Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (14 page)

“Cecelia?
 
What’s wrong with Cecelia?”

“Well, before, she didn’t like you
because you were new.
 
But now, she’ll hate
you.”

“Why now?”

“You don’t know?” Alexis said in
disbelief.
 
“Spencer broke up with
Cecelia two months ago.
 
She’s been
trying – rather embarrassingly, I might add – to get back together with him
ever since.
 
Oh, but of course you
wouldn’t know.
 
That was before you got
here.” Alexis shrugged, dismissing the fact like it was completely
irrelevant.
 
“Whoops.”

I put my head into my hands.
 
“Whoops” was an imperial understatement.
 
“Whoops” was appropriate when Alexis forgot
to do her homework, not when she knowingly made me the enemy of Spencer’s
psycho ex-girlfriend.

“How did I not know this?”

“Spencer doesn’t talk about her
much.” Alexis answered indifferently.
 
“Honestly, I don’t blame him.”

Well
I did
.

I spent the next few hours dreading
the impending approach of my math class, which at this point felt closer to a
torture chamber than a place of learning.
 
On the bright side, Dylan was talking to me again.
 
It never took long for him to break his
frustration-induced silences.

Third hour arrived faster than I
would have liked, and, despite my best efforts to move deliberately slowly, I
still ended up getting to class early.
 
It was like the universe was intentionally trying to piss me off.

I walked to my seat with Dylan
beside me.
 
He was chattering on about
some new movie with spies and blood and guns that he really wanted to see, but
I wasn’t really paying attention, and he didn’t seem to notice.
 
I dropped myself into my rickety wooden chair
and aimlessly swiveled around in it while I waited for the class to fill.
 
Restless, I pulled out my homework and placed
it neatly in the exact center of my desk.

From the corner of my eye, I
watched Cecelia march into the room and slam her bag on the ground with
unnecessary force, effectively detonating it.
 
With a groan and bruised dignity, she bent over to pick up the explosion
of books and papers on the ground.
 
Her
hair, which was usually impeccably straight, didn’t look like it had been
brushed, and fell down around her in a mess of knots and tangles.
 
Someone was having a bad day.

As she rummaged through the loose
papers, her frustration shifted into urgency, her fingers tearing through the
mess as if she were missing something.
 
She pushed her perfectly manicured fingers into her hair and brought her
head up.
 
Her eyes immediately found
mine.
 
She glared at me malevolently and
pressed her glossy lips together.

Dylan’s voice reclaimed my
attention.
 
“If you don’t answer, I’m
just going to take your silence as a yes.”

I swept my leg over my chair so
that I was sitting backwards, face-to-face with Dylan.
 
I couldn’t see Cecelia at all now.
 
“And what did I just agree to?”

“Nice to see you’ve decided to
return to earth.”
 
Apparently Dylan
had
noticed I wasn’t listening.
 
I smiled guiltily.
 
“We’re going to a movie.
 
Heather wants to see it too.
 
We should bring her.”

I had to admit a movie sounded
especially appealing – a way to escape the stresses of reality for an hour or
two.
 
“When?”

“This weekend?” Dylan suggested.

“She can’t do Saturday, though,”
Spencer intruded, appearing from out of nowhere.
 
He helped himself to the empty seat beside
Dylan.
 
“She has other plans.
 
We’re still on for that date, right?” he said
loudly, probably to make sure Dylan would hear.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” I infused
weak interest into my voice.
 
Dylan shot
me a disgusted look.

“Good,” Spencer smiled.

“Seats, everyone,” Ms. Garner
snapped as she strode into the room.
 
Just as the door was about to close, Alexis managed to tiptoe in without
being noticed.
 
“Take out your homework
and place it where I can see it.
 
If it’s
not on your desk when I pass you, I will assume you were either too incompetent
or too lazy to do it.”
 
Ms. Garner was
exceptionally surly today.

I turned forward in my seat to
grade my homework, only to discover that it wasn’t there.
 
How strange.
 
I could have sworn I had placed it on my desk.

I rummaged through my folders and
scanned the ground in search of the missing paper.
 
Ms. Garner was steadily making her way down
the aisle toward me.

“Dylan, hey,” I said under my breath.

Dylan looked up from his work.
 
“What is it?”

“I can’t find my homework.
 
Do you know where it went?”

“Wasn’t it on your desk?”

“I know.
 
I –” A tall, slender shadow fell over me, and
I shut my mouth.

Ms. Garner produced a disdainful
noise from the back of her throat.
 
“Still intent on distracting others, are you, Miss Tesse?”

I stared up at her silently and
fought against my instinct to defend myself.
 
By saying anything, I would just be adding fuel to the fire.

“You know I’ve already warned you
once about that, and yet you still continue to blatantly disobey me.
 
I believe you have warranted yourself a
detention, Miss Tesse.”

“Actually, I was the one
distracting her,” Dylan interrupted apologetically.
 
I shot him a frantic look and willed him to
stop.
 
“I’m really bad with class
policy.
 
She was just telling me to shut
up.”

Ms. Garner grimaced and clacked her
nails across her clipboard.
 
I could
practically see the gears in her head turning, working to make the worst of a
situation Dylan had made the best of.

“Mr. Winters, I see you have
developed Miss Tesse’s penchant for disobedience.
 
Fortunately for you, Miss Tesse, it seems you
have avoided detention… for now.
 
Next
time, neither of you will be so lucky.”

I noticed traces of disappointment
in Ms. Garner’s expression, but only for a split second.
 
As soon as she noticed my bare desk, her eyes
immediately lit up.

“Now, Miss Tesse, would you like to
explain why you don’t have your assignment?”

“I promise I did it.
 
It was right here,” I said meekly.

