After standing in the shower like a zombie, I managed to choke myself with my toothbrush, stab myself in the eye with my mascara, and put on two different color socks. I figured I had met my crap-that-can-go-wrong quota in five minutes.
Boy was I wrong.
Shocked didn’t even come close to what I felt at seeing Emma Deen walk down the halls on Monday morning. I mean, her dad had just kicked the bucket a few days ago. Didn’t she need a period of mourning? Like a month? Or a year?
He wasn’t even my dad and I was still shaken up about the whole thing.
That girl must have ovaries of steel, or she was just heartless, which I knew not to be true. I had seen that girl with hearts beaming in her eyes. She had loved Travis, and while she had been crazy in love, she had been anything but a cold-hearted biotch.
Now she was just scary. Again.
Seeing her filled my stomach with so many knots that I thought I was going to spew bits of blueberry Pop Tarts all over the school linoleum floor. Chase stiffened beside me. Lexi stopped chattering to Sierra and Hayden. I swear you could have heard a pin drop. When her emerald eyes connected with mine, I forgot to breathe.
Goodie gumdrops.
Emma looked like she wanted to slice and dice me again into millions of fragmented pieces. Feeling awkward and uncomfortable as heck, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my fuzzy scarf. (It was a gift from my mom. I loved it. Whoever had come up with the idea to put pockets at the end of a scarf was ingenious). Emma breezed by me. Just when I thought the coast was clear and I was about to exhale, she spun around, strawberry hair flying with her movements.
I jumped. It couldn’t be helped. She was intimidating.
There was nothing friendly about the way her lips curled. “I bet you’re glad to see me.”
Chase cracked his knuckles.
Keep cool. Keep cool. “Actually, I was just thinking that I wish I could go back to the day I met you…and walk the hell away.” I also wished I could uninstall anxiety, because right now mine was through the roof. Where was the app for that?
“See you later…friend.” The last word rolled off her tongue like ice. “I’d watch your back around here. High school can be dangerous.”
Was that a threat? I think she just threatened me. Chase growled, but it was pointless. Emma was already strutting down the hall, her combat boots clanging in her wake. You can bet her scrawny rear I was going to watch my front, my side, my butt, and my back.
Chase nudged my hip with his. “Hey, you okay?”
I hugged my science book against my chest, trying to breathe normally. “No. I am not okay. I have classes with that lunatic.” Emma had just given me a stroke. I had been prepared to face her again, just not so soon. I had imagined I would have more time to prepare myself and not act like such a ninny.
Next time, I am not going to let her get the best of me. I was not going to let her intimidate me for the rest of our senior year. For once I wanted to just be a normal teenage girl. Emma made that nearly impossible.
Sighing, I realized I was going to have to kick her ass.
It was the only way. I had to get down to her level. Plus, I was sort of becoming quite the scrapper. Dare I say that I sort of enjoyed taking my aggression out by attacking Emma?
The bell blasted right above my head, and I swear I lost an eardrum. Chase pressed a kiss to my cheek and whispered, “I’ll see you after class.”
“If I survive,” I muttered.
Bad joke. Probably too soon, but I had a mouth disease. I said crap at the most inappropriate times. Thanks, Mom.
Chase shot up a brow, his silver hoop mocking me. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
I leaned on one foot. “I lost it when I met you.”
The sly grin he gave me sent warm butterflies zooming in my belly. “Don’t stress. I’ll help you find it again.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” I muttered.
Lexi looped her arm through mine. “Let’s go. The two of you can do your bizarre foreplay later. We are going to be late.”
She tugged me down the hall leaving a certain half-demon smirking behind me. I glanced over my shoulder for one last mouthwatering glimpse, just something to hold on to for the next 45 drawn-out minutes.
He winked at me.
Believe it or not, things went from worse to God-kill-me-now, and it wasn’t just because we were playing volleyball in gym class. That was a cinch compared to what waited for me in the girl’s locker room.
How had I forgotten that Emma and I shared this class? Oh, such fond memories of her harassing me in between Jane Fonda workout videos. I miss-stepped just a beat before I strolled past her, deliberately bumping her with my shoulder.
She snickered, but underneath her I-don’t-even-give-a-shit fa?ade, I could feel hate radiating off her skin. I briefly contemplated using my newly acquired compulsion skills to make her forget everything. I mean everything. Then it hit me, the whole light bulb going off in the brain... I thought I had just found the answer to my troubles.
And I might have smiled like a crazy person.