I hesitated before sitting down.
"Don't mind Milo," said Hannah. "He's just being stupid."
"Is he though?" asked Fatima, not looking up from her biology notes. "Milo isn't the one getting bullied in the hallways, making a scene in class, picking fights with people." She glanced up at me and started gathering her things. "You're not exactly trying to make things better for yourself, are you." She gave a little shrug and stood up. "No offence, Lucy. I don't have anything against you personally. I just don't want to be seen with you while you're making yourself into a target."
I felt as if I'd been sucker punched as I watched her go. Fatima had always said exactly what she thought, so it wasn't as if she was saying those things to be mean. She genuinely thought I brought trouble on myself. It was basically what Tennyson Wilde had said as well.
"I won't be offended if you don't want to be seen with me either," I said to Hannah. It was a lie, I'd be super offended, but I didn't want her to feel obligated.
She was still eating, so I stood up to leave. I could get something to go.
She shook her head and smiled up at me.
"Don't be a dummy," she said. "I don't care about any of that. Sit down and eat your lunch."
I blinked down at my plate as I pressed the button and my lunch appeared. It wasn't that I was crying, I was just so grateful to have someone on my side. I'd never had a friend like Hannah before and I didn't know what I'd do without her.
Chapter 3
Having Hannah as my friend was the only thing that kept me sane over the next few days. Although I tried to keep my distance from her, she wouldn't have a bar of it, sticking by my side in the halls and at meals and in class, no matter what people threw at me. Literally threw.
I was heading back from lunch, taking my time getting to class as I wandered down the path, watching that pasty kid Llewellyn from history class as he played with his beagle down on the lawn. It was kind of hypnotic, the way the dog would chase the ball, bring back the ball, chase the ball, bring back the ball. It would be so awesome to be a dog. Life would be simple and people would give you treats just for looking cute. Hannah was stressing over the results from our biology quiz because she hadn't done as well as she'd liked, when we were ambushed.
"Hannah, run!" I told her, as a bunch of people jumped out of the bushes, armed with water balloons.
They were all wearing hoodies, so their faces were covered but it didn't take a crack detective to figure out who they were. The first one launched their balloon at me and it exploded against my shoulder as I turned away from it. Ew, that was not water in that balloon, it smelled like some sort of swamp muck. Hannah managed to get herself off the path, out of harms way, as the others opened fire. I ran. We were close to the tennis courts, so I headed for the locker rooms there, hoping to barricade myself in. I didn't need to worry, as soon as they ran out of projectiles, they lost interest and didn't bother to follow me.
They didn't need to. I was totally covered in mucky muck. Hannah wrinkled her nose at the smell and bolted the locker room doors as I changed into my stinky gym clothes that I'd luckily had in my bag. Man, that sludge was not going to wash out of my uniform. I ran some hot water in the sink and pumped a bunch of soap in to make it nice and sudsy. If I let that stuff set, I'd have no chance.
"Nobody would blame you if you took a few days off," Hannah said, sitting on the bench behind me while I scrubbed at my ruined blazer. "It might be better if people didn't see you for a while, it might blow over."
"And in the mean time, I get behind in classes and they have a few days to cook up even worse torture methods." I shook my head. "No. I don't care how bad it gets, I am not giving in."
In the mirror, I could see Hannah smile. "I don't know how you do it," she said. "How do you get out of bed every day, knowing this is what's ahead of you? I think you're really brave."
I shrugged and stared down at the soap suds in the sink. It wasn't a matter of being brave. What choice did I have? Even if I'd maybe secretly been looking up the price for flights home late at night when all I wanted was to see my family and sleep in my own bed and have a normal life, I had to get to the airport from the school and the island where we were was at an undisclosed location. I was basically stuck there until the end of term. I could hide in my room, but what good would that do? I'd have to come out sometime and it would be even worse when I did. They'd know they'd beaten me and that they could do whatever they liked and I had no defense. It was awful and no fun, but it was the only thing I could do.
My blazer was ruined though. I'd send it out to a cleaning service but they'd have to be some sort of magical miracle cleaning service to get that smell out. The rest was probably salvageable but it needed a proper wash. I'd have to take at least the rest of the day off, school rules were very clear about what could and could not be worn to class, and stinky gym clothes were a no go.
"You should go to class," I told Hannah. "Don't be late on my account. I'll fix this up and head back. See you tonight?"
She looked concerned but after some prodding left as the late bell rang. It was kind of nice to be alone for a while. Even though Hannah meant well and had been so great, I could drop my brave face and just wallow in my own misery. Just for five minutes.
I sat down on the bench, my crumpled, sodden blazer in my hands. The sludgy stuff was in my hair as well; I could feel it sticking to my neck. The smell seemed to have sunk into my skin.
It was fine, I told myself. I only had English after lunch and I was well ahead in that anyway. I'd spend the afternoon getting ahead in my other subjects and then I'd take first in everything and win all the academic prizes at the end of the year and they could all suck it. The whole reason I'd accepted the spot at Amaris was so that I could get a jumpstart in life. If I did well, I'd get into a good college. Most of these losers would just go straight onto Amaris University without thinking about it, but that didn't mean I had to. I could get a scholarship and go to a proper school, somewhere closer to home. That was the point of all of this.
Still, four years was a whole lifetime. It was like 1400 days. Maybe a bit less, I was almost halfway through freshman year. I'd made it that far. But it was a long time. Four years ago, I'd been living a completely different life. I wasn't even the same person that I'd been then.
I wasn't sure how long I sat there, trying to make everything seem less horrible, trying to cheer myself up. It was longer than five minutes.
"Of course, you're hiding," a voice said out of the shadows.
I jumped up and span around, sludge from my hair splattering all across my face.
Tennyson Wilde. Of course.
"What are you even talking about?" I asked, taking my blazer back over to the sink and wringing the water out so that it was dry enough to stuff back into my bag. "And why are you in the girls' locker room? You know there are rules about that sort of thing. Probably laws, even?"
"Don't speak as if you are governed by rules or laws. I know that you do as you please."
I twisted the thick fabric so hard in my hands that it chafed my skin. "Either say what you came here to say or leave," I told him. "I'm not in the mood for your waffle."
Waffles on the other hand, I was definitely in the mood for. I wonder if I could sneak into the dining hall while everyone else was in class. That seemed like the kind of thing that was frowned upon, but still. Waffles.
"The orb."
I looked up at his reflection in the mirror and shivered. His eyes glowed out of the shadows with an otherworldly shine, intense and terrifying. He was definitely not playing.
"What about it?" I asked. "I know you think I have superpowers but I can't actually read minds."
"It's gone."
I dropped my blazer and turned to face him. "What do you mean, gone?"
"This isn't a game," he said, his voice no longer human. I had never seen Tennyson Wilde change into a wolf, and I realized now that was a good thing because it would be way too scary.
He moved out of the shadows, toward me. He moved like molten gold, like he was not governed by the same laws of physics that the rest of the world were. I backed away, only stopping when the backs of my thighs hit the cold porcelain of the sink.
"Where is the orb?" he said, his voice still that subhuman growl.
He got right up in my space, standing over me, and that was it. I was so done with people trying to push me around. I didn't care that he was half-wolf and could eat my face off. Let him try, it was covered in sludge and would taste foul, so the joke would be on him anyway.