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I wait until the last few minutes of the day before I head back to school. Most of the seniors are gone the last period of the day, but I guess Gloria had to fulfill a gym requirement since she quit cheer halfway through the year. I prop a chair under the handle of the storage room where I know guys go look through the peephole someone put in the wall to spy into the girls’ locker room.
Then I lean against the wall outside the locker room until the girls start coming out.
“Hey,” I say, tipping my chin at Lo when she comes out. Her hair’s pulled up in a messy bun, and she barely wears any makeup anymore. She’s in a pair of baggy sweats and a hoodie. She wouldn’t have been caught dead like that a few months ago, but it suits her. Despite the hell that she goes through every day—one I know all too well after spending the last few years in her place—she looks relaxed. It looks good on her.
She nods to me in acknowledgement and keeps walking, like she thinks I’d be here for anyone else. I realize as she walks away that I miss the way she used to cut me down. I expected her to make some cutting remark about me creeping outside thegirls’ locker room, even had a reply on the tip of my tongue. After so long, it’s automatic. I’m ready to go toe-to-toe with her, like I always did, and it pisses me off that they broke her of that habit, made her think she couldn’t still do that.
Or maybe I made her think that by taking her spot at the elite table.
“Lo,” I call after her.
“Yeah?” She turns back, waiting for whatever I have to say, probably expecting me to cut her down the way she always did me. It’s sick to miss it, but she gave me a chance to hit back every day, in whatever little way I dared. Sometimes she was the only person who talked to me all day besides Dixie. I didn’t know until this moment that she’s what kept me sane on those days. Thinking up what to say to her when none of the Dolces would overhear, because I’d learned that she never squealed to them as expected, filled boring class periods every bit as much as fantasizing about getting revenge for all she’d done.
It shouldn’t be hard to let that go, to accept that it’s over and the demon queen will never look down her nose at me, never slice me with cutting words from her forked tongue or step on my shredded ego with her poison-tipped stilettos from hell. It shouldn’t be sad to see that she’s not a demon queen at all but just a regular girl under all the makeup and attitude she used to wear like gilded armor.
“Come ‘ere,” I say.
She hesitates a moment, and then she comes, dragging her feet and glancing at the other girls, like she thinks I have something evil planned and one of them might tip her off.
“Is anyone left in there?” I ask, cutting my gaze towards the door.
“I don’t know,” she says, watching me warily.
“Can you check?”
She swallows, her pupils dilating with fear as she stares at the closed door for a second before returning her attention to me. “Who’s in there?” she asks quietly.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
She sighs. “How dumb do you think I am?”
“Not even a little.”
“You’re not as clever as you think you are, Colt. You’re obviously setting me up. So what is it? Dixie and her friends waiting to jump me, or your dude bros waiting to rape me?”
“What the fuck, Lo?”
“I mean, I get it. I’m a whore anyway, and I’ve proven I’ll keep my mouth shut about it, no matter what y’all do to me. You have to prove yourself, just like Rylan had to show what he’d do to be one of them. Is this your hazing?”
“Lo?” I say. “Shut up, turn around, and walk back in there.”
She clamps her mouth shut, her jaw clenches, and that veil of indifference falls over her eyes, the one through which she’s looked at me all these years, the one that fooled me into thinking she was an inhuman demon queen all that time.
I’m only now realizing that she’s anything but.
She holds my gaze as she shoves the door open, not even checking what’s waiting for her. She’s practically daring me to do something fucked up to her, proving she can take it.
Good.
She’ll need to, because I’m about to.
“Anyone in here?” she shouts into the echoing room.
No one answers. She raises a brow at me. “Happy?”
“Yes,” I say. “Now go in.”
Her lips pinch together, but she stands straight and marches in like the queen she’s forgotten she was. I let the door fall closed behind me, and she spins on her heel, her eyeswidening when she sees me standing behind her. Her gaze darts around, and she swallows.
