AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You seem pretty memorable to me.”
“You and Cleo sure thought so.” A note of bitterness creeps into her voice.
I can read between the lines here – I did something shit to this girl. If I was friends with Cleo back then, that’s not surprising. Fuck, I wish I’d known all this before I opened my mouth.
I sigh. “Look, you want to go eat somewhere that doesn’t smell like urine?”
“With you?” George studies my face.
I glance around the empty bathroom. “I don’t see anyone else offering.”
I can see the torment in George’s eyes as she weighs that Mackenzie Malloy was eating her lunch in a toilet stall against her past tormentor. Finally, she nods, although her shoulders are tense. “Sure. Let’s go.”
George and I stop by a vending machine to load up on snacks, then take our loot out to the bleachers, where the stoners hang out. She looks nervous as we climb up to the top corner and lay out our bounty. Out on the track is a lone runner – Noah. He’s shirtless because the gods have to be kind to me sometimes. Sweat glistens on his naked skin, and I notice a single tattoo of a four-leaf clover, its leaves curling and crumpling at the edges, over his heart. His gym shorts pull across his muscled thighs, and my throat dries as I think about exactly what’s inside those shorts. That boy is damn fine. Hatred looks good on him.
I rip open the wrapper on a no-gluten, no-sugar, no-taste dark-chocolate kelp bar (the school’s snack choices suck), which I have no appetite for any longer. Why am I wasting precious brainpower thinking about a guy who loathes me, a guy so obviously and completely off-limits?
I tear my eyes from Noah and focus on George, who is nervously fiddling with the edge of a bag of dried mango slices and watching a group of guys gathered around an acoustic guitar a few rows over. “I thought these would be your kind of people.” I nod at her hair.
She runs her hand through her rainbow hair. “Oh… I don’t know. I’ve always been too scared to talk to guys like that. They’ll think I’m a freak.”
“I don’t think you’ve looked at yourself in a mirror recently. You’re putting out total hot freaky rocker chick vibes. That guy with the Metallica bandana down there is totally checking you out.”
George glances down at the guys, then back at me, and I see a million questions burning in her eyes. “Who are you, and what have you done with the real Mackenzie Malloy?”
I smile. “I’m holding her hostage so I can steal her life, obviously. Gross, who thought kelp and chocolate go together?” I toss the bar down the bleachers. It bounces across the grass just as Noah steaks by and hits him in the chest, exploding crumbs of kelp all over him. He turns with a snarl and locks eyes with mine. Fuck, if looks could kill I’d be back in that coffin with Noah dancing on the lid.
George is giggling into her arm. “I can’t believe you just hit Noah Marlowe. He doesn’t look happy… are you going to eat that?”
For a moment I think she’s talking about Noah, but then I see her eyeing up a cookie. I slide it over. “All yours.”
“Thanks.” George tears it open and takes a huge bite. She talks about school clubs and bands I’ve never heard of for the rest of the lunch hour. It’s like I turned a faucet on inside her and unleashed a stream of word vomit. It should annoy the fuck out of me, but actually, it’s nice, hearing something other than the shadows dancing around inside my head.
When the bell rings, startling her mid-sentence, George pushes her glasses up her nose and peers up at me. Something changes in her expression, her features falling one by one, like a house of cards crumbling. A minute ago she’d been glowing, tucking her hair behind her ears as she bobbed her head along with the guys’ music. Now, she looks terrified.
Weird.
“I guess we should go in?” I stand up.
Her legs shake as she drags herself after me.
“I had fun. Let’s do this again.”
George nods. We descend the bleachers and start to cross the field, when suddenly her face goes pales and she runs off ahead of me. I call out, but she’s already pushing her way through the crowds heading back inside. She’s so short I lose sight of her in moments.
What’s up with her? For the briefest moment, I thought I might have made a friend. But it seems that not even George the class freak wants to be seen with Mackenzie Malloy.
Mackenzie
“In the week you’ve been at that school, you’ve managed to break a teen actor’s nose, fall for the British rock god, get on the bad side of the head jock, discover some secret childhood friend you don’t remember, piss off the head bitch and make friends with the school freak?” Antony’s laugh bubbles up inside him. “So much for keeping a low profile.”
I moan into the receiver. He’s right, damn him. Being a student at Stonehurst is everything like one of those teen films I studied, and yet, all my studying didn’t prepare me for shit. Every day I walk down that hall between throngs of friends laughing and hugging each other, every time Noah’s eyes stare daggers into my back or Eli tries to talk to me or Gabriel flashes me that megawatt smile, I get this desperate churn in the pit of my stomach. I’ve lived alone for so long I had no idea how much I longed for friendship, for connection. I teased myself with daydreams of what I can never have. Cleo’s words haunt me, running over and over in my head.
You don’t belong.
No shit, Sherlock. It’s senior year, the last year of high school, and I never got to have a normal life with friends and parties and drama. What I wouldn’t give to worry about grades and apply to colleges and think about normal teenage things. I never had a first kiss, or got dressed up with my girlfriends for a school dance, or cheered from the stands at a school sports event. Instead, the only memories I take with me into adulthood are blood and loneliness and betrayal.
At least I’ll have my fucking house.
