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“Suck on this, Einstein!”
A bulky football player-looking guy, his expression contorted into an evil, taunting sneer, wound his arm back and threw something into the shadowed space under the stairs.
A second later, the item was lobbed back and landed on the floor not two feet from her shoes. Paige squinted and made out what looked to be a baby’s pacifier.
Laughing and jostling against half a dozen replicas of himself, the football player hurried up the stairs with his friends, leaving her alone in the foyer.
She knew who Einstein was. She’d seen the boy around and heard the rumors. Nearly every university had one of them—a genius kid who’d enrolled in college way before he was old enough to graduate from high school.
His real name was Anthony something-or-other. Anthony…Morris, that was it. But everyone made fun of him, calling him Einstein. He was sixteen, if the rumors she’d heard were correct, and he was already a junior. What’s worse, the poor kid was small for his age, so he looked closer to twelve.
When he didn’t emerge from under the stairs, she inched forward to check on him. But as soon as she got too close, he threw a jar of baby food at her. She jumped back to save her sneakers from getting splattered as the glass shattered against the floor.
“Sheep,” a young voice jeered from the shadowed nook. “You’re all sheep. Baa.”
At his exaggerated bleating, Paige snickered. “Yeah, they do kind of act like a big dumb cluster of sheep, don’t they?”
“Flock.” The voice turned sullen as it responded.
“What’s that?” she asked, trying to sound as polite and non-threatening as possible. Stepping around the puddle of strained carrots, she cradled her wrapped hand protectively closer to her chest and approached the nook again, much more cautiously this time.
“A group of sheep is called a flock. Or a herd, a trip, or a drove. Sometimes a mob. But never a cluster.”
She flushed, a little indignant he’d corrected her vocabulary when she was the only person trying to be nice to him. “Oh. I like a mob then. They looked like a big group of dumb mobsters.”
“I said mob, not mobster. There’s a huge difference.” He appeared, frowning at her with impatience. A green glob of peas had been smeared across his youthful face. When he saw her, he stopped dead and his pale brown eyes flared open wide.
She cringed at the torment he’d received. “Oh, you poor thing. Here. I think I have some wet wipes in my bag.” Unzipping her purse, she fished around until she found her package of wipes, wincing when her injured thumb bumped her compact.
She pulled a single sheet free and handed it to him, but he backed away, scowling. “Diaper wipes?”
Great. Now he thought she was making fun of him. “No, actually, they’re face wipes. I use them to take my makeup off each night.”
When he didn’t reach out to take the cloth from her, she sighed and stepped closer to dab the smudge off his face for him, hoping he didn’t take insult from her motherly treatment.
But instead of pushing her hand away, he tipped his chin up, encouraging her ministrations. Logan had wrapped her cut thumb so snug that she couldn’t bend it. Sticking out awkwardly, its gauze surface brushed Anthony’s cheek as she scrubbed. He didn’t seem to notice, however, he seemed more concerned about trying to keep his fluttering eyes open as Paige pampered him.
She slowed as she removed the last little bit of peas. “There,” she murmured, forcing a bright smile. “All clean.”
When he simply studied her, looking utterly awed, she shifted her stance, uncomfortable by such intense scrutiny. “You’re Anthony, right? Anthony Morris.”
“Einstein,” he corrected, his wary frown returning.
Okay, so he actually liked his derogatory nickname. She supposed she could deal with it if he could. “Right. Sorry. I think I knew that. I’m Paige. I live up on the—”
“Third floor,” he finished for her in a trance-like state as if he was reading her stats verbatim. “Room three-oh-eight with that rude tramp named Mariah. Suitemate to Bailey Prescott and Tess Simpson.”
When her mouth dropped open, he shrugged. “It’s incredibly easy to hack into the university’s database.”
She nodded, gulping down her instinctive need to flee. But the genius sixteen-year-old definitely had a creepy vibe about him.
“Well…” She floundered, not sure how to tie up this little conversation and flee, yet somehow show him she wasn’t like the mob who’d just harassed him. “Don’t let those bullies get to you, okay, Einstein? Someday when you’re a successful billionaire, they’ll be too busy begging you for a job to laugh. You can get your revenge then.”
Einstein snorted. “If I survive until then.” He lifted his hands to show her his wrists.
She reared back, stunned to see a copy of the same marks she’d seen not-so-long-ago on a different pair of wrists.
“Who did that do you?” she demanded, instantly wanting to beat up whoever had hurt him.