Ms. Garner’s lips thinned in
irritation.
 
“And did it simply
vanish?
 
A poor excuse.
 
Your promises mean nothing to me.”

Cecelia snickered from her seat,
like Ms. Garner had just told the funniest joke in the world.

“I saw her assignment on her desk
though,” Dylan insisted.

“Mr. Winters, I strongly encourage
you to hold your tongue.
 
Miss Tesse is
perfectly capable of speaking for herself.”

I quickly gave Dylan an
appreciative look.
 
He had already done
enough for me.

I leaned back against my seat in
resignation.
 
“Well, I guess I don’t have
my homework then.”

Ms. Garner’s mouth twitched upwards
before finally stretching into a triumphant smile.
 
“I advise you to put more effort into this
class, Miss Tesse.
 
You can’t expect to
skate through life without hard work.”
 
Her cold, unfeeling eyes bore into mine.

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.

Ahead of me, Cecelia and her
friends giggled at my misfortune.
 
Amidst
the laughter, I thought I heard Cecelia gleefully whisper, “I’ll never need to
do my homework again.”

Dylan must have heard it too,
because he tapped my shoulder and pointed to her desk.
 
On it was a paper that looked suspiciously
like mine, with “Cecelia” messily scrawled atop a little area that looked like
it had been scrubbed too many times with an eraser.

I wasn’t absolutely sure the paper
was mine until I watched Ms. Garner approach Cecelia and halfheartedly
compliment her perfect answers.

For the rest of class, I fumed in
my seat in angry silence.
 
Even Alexis
had remembered to do her homework, which didn’t make me feel any better.

Chemistry passed in a blur, and
before I knew it, I was walking with Dylan, Spencer, and Alexis to the
cafeteria.

“More new kids,” Alexis announced
while we were in line to get food.

My eyes passed over the sea of
heads and stopped on Arisella and Adrian, who were poking at two gelatinous
blobs of meatloaf at a table at the edge of the cafeteria.
 
They stood out from everyone else, not just
because of Arisella’s pink highlights, but because there was something about
them that was fundamentally different from everyone else.
 
They gave off an indescribably hostile aura,
which was probably the reason the tables around them were empty.

“They’re our neighbors,” Dylan
informed her.

Spencer’s forehead wrinkled in
confusion.
 
“Our?”

“Amber’s and mine.
 
Did she not tell you I moved in with her
family?”

I gaped at Dylan.
 
“You do not need to tell everyone we know,” I
hissed under my breath.
 
Dylan grinned
shamelessly.

“No, she did not,” Spencer
muttered.

I avoided making eye contact with
Spencer while I paid for my lunch.

My attention was drawn back to
Arisella and Adrian, who looked completely out of place amongst the noisy,
hungry crowd.
 
“I think I should sit with
the new kids.
 
It’s their first day.”

“Again?” Spencer said, more upset
than he really had a right to be.

Alexis picked up her tray and used
it to gesture toward my chest.
 
“You sure
do have a weak spot in your heart for new kids.”

“I actually think that’s one of my
more redeeming qualities,” I said over my shoulder, while I made my exit.
 
Adrian’s head lifted as soon as I left the
line, and from across the cafeteria I thought I could distinguish a subtle
grin.

But before I had even gone five
feet, Dylan fell into step beside me.

“What?
 
You couldn’t have been expecting me to sit
with them.”
 
Dylan’s eyes flicked back to
Spencer and Alexis, who were watching us cross the room.
 
I guessed I hadn’t.

If Adrian had been smiling at all,
he certainly wasn’t anymore.
 
Dylan and I
slid into the pair of vacant seats in front of Arisella and Adrian.
 
Arisella was still viciously stabbing her
meat loaf with a fork, strewing it all over her plate to examine its
ingredients.

Dylan eyed her like she was a wild
animal.
 
Technically, she kind of was.

“They were very poorly
homeschooled,” I whispered to Dylan before he could get too apprehensive.

Dylan snorted.
 
“Was she homeschooled at a zoo?”

Arisella smashed her fork into the
table.
 
“What is this horrid meal?”

“Meat loaf,” I informed her, as I
took a bite out of my spaghetti.

“Meat?”
 
Arisella scoffed.
 
“This isn’t meat.”

I rolled my eyes.
 
“That’s why no one ever eats it.”

Adrian snuck a spoonful of the
disgusting brown stuff into his mouth.
 
“It’s not that bad,” he remarked, although his wrinkled nose said otherwise.
 
“It tastes kind of like moonra –” Adrian
stopped midsentence.
 
I suspected he was
about to say the name of some Fallyrian meat, but remembered Dylan’s presence
and caught himself.
 
Fortunately, Dylan
was too busy inhaling his pasta to notice.

Arisella pushed her tray of mush
away, completely giving up on the idea of ever ingesting it.
 
Her eyes honed in on some invisible object
behind me.
 
“A girl is coming this way.”

I whirled around in my seat.
 
Cecelia was sashaying toward us, her mini
skirt bobbing indecently at her thighs, like she had majored in the science of
just managing to skim the dress code.
 
It
appeared that she had spent the last thirty minutes in the bathroom
straightening her appearance, because she looked nothing like she had in math class.

“Gentlemen,” she purred as she
claimed the seat beside Dylan.
 
“And
ladies.”
 
She didn’t even bother to look
at Arisella or me.
 
“I’d like to welcome
you to Pierce High.
 
I’m Cecelia, a
friend of Amber’s.”

I sputtered loudly on the milk I
was drinking, earning me a disgusted glance from Cecelia.

“We’re Adrian and Arisella Smith.”
Adrian raised his hand toward himself and his sister.
 
I lifted an eyebrow at him.
 
I was more than sure he had just given a
false surname.