Ms. Felton pauses, and the entire room turns to look as the elevator opens, and a guy with razored mint green hair appears, the sleeves of his crisp, white shirt pushed up, his muscular forearms covered in tattoos. My eyes widen and my heart skips several beats as he steps into the room like he owns the place.
“Sorry I’m late, Carrie-Anne,” he says, green eyes sweeping the room and coming to rest on me. Pretty sure I’m the only person in this room he doesn’t recognize. He surveys me for a moment, and then flicks his attention back to our teacher. “No seat for me?”
“It seems we’re short one chair,” Ms. Felton says, checking the iPad in her arms. “We have one more student than originally planned …”
“Get up, Charity,” Tristan whispers, leaning over and focusing quite clearly on me. “You’re the one who’s attending for free. Zayd’s family actually pays for him to go here. Don’t you think he deserves a chair?”
My cheeks heat up with anger, but I don’t move from where I’m sitting. I’d rather die. Little do I know in that moment, the Idols will try their hardest to achieve that end.
“I think if Burberry Prep can afford elevators, it can afford an extra chair.” My voice is quiet, but firm. Miranda makes a small, helpless sound from beside me, and Tristan sits up, lifting his chin like I’ve just seriously pissed him off.
“It’s not a matter of affording chairs,” Ms. Felton interrupts, misreading the situation and waving her hand dismissively. “This is a small room, and we didn’t want more furniture than necessary. I’ll have the maintenance staff bring another up. Mr. Kaiser, seeing as you’re the only person who refused to show up on time, you can stand for the time being.”
“My pleasure, Ms. Felton,” he purrs, swaggering over to the window and propping himself on one of the wide, stone sills. His eyes go half-lidded, and he looks the teacher up and down appreciatively. “Anything for you.” Most of the students chuckle, but I can’t seem to stop studying this guy. Colored hair is expressly prohibited in the student dress code, and here this guy is with mint green hair, piercings in his lips and brow, and arms covered in tattoos.
“Zayd’s agent got him some special working contract,” Miranda whispers, reading my mind. “Like, he has to maintain a certain look for his career. That, and it’s rumored this his agent, Bob Rosenberg, is fucking Vice Principal Castor.” My mouth twitches at the corner, but I’m not surprised. Nothing at this school could surprise me at this point.
“And what’s his career?” I ask, casting another glance in Zayd’s direction. He’s easy on the eyes, that’s for sure. My stomach twists into a little knot, and I bite my lower lip.
“Rock star.” Miranda grins when I give her a questioning look. “Lead singer of the band Afterglow. They’re kind of a big deal; they had over a hundred thousand downloads of their debut album last year, and like a hundred million streams.”
Ms. Felton gives Zayd a narrow-eyed look, like she’s used to this sort of bullshit from entitled teens, and goes back to her speech, telling us all how we should be able to speak freely in here, how there are no limits to the discussions we can have, and so on and so forth. Pretty sure I’m the only person listening, and when the bell in the chapel sounds, I’m also the last one out.
Except for Zayd Kaiser.
“You,” he says, like he expects me to leap at his beck and call. “You’re new here?”
“This is Marnye Reed,” Miranda says, beaming happily and gesturing at me like I’m her newest, greatest find. I think she senses a possible Idol ally for me, but … I don’t think so. The way Zayd’s looking at me, like I’m a piece of meat he might use and throw away, I’m pretty sure she’s dead-wrong. I have a way of reading people. Been doing it my whole life. Back at LBH, it could literally be the difference between life and death. At the end of last year, one of the freshmen was murdered by two seniors.
“Marnye Reed,” Zayd starts, his voice this husky purr that gets under your skin in the best possible way. He taps an inked finger against his mouth for a moment, and then snaps his fingers. “Right. A few of the others texted me about you this morning, before the great phone purge.” He crinkles his brow and then flicks at one of his silver lip rings with a tattooed finger. “What they’re saying about you, it’s just not right.” My mouth pops open, and I feel the briefest inkling of relief. Maybe I don’t have to be in a feud with every popular kid on campus. “They’re calling you the Working Girl, but they’re also saying you’re not fuckable.”
“Excuse me?” I choke, but Zayd’s already smiling at me with sharp, sharp lips, like a razorblade threatening to cut. His hair is spiked up, his shirt mussed, and half his buttons are undone. I can see another tattoo lingering on the fine planes of his chest.
