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I laughed around the bite in my mouth, swallowing it down with a grimace. “I might as well have.”
I winced, realizing I’d said that out loud, but Becca didn’t comment or question, just snagged a grape from the top of one of my salads and plopped it into her mouth.
The girl from this morning strode in a moment later with three other girls strutting behind her. They had to be related, I thought at first. All three were blondes, though after closer inspection it was easy to tell at least one of them wasn’t a natural. Her brows were too dark and her roots were beginning to show. I assumed it was a prerequisite to join her clique and snorted, going back to my lunch.
“I heard about this morning,” Becca said, drawing my attention back to her.
Why wasn’t I surprised?
“People are saying Bri has it out for you.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah. She’s sort of like the queen of Briar Hall. A legacy student. Her family has been going here for generations.”
Woop-de-freakin’-do.
Becca licked her lips and scanned the students in the dining hall like she was considering how she might want to chop all their heads off.
“You look murdery,” I commented, wiping my hands on a napkin before swapping out my sandwich for the soup.
Her expression softened, and she smirked, one corner of her deep crimson lacquered lips tipping up as her eyes leveled back on me. “A bad case of resting bitch face,” she explained. “Inherited from my mom. I checked and there’s no cure. I always look stabby. Probably why bitches like Bri generally steer clear of me.”
“Teach me?”
She chuckled. “Maybe. If you’re lucky.”
I set the spoon down in favor of drinking the rest of the soup straight from the bowl, wondering if it was too soon to go back for seconds. So much fucking food must get wasted here. Enough to feed all the students from Lennox High who couldn’t afford a proper lunch. It looked like most of them weren’t even eating, going straight for the sparkling water and not much else.
“So, you were going to give me the low down,” I said, sitting back in my chair to give my stomach a moment to adjust itself before I attempted to pile anything else into it. “Anyone besides Bri I need to be wary of?”
She jerked her head to the side, gesturing toward the door. The three guys from my homeroom were just entering the cafeteria. The one who’d colluded with Bri to accuse me of theft scanned the student body, making heads spin away from him as though they were afraid to be caught staring.
When his cold stare found me, I stared back, tipping my head to one side, raising a brow.
His jaw twitched as the blond one said something, and the trio went to sit at a table in the back corner of the cafeteria. I didn’t miss how it was the one vantage point that would give them an unobstructed view of the entire room,andensure no one could slip behind them undetected. It was where I would have sat. Where Ididsit when I actually ate in the cafeteria at Lennox High.
“Yeah. Kind of figured. They were in my homeroom,” I mused as the blond guy went to pile a plate sky high with food and carry it back to the table. Grey. I thought he was going to share it—the bitch boy going to get everyone’s lunches—but he kept the tray to himself, immediately diving in. Demolishing the mountain of food like a starved beast.
The guy was thick with muscle, but if he ate like that all the time, you had to wonder where it all went.
“You shouldn’t stare,” Becca said. “They’re the Crows.”
I lifted a brow.
She leaned in, her brown eyes cutting to the table in the corner and back again as though she were afraid they might hear her from this far away. “They’re Diesel St. Crow’s adopted sons.”
I knew that name. Where the hell did I know that name from?
“The Saints,” Becca said when she saw I was having trouble catching on. “The Thorn Valley chapter. Diesel’s one of the original three. This was ground zero for the gang. Now there are chapters all over Cali. One in Phoenix, too, I think.”
Heat licked up my back, and my appetite for food vanished, replaced with something more savage. Of fucking course they were part of a gang.
I thought I was escaping that bullshit when I agreed to leave Lennox and come here. I should’ve known better.
“They’re members then?”
She nodded, absently picking at the orange on her plate. “What’s his deal?” I asked. “The one who keeps staring.”
