Aileen took a step back. “Don’t bite my face off, I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t get the feeling you did anything more than hear it. I thought we were supposed to be friends.”
“And there is no way you would stick your neck out for me that much if you heard the biggest creeps around this place slagging me off.” Aileen shrugged. “What difference does it make, Callie? I thought you were always the one who said you didn’t care what other people said. You had your path in life, and nobody was going to sway
you from it. Wasn’t that right?”
I had said that… but I’d said it in the days before Lucas had decided to drive headlong back into my life. Before he’d completely broken me down.
“Whatever,” said Aileen, as if I’d actually given her some response. I was just standing there in front of her, jaw dropped, unable to think of anything to say. “I’ve got to get to class.”
I watched her stalk off, her overly-short skirt flaring with each stride and her hands still on her hips even though she had her back to me now.
It probably was too much for me to expect Aileen or even Tamara to stick up for me against whatever they were hearing. It wasn’t like I spent that much time with them outside of school. I was too busy doing my own thing—doing that job Lucas had pretty nicely convinced me was a waste of my time.
I had no memory of getting to English, or of what Ms. Alton said before she turned us loose to work on some stuff from the textbook. I don’t know if I even opened my book, but Ms. Alton was usually resigned to the fact that a class requiring reading and writing for the last period of the week was always going to be lost on some. She touched my shoulder once on an early round through the room and asked if I was all right, but when I assured her I was fine she left me alone on subsequent passes. She could see I wasn’t really working, but she’d probably also heard some of the gossip going around about me. Maybe teachers felt sorry for whoever was under the social microscope and cut them a bit of slack.
The class was both interminable and over more quickly than I expected. I made a break for the gates as soon as Ms. Alton gave us the all-clear to go, my mind so focused on the goal I was surprised I didn’t walk straight through a wall.
“Hey,” spoke up a guy whose face I was familiar with, but whose name I had never learned. He stepped up alongside me and clapped a hand on my shoulder I flinched away from. “What’s up, Callie?” he mocked me. “Do you just not like it when guys pay you attention?”
“I’d like it just fine if the ones who did it weren’t absolute assholes,” I snapped back, and then I started to run for my car. They could all point and laugh at me as I went if they wanted.
I slowed as I reached the car, realising something was wrong. This was my car, but…
The window rolled down, and Lucy Starling tipped her sunglasses up to squint at me. “Callie? Can I help you?”
This was Lucy’s car, not mine. I’d gotten myself tripped up in my distraction.
I tried to explain, but I was still so shaken from the day the words wouldn’t come together in my mouth. Finally I swivelled to point at my own pink convertible, also in roof-up mode… but with a dent in one of the rear passenger doors I could see from all the way across the carpark.
Lucy winced. “Oh, did you have an accident? Are you going to need a ride somewhere?”
“I think I’ll be fine, thanks,” I said. “I just didn’t recognise my own car at first.”
“It does seem to be a popular choice here,” Lucy observed.
“And no, it wasn’t an accident… I’d say whoever did it was very clear in their actions.”
“I feel like there are some things I haven’t missed out on by skipping high school,” Lucy said.
“A lot. Anyway, I won’t keep bothering you…”
Before I could excuse myself, Lucas was there on the other side of the car. I yelped, and staggered back a few steps.
“Now Callie, I have it on the authority of a few people in the know that I am not in fact an ugly monster yet,” Lucas said.
His face still carried a patchwork of bandages: over his nose, and a few forming a line across the right side of his face. He did, in fact, still seem to be a handsome bastard underneath the bandages, but they broke up the impression of him just enough that he wasn’t able to overwhelm me with his looks. I faced him with all the righteous indignation that had built up again over the afternoon.
“Okay, Lucas, so I know what you must have said to Ashleigh, and I’m going to have to wear that… but what the fuck are you thinking letting people believe I had something to do with your accident?”
“You did,” Lucas said. “What about that was a lie?”
“Lucas, you know I was nowhere near you when you had that accident. You fucking know it!”
“You know what I know,” Lucy spoke up, “is that I didn’t survive my own cells trying to go rogue on me just so I could suffer through my brother’s messed-up personal issues.” I took another step back as her car started. “You two can sort this out. Lucas, please make an effort.”
I stared after her in awe as she drove off school property and disappeared around a corner, ditching Lucas as casually as he had ditched me before his accident. I couldn’t help thinking that was Lucy’s way of making a point.. and the thing was, Lucas had taken it from her without a fight. He was just staring at where she had been last, the same as me.