“What I’m saying is, you can’t be a Working Girl and an unfuckable virgin all at once.” Zayd leans in close to me, close enough that I can smell cloves and tobacco on his skin. Maybe he thinks smoking clove cigarettes makes him a badass. It doesn’t. All it does is make him look like a douche. “And really,” he reaches out to tease some of the loose hair hanging by my face. “I’d fuck you, if you were game.” Zayd grins at me, but it’s not a kind expression. It’s derisive, mocking, demeaning. “That’s the best offer you’ll get all year, so I suggest you take it.”
“Why don’t you go to hell?” I blurt back, my cheeks flushed, my head swimming. How is this happening? I haven’t even had my first class yet, and I’ve already been put through the wringer. I’m exhausted. I wonder how long it’ll take them to get tired of picking on me. Maybe never. In middle school, they didn’t get tired until … Zack changed things.
“Last chance, Working Girl.” Zayd leans in even closer and puts his mouth near my ear. “I’ll even pay you for your services: whatever the fee is, I can afford it.”
Without thinking, I lift a hand, intending to slap him in the face. Zayd intercepts the motion, giving my wrist a squeeze before smirking and stepping back. He releases me, but not before looking me up and down with a dark glimmer in his green eyes.
“You’re going to regret that move,” he tells me, and I’m so flustered that I can’t seem to come up with a response.
Me? Regret this moment? The only person who’s going to regret anything today is Zayd Kaiser when I report him to the school administration.
“It’s not worth it,” Miranda whispers, putting her arm through mine. “Come on, let’s go to class and hopefully by the end of the day, they’ll forget about tormenting you.”
With a nod, I follow along behind her. My eyes are stinging with tears, but I won’t shed them.
I refuse to give these guys the satisfaction.
By the time lunch rolls around, Miranda’s done some recon, sliding into the seat across from me and picking up the menu from her plate. And yes, I said it: menu. The ‘cafeteria’ is set up like a restaurant with servers and busboys, tables set with plates and cloth napkins, small menus printed on cardstock that make me think of two birthdays ago when Dad splurged and took me to a fancy restaurant for dinner.
My mind is racing, and I feel cold all over, like I’m so far out of my element I may never get warm again.
“It’s bad, Marnye,” she says, sighing and then pausing to place her order with our waiter. Me, I’ve already got a plate of souvlaki chicken with roasted lemon potatoes topped with feta. Frankly, I don’t know what half of those things are. Back home, we have sloppy joes, burgers, and hot dogs. That’s dinner at the Train Car with Dad. “It’s really, really bad.”
“What’s bad?” I ask, wondering how my day can get any worse. I came into Burberry Prep this morning with high hopes, ready to take on the world. Right now, I feel like I’m living a social apocalypse.
“The Idols, they’ve declared war on you.” My mouth pops open, but I’m not really sure what to say to that. How do you respond when someone tells you the richest, most popular kids at your school want you socially killed?
“All of them?” I ask, glancing over at the large table in the corner where Tristan, Creed, and Zayd sit next to Harper, Becky, and a girl who I can only assume is Gena Whitley. They aren’t looking at me. Instead, they’re laughing and eating, drawing all of the energy out of the room. I have to admit, they’ve got charisma, all six of them. Then again, Hitler had charisma, too, and look how that turned out.
“All of them,” Miranda confirms, lifting her glass of ice water to her lips and glancing at the round table and all of its royalty. “They don’t want you here.”
“Why?” I ask, but I needn’t have bothered. Miranda glances at me, but her face says it all: they don’t want me here because I grew up in a neighborhood of trailers and mobile homes, because I lived in an old train car most of my life, because I don’t have a net worth or a family legacy. “What am I supposed to do about that? I was thinking about reporting Tristan and Zayd to the administration. There’s an anti-bullying policy that I read about in the student handbook—”
Miranda’s look stops me dead in my tracks.
“What?” I ask, picking up my fork and poking at my fancy Greek-inspired chicken dish. It tastes … strange. Maybe my palette just isn’t as refined as everyone else’s? I wonder if I could ask the kitchen to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? “Am I supposed to just let them get away with their bullshit?” My eyes wander back to the table again and I catch Creed staring at me. His blue eyes narrow, and he reaches up to brush some blond hair back from his forehead. If it’s possible to arrogantly brush hair from one’s face, he manages it. Zayd and Tristan notice him looking my way, and soon all three Idols are glaring at me.
Fantastic.