Emory Watkins and the other guys from the basketball team were staring past us as we walked by his locker. He nodded at me.
I hate to break it to you, Ethan, but they’re not looking at me.
I heard Link’s voice. “Hey, girls. We shootin’ hoops this afternoon or what?” He bumped fists with Emory and kept walking. But they weren’t looking at him either.
Ridley was a step behind the rest of us, letting her long pink nails trail along the locker doors. When she got to Emory’s, she let the door close beneath her fingers.
“Hey, girls.” The way Ridley rolled out the words, she still sounded like a Siren.
Emory stammered, and Ridley let her finger trail across his chest as she walked past. In that skirt, she was showing more leg than should have been legal. The entire team turned to watch her go.
“Who’s your friend?” Emory was talking to Link, but he didn’t take his eyes off Ridley. He’d seen her before—at the Stop & Steal when I first met her, and at the winter formal, when she trashed the gym—but he was looking for an introduction, up close and personal.
“Who wants to know?” Rid blew a bubble, letting it pop.
Link looked at her sideways and grabbed Ridley’s hand. “Nobody.”
The hallway divided in front of them as an ex-Siren and a quarter Incubus conquered Jackson High. I wondered what Amma would have to say about that.
Sweet baby in a manger. Heaven help us all.
“Are you kidding? I’m supposed to keep my things in this filthy tin coffin?” Ridley stared into her locker like she thought something was going to pop out of it.
“Rid, you’ve been to school before, and you had a locker,” Lena said patiently.
Ridley flipped her pink and blond hair. “I must’ve blocked all that out. Post-traumatic stress.”
Lena handed Ridley the combination lock. “You don’t have to use it. But you can put your books inside so you don’t have to carry them around all day.”
“Books?” Ridley looked disgusted. “Carry?”
Lena sighed. “You’ll get them today, in your classes. And, yes, you have to carry them. You should know how this works.”
Ridley adjusted her shirt to expose a little more shoulder. “I was a Siren the last time I was in school. I didn’t actually go to any of my classes, and I certainly didn’t carry anything.”
Link clapped his hand down on her shoulder. “Come on. We have homeroom together. I’ll show you how it’s done, Link-style.”
“Yeah?” Ridley sounded skeptical. “How is that any better?”
“Well, for starters, it doesn’t involve any books….” Link seemed more than happy to walk her to class. He wanted to keep an eye on her.
“Ridley, wait! You need this.” Lena waved a binder in the air.
Ridley slipped her arm through Link’s and ignored her. “Relax, Cuz. I’ll use Hot Rod’s.”
I slammed the locker shut. “Your gramma is an optimist.”
“You think?”
Like everyone else, I watched Link and Rid disappear down the hall. “I give this whole little experiment three days, max.”
“Three days? You’re the optimist.” Lena sighed, and we started up the stairs to English.
The air conditioning was running full blast, a pathetic mechanical hum echoing through the halls. But the outdated system didn’t stand a chance against this heat wave. It was even hotter upstairs in the administration building than it was outside in the parking lot.
As we walked into English class, I stopped for a minute under the fluorescent light, the one that had burned out when Lena and I had collided on the way into this room the first day I saw her. I stared up at the cardboard squares in the ceiling.
You know, if you look really close, you can still see the burn mark around the new light.