Skylar blew a wisp of white-blonde hair out of her face. “It could be worse. I mean, I could have actually had to work for the title! Seriously, some of the girls on the student council have been angling for sensual supremacy for years, and all I had to do was let Justin Thomas kiss my neck for five seconds—which, quite frankly, could have been used as a medical substitute for bloodletting in medieval times. I’m talking total leech.”
It took Skylar four, maybe five seconds to rattle off this entire statement and another two to catch her breath before she plowed on. “Anyway, Justin Thomas is Kelly Masterson’s boyfriend, and she’s the total alpha around here—captain of the cheerleading squad, student council vice president, and so on and so forth, et cetera, et cetera—so I got to jump straight to the front of the class. It’s unfair, really. A lot of people have worked really hard for the title to lose it to an upstart little dark horse like me, but c’est la vie.”
I knew from the content of Skylar’s speech that it must have been served with a hefty dose of sarcasm, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of attitude in her tone. She did earnest and perky way too well, and the combined effect of her words and her manner took me so off guard that I actually swallowed my gum.
“You sure you don’t want a Tic Tac?” Skylar asked.
Dazed and confused didn’t even begin to cover my current state of mind, so I just held out a hand and allowed her to pour a couple of orange Tic Tacs into it. I popped one into my mouth. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem,” she said, and then she grinned again, more pixie than not. “So what’s your deal? Rumor has it you’re a princess incognito.”
I swallowed my Tic Tac. At this rate, I could only hope that Skylar knew the Heimlich maneuver, because sooner or later, I was going to need it.
“Rumor has it I’m a princess?” I repeated.
“Daughter of a foreign dignitary and a Hollywood Grace Kelly type,” Skylar confirmed. “But I might have just made that up. You’re not really on the Heritage High rumor radar yet—but don’t worry. If you spend a few more minutes talking to me, you will be.”
For the first time, her blue eyes took on a hint of something that wasn’t pep: wariness, maybe, or an expectation that I’d take this opportunity to run far, far away and never look back. But a moment later, whatever glimmer I’d seen was gone, replaced with a steely, uncompromising optimism that must have grated on the girls trying their hardest to freeze her out.
For less than a second, I considered my options: make a friend and become a social pariah, or walk away and spend my life in comfortable obscurity.
No contest.
“I’m Kali,” I said, smiling for the first time in what felt like years. “I transferred to Heritage a few weeks ago. When I’m not failing history tests, I spend my time as an insurgent superhero who lives in fear of being hunted down by monsters or bureaucrats.”
Skylar didn’t balk for so much as a second. “Insurgent superhero! I love it. And your delivery was even better than mine—I could totally almost believe you.”
Yeah. Totally.
Time for a subject change.
“So are the girls on the cheerleading squad really out to get you?” I asked, nodding toward the gym floor as our row began to trickle out of the bleachers.
Skylar shrugged. “They’ve been at it for about six months. I haven’t cracked yet. It’s driving them nuts.”
I glanced at the cheerleaders out of the corner of my eye. Down to a one, they were glaring at the girl next to me. Completely unbothered by their death stares, Skylar stood up on her tiptoes and waved at them like she was greeting her very bestest friends. The entire squad immediately averted their gazes. Apparently, it was a social no-no to acknowledge the wave of someone you’d thoroughly shunned.
“Don’t you ever just get sick of it?” I asked, shivering at the enmity coming our way. Even without my powers, I would gladly have faced down hellspawn over high school mean girls any day.
“Get sick of watching them scrambling, trying to figure out why I’m not sobbing in a puddle in the girls’ room?” Skylar asked, sounding for all the world like some kind of Zen master. “Not really. I’ve got five older brothers. Having the tampons stolen out of my gym locker on a regular basis kind of pales next to the power of the atomic noogie.”
“They steal your tampons?” I asked incredulously, when really what I was thinking was more along the lines of define “atomic noogie.”
“It’s a classic mean-girl tactic,” Skylar explained, and I had to remind myself that she was talking about the tampon-stealing, not the noogie. “Wearing white is like waving a cape in front of a bull.”