The Original Crowd (A Whole New Crowd 0.50)

“What can we do?”

“You can’t do anything. I—me—I have to do something to save my own ass right now,” I muttered.

“What are you going to do?”

I sighed. “Might be better if you don’t know.”

“Taryn,” he argued.

“Tray.”

“Let me help.”

“You want to help? You can get Mandy off my back tonight. I’m supposed to go to Carter’s party—an act of good faith that I’m developing friendships here. Oh, and I’m supposed to take these other two kids—Molly and Garrett,” I added. “You want to help? Take those two to the party and keep Mandy off my ass.”

“Who are the hell are Molly and Garrett?” Tray asked, shifting into drive and pulling out into traffic.

“My science lab partner. Molly sits beside me in psych. class.”

“Does she wear magnifying glasses?”

“Yeah.” I sighed.

Tray was silent a moment, driving back to school. “Who’s Garrett?”

“I’ll just tell him to call you. His last name is Larkins.”

“Hmm,” Tray mused. “How is it that I have no idea who these people are?”

“Because gods don’t have to know who the minions are,” I retorted, not caring worth a crap how antagonistic my tone was.

Tray just shot me a look as he pulled into the parking lot and into his normal parking space. There wasn’t a sign that said it was designated as his, but no one else parked there. Everyone knew it belonged to him.

I slammed my door as I got out and swept inside, not waiting for Tray.

*

School turned out to be useless. I couldn’t concentrate, but I didn’t want to skip. That’d probably warrant a phone call to my adoptive parents. I might be getting into enough trouble, anything extra was just not needed. But I had to move quickly. Right now I needed to go into damage control, and get my hands on those tapes—that’s what I needed to do.

No matter whose hands they were in.

Or which authorities.

I was already running through plans, past trips to jail, and any information that I might have stored in my not-so-helpful subconscious. Seriously. Information locked up in there should want to come out to help. Subconscious and conscious were both parts of me. If my brain didn’t let me have my own information, I’d be stewing in jail. The subconscious would be punished right along with the rest of us. And right now, my id wanted revenge.

Enough with the psychology bullshit.

Fourth period proved semi-interesting. We were dissecting little pigs and I was able to butcher the freakishly cute animal with our tweezers. I kept pretending the little snout was my face.

God. I’d screwed up!

I was too distracted with all this other bullshit drama in my life—Jace, Geezer, Geezer’s dad, Brian, and, I hated to even acknowledge this, Tray and the nonexistent communication about the mind shattering sex we had.

“If you don’t stop, we’re going to a D on our project,” Molly spoke up, the tremble in her voice gave her away though.

I sighed and placed the tweezers down. Nice and slowly.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, busying myself in our textbook.