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I meet Cleo’s glare with one of my own – a glare that would reduce a lesser mortal to a puddle of goo, but Cleo wouldn’t be so easy to break. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re achieving here. I’m not after your crown or your man. Gabriel can make his own decisions, although if he wants to avoid venereal disease, he should probably keep away from you. On account of the ass milk.”
Gabriel is laughing so hard his whole body trembles, but no one else dares. There’s an intake of breath from Cleo’s minions and the surrounding students.
Cleo smirks. “You think you can walk back in here and own this school? I know you believe you’re special because you disappeared for four years. You were probably in Tijuana getting your nose and boobs done.” She gives this condescending nod to my chest. “You should go back. They’re uneven, and no one wants you here. Go back to being a ghost slut, and stay away from Gabriel.”
No one wants you here.
The words coil around my heart, squeezing the air from my lungs. I’m unwanted. That word brings up all kinds of pre-coffin shit I didn’t want to think about right now. I don’t know what I expected, showing up at Stonehurst during senior year, where everyone else knows each other, has this history, has this sense of the way things should be. I should have known I couldn’t fade into the background.
But I came anyway, and as much as I tell myself it’s to achieve what Antony and I need, I know that’s not the whole truth. Deep down, I’m sick of being lonely. I’m sick of empty rooms and playing music at top volume to drown out the darkness and the voices in my head. I’m sick of staring at the fancy dining table that seats twenty or sprawling out on the monster sofa in the games room and wondering what it would be like to add a player two to a video game.
I want everything I can’t have. The loneliness that is crushing me also protects me. And I’ve gone and cracked that shit wide open. A single tear leaks out of the corner of my eye.
I blink the tear away, but it’s too late. Cleo’s seen my weakness, and she pounces. “Poor little ghost slut, crying because she can’t handle it out here in the real world. Go back to the shadows where you belong. And leave Gabriel alone – he’s mine.”
Before I can formulate a scathing response, Cleo turns on her heel and trots away, ass swinging. The girls behind her all turn in unison, like this was a carefully choreographed act to impart maximum humiliation, and stomp after her.
I glance at Gabriel, blinking away the tear before he sees it. He shakes his head. “Cleo’s rolled out the red carpet to welcome you, Mac.”
“I’m not afraid of her.”
“Really? I am.” Gabriel shudders. “She may look like just another mean girl on a power trip, but Cleo St. James is batshit crazy, and not in a fun way. If you want me to stop bugging you, bring the heat off—”
“Hell no.” I lace my arm in Gabriel’s. He grins as we walk together in the direction of homeroom. “Cleopatra doesn’t scare me.”
But after our run-in with Cleo, Gabriel’s subdued. He doesn’t joke and flirt with me in homeroom or first period. He takes his books out and hunches over them, but I can see him doodling in the margins instead of working. I see too, that everyone around him whispers about him, watching him out of the corners of their eyes. I hear my name on their lips, as well as Dylan’s.
I wonder if this is Gabriel’s way of trying to take me out of the spotlight, or if it has something to do with what Cleo said about Dylan.
I can’t pretend I know anything about what he’s going through. I’d never found my best friend ODed in my hotel bathroom with a suicide note blaming me. Hell, I’ve never even had a best friend, unless I count Queen Boudica. But I do know a little bit about being infamous, about living your worst nightmares in the press for all to see.
Everyone in this school knows this horrible truth about Gabriel, and they know a completely different truth about me. They circle us both like sharks, waiting for us to tire, before they gobble up every broken piece of us that’s left.
Mackenzie
I debate skipping out on the chemistry make-up session, but I’m three days into class and already so behind that I know I’m in danger of flunking out if I don’t put some work in. All I have to do is follow the written directions and write down what I observe. How hard can it be?
Next to impossible when faced with the glory that is Gabriel Fallen. As soon as I walk in the door to the lab, he’s putting on a show for me. He has his lab coat on backward and his aviators on and he’s spiked his shoulder-length hair so it sticks out at all angles. He holds up a test tube and announces in a trembling voice, “My greatest creation. It’s aliiiiiiive.”
“You’re ridiculous.” I roll my eyes as I slide my seat away from him. That scent of him swirls around me – the smoke and sugar of heathen debauchery. All the dark and tempting promises of his music drip from him, and I want to surrender to it. Instead, I pick up the worksheet containing the experiment we’re supposed to complete and start measuring out the different chemicals.
“What are you talking about? This is my serious student face.” Gabriel purses his lips. “I copied it from Eli.”
“It needs some work.” I stare down at the page in a vain attempt to keep myself from laughing. “It looks like someone’s shoved a cantaloupe up your rectum.”
“A cantaloupe?” Gabriel slides in beside me. “That’s awfully specific. Do you have a lot of practice shoving spherical fruit into forbidden orifices?”
His arm brushes mine, and my skin crawls with heat. I look toward the windows – anywhere to avoid meeting Gabriel’s eyes, because I don’t trust myself around him right now – and see Eli and Noah walking across the quad, surrounded by their popular friends. Cleo hangs off Noah’s arm, but his eyes are fixed on the classroom. On me and Gabriel. And he looks murderous.
“Your friend doesn’t like me.”
Gabriel looks up and sees his friends. He grins wickedly and flips Noah off. Noah frowns and returns the gesture, but I can tell from the tightness in his shoulders that this isn’t friendly ribbing. Noah doesn’t want Gabriel to hang out with me.
Cleo looks over and sees us. She shakes her head at me as if to say, ‘what will I do with you?’ Great. I’ll pay for this later. Now Eli’s looking, also great. He gives this friendly wave that makes my chest tight. The last time someone waved at me… I can’t even remember. I whirl around to face the experiment again. No point wishing for what can’t be.
“Noah’s got a wicked hate on for you,” Gabriel muses as he makes a table for our results on the back of the worksheet.
I grunt in reply. There’s nothing else to say about it. If I were Noah, I’d hate me too. “Noah’s your friend. You don’t share his hate?”
