Lust - 1 (4 page)

“Like?”

“I don’t know. Guys? What we’re going to do this weekend? Whether any of your cigarettes are stil dry enough to smoke?” Sighing, Miranda pul ed out her pack—only slightly wet on one corner—and tossed it to Harper.

“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but did you even stop to consider what would happen if you’d gotten caught? Or if, I don’t know, you’d
set the school on fire
?”

“Rand, it was a
double period
.” Harper spoke slowly and loudly, as if deciding that Miranda needed a little help trying to wrap her brain around the basics. “We would have been stuck in there
forever
”

“Oh, please,” Miranda snorted. She began digging through her soggy backpack, assessing the damage: Spanish notebook: dry. Sort of. Paperback
Hamlet
for AP English: soaked. Stila mascara and MAC lipstick: merciful y intact. “If you’d just waited, we would have been out in an hour.” Harper took a long drag on the cigarette and took a moment to consider that. She shook her head.

“We’re seniors now,” she said final y “We’ve waited long enough.”

Boring.

It had taken the girl—Harper—an endless fifty minutes to guide Kaia through the school, fifty minutes of her life that she would never get back. And the rest of the morning had just been more of the same. People she didn’t want to meet, tel ing her things she didn’t want to know. As if she cared what to do or where to go in this shoebox of a school, or had any interest in who was who—or who was sleeping with whom—as if the mundane details of anything in this tedious town could be anything less than tedious.

Anything but boring.

Boring.

Boring.

The word had been beating a steady tattoo in her head ever since she’d arrived in this one-horse (or in this case, she supposed, one-Wal-Mart) town. Not by plane, of course.

There was no airport in Grace, CA. Apparently, there was no airport anywhere
near
Grace, CA, if the endless drive from Las Vegas was any indication. Though to be honest, she was surprised there were even cars in the ridiculous town—the whole place had the feel of a different century, except for the tacky tourist strip of Route 66 running through the town center

—
there
time seemed frozen in a particularly bad year of the 1970s.

She’d plodded through three hours of the school day and knew pretty much al that she needed to know about her new life in Grace—as in, there wasn’t going to be much of one. Now here she was, standing in line in a cafeteria—a
cafeteria
, a smel y, cramped room painted hospital green, with long metal tables bolted to the floor, cranky old women in hairnets doling out lumps of food, hordes of dul -eyed students who at least deserved credit for not al outweighing an elephant, if they’d been eating this greasy crap their entire lives.

Who knew places like this actual y existed? Kaia’s schooltime meals had varied. There was the gourmet health food in the regal boarding school dining hal , with its vaulted ceilings and centuries-old oak tables. And of course the Upper West Side takeout cuisine grabbed to go during lunch periods—wel , any and al periods—at her city prep school. (Prep school had been before
and
after boarding school—getting kicked out was easy when you had plenty of money and connections to kick you into somewhere else. How was Kaia supposed to know that she would only have so many opportunities to vacil ate between the frying pan and fire before getting thrown off the stove altogether?) Even the lunches the maid had occasional y put together for her—or, years ago, the lunches her mother had packed before she’d decided that mothering was too last season—even those had been better than this slop. But that was then, this was now. This was life in Grace: dry heat, neon, decrepit gas stations, incompetent teachers, grease, dust,
cafeterias
. This was her life.

She was stuck. Stranded. A world away from everyone and everything she’d ever known.

At least it was also a world away from her mother. Thank God for smal favors, right?

“Kaia, over here!”

Kaia whirled around to see the mind-numbing tour guide, Harper, waving in her direction. She stuck on a smile—though she didn’t trust Harper any farther than she could throw her (which, judging from the poorly hidden rol of flesh squeezed into the waistband of the girl’s faux designer jeans, wouldn’t be very far at al ). But no reason to burn any bridges—not yet, at least. Besides, no way was she eating alone.

“Hi, Harper,” she said lazily, paying for her “lunch” (an apple, skim milk, and some wilted lettuce masquerading as a salad).

“
My friends
wanted you to come have lunch with us,” Harper explained.

Kaia noticed, but didn’t mention, the pronoun that was plainly missing from Harper’s halfhearted invitation. She fol owed Harper obediently out of the dingy cafeteria and into the cramped “quad” behind it, where students were apparently al owed to eat—if they could find a place to perch amidst the broken tables, scattered garbage, and everpresent dust. Kaia wrinkled her nose—this whole school should be declared a toxic waste site. Students included.

“Everyone, this is Kaia Sel ers,” Harper said with a sarcastic flourish of her hands, once they’d found the right table.

Mmm … maybe not
all
the students. “Everyone” apparently included two tasty guys who looked as if they’d just walked out of an Abercrombie ad. They were sprawled on the wooden benches along with a few other apparent A-listers—even mahogany-fil ed dining hal s have tables set aside for the social elite, and as a lifelong member of that class, Kaia could spot the signs from a mile away. The table was on the outskirts of the quad, far from the lunchroom monitor who poked her head outside every once in a while to make sure no one was smoking, drinking, or destroying school property. But even physical y on the margins, the group was stil somehow at the center of everything—attention, conversation, focus. These kids were loved, they were hated—but most of al , they were watched. Kaia knew the feeling.

“Kaia, this is Miranda Stevens.” Harper stood next to Kaia but had careful y angled her body away, so that she could keep a close watch on her but didn’t have to make any direct eye contact.

One of the girls, apparently Miranda, stepped forward to shake Kaia’s hand. Scarecrow thin, limp, dul hair pul ed back into geeky braids, some unfortunate fashion choices—

the white T-shirt under the imitation Chanel jacket just wasn’t doing it.
But cute,
Kaia thought. She’d do.

