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It’s absolutely infuriating. Because it’s Kaden fucking Hunter. How can something feel so right with someone who is so wrong?
Yanking my locker open, I pull out my bag and slam it down on the bench before me in frustration.
“Now you’re suddenly putting some strength into your arms?” a taunting voice comes from my left.
I ignore it, but move quickly to get dressed. Jane and Leslie haven’t stolen my clothes and towel again since that first time, but they still make me wait for everyone else to shower first. And I don’t care enough to fight them about it.
Kaden might have left me alone this entire week, instead focusing on tormenting my brothers, but Jane and Leslie, on the other hand, have not. Just like every day of every week, they do something or other to make me feel like a worthless waste of space. And their constant mocking comments and petty acts of cruelty have worn me down more than I want to admit.
Pulling my pants up, I manage to zip them up and button them right before the two apparently tireless mean girls appear beside me. I reach for my shirt, but Jane snatches it from the bench right before I can grab it. I’m at least wearing a bra, so I’m thankfully not entirely naked above the waist as I turn to face them.
“What do you want?” I ask, barely managing to keep the venom from my voice.
Jane, who is still holding my shirt in one hand, drags a demeaning glance up and down my body. “Look at you. We’re three months into the semester, and you’re still as skinny as the day we got here. Do you have some kind of disease that makes it impossible for you to actually gain muscles, or what?”
Next to her, Leslie snickers and flicks a mocking look over my body.
I suppress the instinct to cross my arms over my chest, and instead simply reply in a dead serious tone, “Yes, I do. Didn’t you know? I thought the teachers had already informed everyone since it’s highly contagious.”
Both of them jerk back, and Jane drops my shirt as if it had burned her. Or infected her.
Quickly crouching down, I snatch it up before she can grab it again. A smug chuckle escapes my lips as I straighten.
Realization pulses across their faces.
I flash them a smirk before pulling the shirt over my head.
However, during those few seconds that my vision is obscured by the shirt, they close the distance between us again. I’ve barely managed to tug the hem down before Leslie gives me a shove that sends me stumbling backwards. My back smacks into the locker behind me with a thud.
The few other girls who are still getting dressed glance our way. But none of them does anything to intervene. Because of the unspoken rule that the top students get to shower first, everyone who is still here, except for Jane and Leslie, is down at the bottom of the pecking order. Just like me. And they are apparently reluctant to become the mean girls’ next target. I can’t really blame them for that, though.
“Did no one ever teach you not to piss off your superiors?” Leslie demands, as both she and Jane corner me against the locker.
“Oh, they did,” I reply, and then flick a dismissive look up and down their bodies. “But since I don’t see any of my superiors in this particular room, I think I’m good.”
Anger flashes in their eyes.
Then Jane shoots me a pointed stare. “And this is why no one likes you.”
Logically, I know that she is probably just making that up, but hurt still stabs through my chest.
“Aww, look at that. She’s hurt.” Jane glances at Leslie. “Should we tell her?”
Leslie cocks her head, her blue eyes still on my face. “I don’t think she can handle it if we do.”
“Then we should definitely tell her.”
“Agreed.”
“Tell me what?” I snap while desperately wishing that I was strong enough to knock their damned heads together and simply walk away from here. But with both of them trapping me against the row of metal lockers like this, I can’t leave unless they move.
“No one wants you here because you’re messing it up for everyone,” Jane says as if it’s the most obvious thing ever that I really should already know. “No one wants to be partnered with you during sparring lessons, because it makes them fall behind in their training too since you can’t keep up. And no one wants you on their team during team challenges because it’s a guaranteed way to lose.”
Pain twists my insides. Of all the mean things they have said to me this semester, this is by far the worst. Because I don’t know how to convince myself that it isn’t true.
“Not to mention the fact that you’re preventing a real aspiring assassin from attending Blackwater,” she continues. “You’re a legacy student from the great Petrov family, so the school can’t refuse you entry. Which means that they had to take a spot from someone who deserved to be here and give it to you instead.”
More hurt flashes through me, and I swallow against the sudden nausea crawling up my throat.
