoke, I would’ve craved nothing more than to make her only see me.
“I love this bracelet.” Chloe touches the metal symbol on my leather band. “An hourglass.”
I pull my arm away. “Yeah, it’s kind of a family thing.” I stand up, grabbing my materials and garbage. “I gotta go,” I tell her.
But as I drop everything into the trash bin, Chloe touches my arm, stopping me. I turn, seeing her standing in front of me. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asks.
Huh?
Jesus. Almost four years at this school, and now people want to make me feel liked and accepted?
“Sorry, I asked Ms. Martelle,” she says, “so I didn’t embarrass myself before I asked you out, and she said she didn’t think so. Will you go out with me sometime?”
I flash my eyes to Clay, seeing her watch us. The look in her eyes, like she’s not breathing, owns me. She owns me.
It takes a moment, but I meet Chloe’s gaze again. “I have a girlfriend,” I tell her gently.
I belong to someone.
“But you’re not going to prom with her?”
I fight not to look in Clay’s direction again. “Maybe.” I hope. “I’m sorry. It’s…”
“Complicated,” she finishes for me. “It’s okay. I think I knew. I mean, how could you not be taken, right?”
Yeah, right.
“See you this weekend,” I tell her.
I leave, heading to my locker and feeling a little badly. If Clay weren’t in play, I would’ve accepted. How nice would it be to have someone any time I want?
I stop at my locker and look down the hall, seeing Mark Calderon leaning into Sophia Herrera, the whispers between them and everything in his body language telling me they’re getting it on.
How nice would it be to be as close to Clay as I want, any time I want, and wherever I want like them?
I could have that with someone like Chloe or Megan. I can have that when I leave for college.
But I really like my crazy-as-fuck Barbie doll with a mouth that pisses me off one minute, and arms that hold me so tightly that I don’t care if I can breathe the next.
I open my locker, a paper dropping onto the floor from inside.
Bending down, I pick it up and unfold the half-sheet.
Fear grips me. It’s probably a hate letter. A threat. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I almost crumple it up, but I see the words and start reading.
It never looks like me, the person in the mirror, the black script reads.
She looks like everyone else.
I look around, not seeing anyone else in the hall, except for a few loiterers down by the doors to the lunch room.
I keep reading.
She’s like every woman on his arm—the same hair, the same clothes, the same smile, because to beat she has to compete, right?
I stood in front of the mirror this morning, a mouthful of toothpaste and my hair tangled by your fingers. You sucked my lips swollen last night, and I can still smell your kisses on my skin.
The world swims, how hard I’m used by you.
How all I have when you’re done with me is my bones.
I don’t care what I look like anymore as long as I look like yours.
Marked, raw, tangled, sore, and scented like you—I don’t care.
As long as I look like yours.
My eyes burn, a baseball lodged in my throat as I read it again and again. As long as I look like yours.
A tear spills down my cheek, and I hear a locker open. I look over my shoulder, down the hall, and see Clay watching me as she pulls out a book.
Even from this distance, I can see her eyes pooling too.
The hall floods with students, afternoon classes about to get under way, and I lose sight of her, but my body overheats under my skin, and I’m so hot.
