No. She didn’t just say all that.
I let out a low groan and duck my head. Heat rises up my neck and takes up permanent residence on my cheeks.
“Emberly.” Ash nudges me with her elbow, and I have to stop myself from jabbing her in the nose. “Let me introduce you to my friends.”
I think the sound that comes out of my mouth resembles grumbled agreement. At least that’s what I’m going for.
Forcing myself to raise my eyes, I glance at the people sitting to the right, left, and in front of me. Various expressions of amusement light their faces as I regard them.
Guess they’re used to Ash’s brash personality.
Unfortunately, I’m not.
Ash goes around the table, rattling off names.
Kenna, the girl sitting to my right, wiggles her fingers at me in greeting. Her mahogany-colored hair is slicked back into a trendy bob, the edges razor cut in a straight line right at chin level. Her green eyes resemble a prairie field in springtime, the slight bronze color of her skin making them pop and giving her a slightly otherworldly look.
The girl next to her is Hadley. When she’s introduced, she adjusts the tortoise-shell glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose.
“They’re not prescription,” she explains. “We all have perfect eyesight. I just like the look of them.” Her smile is on the shy side, and she clears her throat before brushing a lock of her charcoal-colored wavy hair behind her ear.
I like her.
Sterling and Greyson, the two dudes at our table who are sitting across from me, nod when their names are announced.
I promptly forget which is which. They look too much alike with their matching dark hair—only a shade above black, and long enough to curl at the ends. They both sport square jawlines and blue-green eyes.
“Greyson and Sterling are twins,” Ash announces. I continue to regard them from underneath the bill of my hat. The longer I stare, the more I can tell them apart. There’s an obvious resemblance, but they can’t be identical. Something a lot like déjà vu tickles my brain, but I brush it away.
“We’re all tenth-years,” one of the brothers explains. “Even Sterling here, although you wouldn’t know it from his maturity level.”
Okay, so you must be Greyson.
I bob my head as if I know what he’s talking about.
“Hey! Low blow, bro.” Sterling scowls at his brother and tosses a wadded napkin at Greyson’s face. Greyson deflects the projectile easily and continues.
“Tenth-year is the equivalent to human twelfth grade . . . at least here in the States. But unfortunately, we all still have three years left at Seraph Academy. We don’t graduate until we’re twenty.”
“Well, that sucks.” The words fly out of my mouth without thought. I hear Ash chuckle next to me. Hadley’s and Kenna’s eyebrows shoot up and Sterling covers his reaction with a cough.
Greyson simply shrugs as if he doesn’t have an opinion either way. “You get more freedoms and participate in ops your last few years, so it’s not so bad.”
Two extra years of high school is not my idea of a good time. No way am I sticking around for that. I want to figure out how my supposed powers work, get a grasp on how to survive in both the real and spectrum worlds, then get the heck out of Dodge.
“Stop boring her with academy factoids, Grey. Besides, there’s something else we all want to know.” Sterling hunches his large body forward, a court-jester grin on his face. “Did you really think you were being kidnapped?”
“Sterling,” Ash warns.
“What?” His eyes widen with feigned innocence.
“Oh, wipe that look off your face. It’s not becoming on you.” Ash launches a French fry at his head.
Catching it easily, he pops it in his mouth. “Yum. Thanks, Ash. You’re a doll.”
Ash’s eyes turn toward the ceiling before she angles her body in my direction. “Ignore him. You don’t have to answer that.”
Easy for her to say. She doesn’t have five sets of eyes boring holes into her.
My cheeks heat under their regard. The curse of being fair-skinned is I can never hide my embarrassment.
“Um.” I swallow to wet my throat . . . and to stall.
“Kind of? Everyone came at me at once. I mean . . .” Shoot, why is talking to people so hard? “I was carried off by a big fat turkey-bird at one point. The thing even dropped me from the sky. So, yeah. I thought I was being abducted.”
I finish on a shrug, not sure what else to say. I don’t bother pointing out that technically, I was kidnapped. No one asked my permission to whisk me away to their fancy academy.
After a beat, Sterling turns to his brother. Their rapid-fire exchange goes completely over my head.
“It must have been, right?”
“Who else would have pulled something like that?” Greyson responds with a smirk.
“Oh man, I’ll bet Deacon is still chewing him out.”
“Not like that’s ever bothered him before.”
“Very true. I still would have liked to be a fly on that wall.”
“If only we could shift into something that small.”
“So true, man.”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt, surprising myself. “Are you saying you know who the bird boy is?”
Twin smirks grow on their faces.
“Yeah. The fat turkey was our brother, Steel.”
I definitely remember that name. That’s the a-hole who called me a freak.
I don’t bother concealing my reaction and it’s only a tick before both brothers break out in a fit of laughter. I can’t really blame them. If I had to guess, I’d say I look like I’ve eaten something particularly gross.
“Is that who you saw?” Greyson points to the left.
I scan the cafeteria until I spot a guy who looks vaguely familiar. He has the same jawline as the twins sitting across from me, but he appears a bit older than them. Similar dark hair, but shorter on the sides and a shade darker—the black reminds me of a raven’s feather. His full lips twist into a side smirk as he listens to someone talking on the other side of his table.
Squinting my eyes and with a head tilt, I keep filing away information about the guy.
He’s slouched comfortably in the almost-too-small chair, with his arm lazily draped along the back of the seat of the beautiful girl beside him. Dark brown hair the color of chestnuts hangs in loose curls down to her waist. Her face is the perfect heart-shape. Even from my spot, I catalogue her delicate nose and large green eyes framed by thick lashes.
Laughing, she brings her hand to rest on Steel’s bicep in a gesture of familiarity.
The gesture prickles my annoyance even when I know it shouldn’t.
“That may have been him,” I confess, forcing my attention to my own table.
“Oh, man!” Sterling slaps the table. “This is the best day ever. Not only has she dubbed him a fat turkey, but she broke his nose and can’t even remember what he looks like. I’m going to hold this over him forever.”
It’s a miracle all the commotion hasn’t drawn the gaze of the whole cafeteria. As it is, several of the closest tables have stopped their conversations to cast curious glances our way.
I am not going to survive with this bunch.