Arriane flitted about the others, whispering things Luce couldn’t make out, like some sort of goth princess. When she passed Cam, he tousled her newly chopped hair.
“Nice mop, Arriane.” He smirked, tugging on a strand at the back of her neck. “My compliments to your stylist.”
Arriane swatted him away. “Hands off, Cam. Which is to say: In your dreams.” She jerked her head in Luce’s direction. “And you can give your compliments to my new pet, right over there.”
Cam’s emerald eyes sparkled at Luce, who stiffened. “I believe I will,” he said, and started walking toward her.
He smiled at Luce, who was sitting with her ankles crossed under her chair and her hands folded neatly on her heavily graffitied desk.
“Us new kids have to stick together,” he said. “Know what I mean?”
“But I thought you’d been here before.”
“Don’t believe everything Arriane says.” He glanced back at Arriane, who was standing at the window, eyeing them suspiciously.
“Oh no, she didn’t say anything about you,” Luce said quickly, trying to remember whether or not that was actually true. It was clear Cam and Arriane didn’t like each other, and even though Luce was grateful to Arriane for taking her around this morning, she wasn’t ready to pick any sides yet.
“I remember when I was a new kid here … the first time.” He laughed to himself. “My band had just broken up and I was lost. I didn’t know anyone. I could have used someone without”—he glanced at Arriane—“an agenda to show me the ropes.”
“What, and you have no agenda?” Luce said, surprised to hear a flirting lilt in her voice.
An easy smile spread across Cam’s face. He raised one eyebrow at her. “And to think I didn’t want to come back here.”
Luce blushed. She didn’t usually get involved with rocker guys—but then again, none of them had ever pulled the desk next to her even closer, plopped down beside her, and stared at her with eyes quite so green. Cam reached into his pocket and pulled out a green guitar pick with the number 44 printed on it.
“This is my room number. Come by anytime.”
The guitar pick wasn’t far from the color of Cam’s eyes, and Luce wondered how and when he’d had these printed up, but before she could answer—and who knew what she would have answered—Arriane clamped a hard hand down on Cam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, did I not make myself clear? I’ve already called dibs on this one.”
Cam snorted. He looked straight at Luce as he said, “See, I thought there was still such a thing as free will. Maybe your pet has a path of her own in mind.”
Luce opened her mouth to claim that of course she had a path, it was just her first day here and she was still figuring out the ropes. But by the time she was able to get the words straight in her head, the minute-warning bell rang, and the little gathering over Luce’s desk dissolved.
The other kids filed into desks around her, and soon it stopped being so noteworthy that Luce was sitting prim and proper at her desk, keeping her eye on the door. Keeping a lookout for Daniel.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could feel Cam sneaking peeks at her. She felt flattered—and nervous, then frustrated with herself. Daniel? Cam? She’d been at this school for what, forty-five minutes?—and her mind was already juggling two different guys. The whole reason she was at this school at all was because the last time she’d been interested in a guy, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. She should not be allowing herself to get all smitten (twice!) on her very first day of school.
She looked over at Cam, who winked at her again, then brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. Staggering good looks aside—yeah, right—he really did seem like a useful person to know. Like her, he was still adjusting to the setting, but had clearly been around the Sword & Cross block a few times before. And he was nice to her. She thought about the green guitar pick with his room number, hoping he didn’t give those out freely. They could be … friends. Maybe that was all she needed. Maybe then she would stop feeling quite so obviously out of place at Sword & Cross.
Maybe then she’d be able to forgive the fact that the only window in the classroom was the size of a business envelope, caked with lime, and looked out on a massive mausoleum in the cemetery.
Maybe then she’d be able to forget the nose-tickling odor of peroxide emanating from the bleached-blond punk chick sitting in front of her.
Maybe then she could actually pay attention to the stern, mustached teacher who marched into the room, commanded the class to shapeupandsitdown, and firmly closed the door.
The smallest tweak of disappointment tugged at her heart. It took her a moment to trace where it had come from. Until the teacher shut the door, she’d been holding out a little hope that Daniel would be in her first class, too.
What did she have next hour, French? She looked down at her schedule to check what room it was in. Just then, a paper airplane skidded across her schedule, overshot her desk, and landed on the floor by her bag. She checked to see who’d noticed, but the teacher was busy tearing through a piece of chalk as he wrote something on the board.
Luce glanced nervously to her left. When Cam looked over at her, he gave her a wink and a flirty little wave that caused her whole body to tense up. But he didn’t seem to have seen or been responsible for the paper airplane.
“Psssst,” came the quiet whisper behind him. It was Arriane, who motioned with her chin for Luce to pick up the paper plane. Luce bent down to reach for it and saw her name written in small black letters on the wing. Her first note!
Already looking for the exit?
Not a good sign.
We’re in this hellhole until lunch.
That had to be a joke. Luce double-checked her schedule and realized with horror that all three of her morning classes were in this very same room 1—and all three would be taught by the very same Mr. Cole.
He’d detached himself from the blackboard and was sleepily threading his way through the room. There was no introduction for the new kids—and Luce couldn’t decide whether she was glad about that or not. Mr. Cole merely slapped syllabi down on each of the four new students’ desks. When the stapled packet landed in front of Luce, she leaned forward eagerly to take a look. History of the World, it read. Circumventing the Doom of Mankind. Hmmm, history had always been her strongest subject, but circumventing doom?
A closer look at the syllabus was all it took for Luce to see that Arriane had been right about being in a hellhole: an impossible reading load, TEST in big, bold letters every third class period, and a thirty-page paper on—seriously?—the failed tyrant of your choice. Thick black parentheses had been drawn in black Sharpie around the assignments Luce had missed during the first few weeks. In the margins, Mr. Cole had written See me for Makeup Research Assignment. If there was a more effective way of soul-sucking, Luce would be scared to find out.
At least she had Arriane sitting back there in the next row. Luce was glad the precedent had already been set for SOS note-passing. She and Callie used to text each other on the sly, but to make it here, Luce was definitely going to need to learn to fold a paper airplane. She tore a sheet from her notebook and tried to use Arriane’s as a model.