Nan pouted. “They do not sound like screeching cats. And they’re called the Dead Prince Society. I’ll stand in line all night if I have to, but we are definitely going. And we definitely need to find you different clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Mina looked down at her vintage striped shirt and grimaced at the obvious paint stain from her earlier art project. What others called thrift store, Mina’s mom called vintage. How could she have missed the stain? She furiously rubbed at the offending paint and it started to slowly chip off, but it was going to take a lot of chipping to get it all.
She’d thought she’d been doing better with her wardrobe. At least she no longer wore hoodie jackets, which had tended to be a bane to her on her last encounter with the Story, when it had tried to turn her into Red Riding Hood and made all of her clothes red. Still, it was tough to fit in and buy expensive clothes when her single mom, who cleaned houses for a living, supported her and her brother. So Mina chose to wear hand-me-down, garage-sale items and thrift store finds which weren’t all bad.
“Forget it, Mina. The shirt is a lost cause. It’s not worth salvaging.” Nan grabbed her hand, pulled her out of the chair. Mina sighed, picked up her backpack and followed her friend out into the hall of Kennedy High.
Most of the students had already left for the day, and only those who had detention or were involved in afterschool clubs and sports were on campus. Mina never minded staying late after school. It meant she was able to see Brody and avoid running into despicable Jared.
Mina had once believed Jared was dead, and had felt responsible for his death. A Fae wolf had jumped from a moving van onto Jared’s motorcycle while they were both speeding down a highway. Mina saw them crash and she believed there was no way they could have survived that wreck. She had been devastated and spent days crying over him. Now, since he obviously wasn’t dead, she wished he was. He was rude, obnoxious and a complete jerk.
The day that Jared had appeared in the school lunchroom, miraculously alive, would be forever burned into her memory. For a moment, when he’d surprised her and looked at her with such heat filled and intense eyes, one would have thought it was Mina who had almost died. She’d clutched the table for support and dug her nails into it so she wouldn’t run to him crying and blubbering loudly. He’d seen her slight movement and given just the slightest head shake “no”. He’d continued to stare right into her soul as he moved across the lunchroom to sit at a different table. Jared was rejecting her, to keep up with appearances of being a new student.
Mina’s heart had thudded. She’d heard her blood rushing in her ears as she’d tried to make sense of the intense emotions that had overtaken her at the sight of Jared and his immediate response to her. Excitement, happiness, joy, confusion, hurt, betrayal, sadness, all of those emotions had flushed across her face in a blink of an eye and she’d sat down hard on the chair. Nan had barely noticed as she had droned on and on about the new kid.
She hadn’t been able to take the rejection from the one person who knew who she really was. And obviously Jared still remembered everything that had happened. Why? Why would he do this to her? She’d sat numbly across the room from Jared who knew her but pretended otherwise, and Brody who didn’t remember her and she wished had. The Fates were cruel. Why couldn’t it have been the opposite? Why couldn’t Brody have retained his memories and Jared have forgotten?
Mina had felt awful at her sudden change of thought and covered her face with her hands. It was too much, all too much for a sixteen year old to absorb. It wasn’t until she’d heard Savannah White’s laugh fill the lunchroom that Mina had officially lost it. She’d grabbed her tray and pushed it across the lunch table, then stood up loudly as her chair had flipped over, causing every head to turn her way expectantly. Every head except for Jared’s.
Mina had been angry. Angrier than she’d felt in a while. As a result, she’d turned and pushed another chair out of the way. The chair had moved effortlessly, and magically it changed directions. It skidded into a poor passerby, Steven. He stumbled and dropped his lunch tray of food right into the lap of the one and only Savannah White. Savannah had screamed at Steven and his pile of spaghetti that spilled across her pristine cheerleader uniform. The lunchroom erupted into laughter.