He turns away without smiling and I fire a heated glare at his back.
The shorter guy next to him checks me out. Not in the flirty way I’m used to but with a cautious curiosity. I’ll have to watch him. If anyone’s going to see right through me it’ll be that keen set of eyes. He brushes the blond hair off his forehead, then snickers at something the towering guy beside him said. He’s messing with his pale brown locks, murmuring something and not even bothering to notice me.
They walk down the hall together, like a trio who have known each other for life. There’s something about their swaggers that tells me they’re cool, respected. You don’t mess with them. Guys are watching them pass and the three are almost oblivious, caught up in their own little tight-knit world. If they were girls, their arms would be linked and they’d strut through the crowd, giggling over personal jokes that no one else understood.
It makes me miss Charlize and Rhianna. Although, if I’m being honest, these guys look even closer than I was to my girlfriends.
I bet these guys talked about me in their room. If they room together, that is. I have to assume it.
Trey. Was that his name?
He was probably spouting off about my uptight ass while shoving Pringles into his mouth.
Someone nudges me, nearly throwing me off my feet as they rush past.
Laughter, chortling, a football flying over my head. More jostling up front, good-natured insults shouted from one end to the other.
I’m an alien on a foreign planet.
How am I supposed to survive in this place?
I follow the bustle down the stairs and outside. We head down a long, covered corridor that reminds me of Hogwarts with concrete pillars and pretty archways. An icy breeze blasts my face, making my teeth chatter. I hunch my shoulders and scuttle inside the double doors. The sounds change as clomping shoes move from concrete to polished wooden floors.
The first thing to hit me is the smell. My nose wrinkles, my gag reflex kicking in once more as I’m hit by a pungent odor. It’s food on a large scale. Turkey, maybe, and…potatoes? I’m used to Nannie’s Italian cooking—rich meat sauces, pasta made in heaven, crisp green salads vibrant with color and flavor.
I doubt I’m going to get that here.
Joining the line that weaves around the tables, I scan the ocean of testosterone. It’s intimidating to say the least. Plates piled high with fluffy mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables, tables loud with grunts and deep voices, forks heavy with massive mouthfuls. I grimace and look away when one guy starts laughing and gives me a shot of his over-stuffed mouth.
I don’t belong here. Mealtime at my house was elegant, refined—orchestral music playing from the sound system, Mom and I eating small mouthfuls, Dad asking me about my school day. Me telling little lies so he wouldn’t know who I was dating or how I skipped out of school for an afternoon at the beach, and him telling big ones so I wouldn’t find out just how crooked my family really was.
These Eton cavemen eat five times as much as I do. I’ve always been a pigeon eater. How am I supposed to compete with them? But I have to try, right? Or I’ll give myself away.
Shuffling forward, I finally reach the trays and grab one, gripping the brown plastic and swallowing the burning sensation in my throat. My stomach is pitching like a tsunami is threatening to take me out. I don’t know how I’m going to eat.
A large white plate is slapped down on my tray, then piled high with food. Slop, tap, slop, tap…the metal spoons dump more and more food on my plate, weighing me down. Balancing the tray, I collect my cutlery and search for a place to sit.
Every table is filled with gorillas, with the odd skinny chimp perched on the end of a row. That’s going to be me. I’m cool with it as long as no one notices me. I don’t want to talk or answer questions. I just want to nibble what I can and then disappear to the safety of my room.
Clearing my throat, I edge towards a spare seat on the far table to the right. I nearly make it. But the scary-ass weasel who eyed me up in the corridor earlier today won’t let me.
His foot shoots out without warning and I trip to the floor. My tray smacks against the hard wood, followed by my body. I land in my mashed potatoes, gravy spurting onto my neck and face. Everyone around me bursts into laugher. It’s loud, grating…humiliating.
Clenching my jaw, I force myself up, refusing to look to my right and acknowledge the world’s biggest asshole. My sweater is covered with slop. It runs down my clothes, and a couple of big chunks drip off my chest and plop onto the floor beside my shoe.
Sharp footsteps approach and a teacher starts yelling at me. “What’s going on here?”
The laughter dies down to a soft snicker. I stand silent, waiting for someone to turn Evil Eyes in, but no one says a word.