“And I’m Beth,” the other girl, blond and beautiful—if you liked that farmer’s daughter thing—waved from the other end of the table, where she was nuzzled under the arm of Abercrombie Number One. “Welcome to Haven High. I’m sure you—”

“And this is Adam and Kane,” Harper interrupted, stepping around to the other side of the table and placing a possessive hand on each of their backs. Adam was an al -

American boy, with blond hair, a square jaw, an honest face, a dark blue T-shirt that no doubt hid washboard abs but revealed astonishingly thick biceps—no surprise, then, that he would be dating the farmer’s daughter, Kaia supposed. He kept one arm tightly around the blond girl, but reached out the other to shake Kaia’s hand. His fingers were warm, his grasp firm—she held it just a second too long.

Kane, on the other hand—there was nothing honest about him. The same muscles (they definitely didn’t make them like this in New York), the same striking good looks, but she could tel from his hooded eyes, from the smirk playing across his lips, from his unabashed and appreciative appraisal of her body as he rose to greet her, that he was playing in a different league. Maybe playing a different game.

Again Kaia extended a hand; instead of shaking it, Kane gently turned it face down, then raised it to his lips and gave it a light kiss.

“Charmed,” he said. From anyone else, it might have been smarmy. From him? It worked.

Both boys grinned at her, and Kaia could feel their gazes traveling down her long neck and lingering at the point where her silver pendant disappeared into the darkness of her low-cut V-neck.
Boys and cleavage,
she thought.
It never fails
.

She also noticed Harper noticing the boys’ glances—and saw the girl’s eyes narrow.

Not bad, Kaia decided. Pretty standard, maybe, but not too bad.

Who knows—maybe she could have a little fun here after al ….

It was a perverse rule of nature: The first day of school always lasted forever. Temporal distortion not covered by the theory of relativity: One hour of first-day time roughly equivalent to half an eternity of normal time. Endless minutes of staring out the window, cursing the wasted daylight, al that time
not
getting a tan,
not
drinking a frozen strawberry margarita,
not
listening to cheesy eighties music and complaining there was never anything to do while secretly delighting in the Madonna singalong. Outside was suddenly Eden—

inside, sweating through sixth period and watching the decrepit clock tick off the minutes, surely nothing less than the seventh level of Hel .

But this year, waiting through the day presented, at least for some, a special torture. They weren’t waiting for the final bel , they were waiting for the final period: advanced French. Normal y a snoozefest with 150-year-old Madame Marshak (who, in the best tradition of hateful y eccentric high school French teachers, remained convinced of her essential Frenchness, despite her Houston birth certificate and unmistakable Texan twang). But this year Marshak had final y gone on to greener pastures—her sister’s house in Buffalo. Although given her advanced age and penchant for driving around tipsy after too much cheap French wine, it seemed likely that Buffalo would be only a brief layover on the way to her final destination.

Regardless, there was a new
professeur
in town—the first new teacher Haven High had seen in years.

He was young.

He was British.

And, if freshman gossip was to be believed—for he’d already made an appearance in third period’s French for annoying beginners—he was hot.

Seriously hot.

There was only one advanced French class, which meant that Beth, Harper, and now Kaia would be stuck in the smal room together al year long. Beth sat toward the front (though not in the front row—she’d learned long ago that good grades were one thing, teacher’s pet was quite another) and flipped through her organizer, trying to figure out how she was going to fit in homework, editing the school newspaper, applying to col eges, babysitting her little brothers, and working a part-time job without going insane. And, oh yeah, without letting her boyfriend forget what she looked like.

Harper, ensconced as usual in the back row, lazily examined her nails and decided that it was definitely time for a manicure. And, come to think of it, maybe a pedicure. And a haircut. Not that there was a decent salon anywhere in town, but at Betty’s off of Green Street, they did a slightly better than half-assed job, and threw in a ten-minute head and shoulder massage for free. Which was an appealing thought—it was only the first day of school and already she could use a serious de-stressing.

Kaia slipped into the classroom just before the bel —Haven High stuck its language classes down in the basement, and she’d already stumbled across a decrepit boiler room and overstuffed janitor’s closet before final y finding her way here. She took the only seat that was left, on the aisle next to a boy who smel ed like rotten fruit. A fitting end to the day. Or
un
fin parfait pour le jour
, as her new French teacher would say. Wherever he was. “Advanced” French. Such a waste of her time, Kaia thought, considering she’d spent half of last summer on the Riviera, gossiping with the château’s staff like a native. Such a joke. Such a—

Such an unexpected treat. If the man who had just appeared in the doorway, flashed the class a rakish smile, ran a hand through his adorably floppy hair, and strode to the front of the room was actual y their teacher, life at Haven High was suddenly looking up.

For the rumors were right.

This guy was hot.

Seriously hot.

Just like a movie star,
Beth sighed to herself as he grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote his name on the board in quick, loping script.

Jack Powel .
“Hola! Me llamo Jack Powell. Como esta?”
he asked, as the class stared blankly back at him. “Okay, and if you understood any of that, you’re probably in the wrong place and you should get out. As for the rest of you,
bienvenue
and welcome to French 4.”

Hot and British,
Harper mused.
Tasty—Hugh Grant meets Clive Owen. So what the hell is he doing here?

“As you probably know, I’m new around here,” Powel admitted, taking off his sports jacket and perching casual y on the edge of his desk. “So I’m sure this class is going to have some surprises to offer al of us.”

You have no idea,
Kaia thought. She had never expected to find someone like him—so handsome, so charming, so cosmopolitan, so
her
—in this shitty town. But now that opportunity had knocked, it seemed only polite to open the door and invite him in.