“This is so much cooler than back home,” I said, sliding my tray down a few seats to sit at the center of the empty table. The warm weather had attracted most of the students outside today, so we had free pick of the room.
David slid in next to me. “Cooler would be if they hired enough kitchen staff to accommodate the great number of students.”
“I thought they did just fine.”
“Today, yes,” he said. “But it usually takes until the end of lunch period to be served, and half of us end up eating in class.”
“Oh, why was today so quick then?” I looked back at the now-empty buffet—all the kids seated, eating, aside from a few dregs gathering by the drink machine or buying sweets.
“They had help today.”
“Volunteers?”
“Of a sort.” David covered his smile with a fist. “Half the football team is serving detention in the kitchen.”
“Really? Why?”
“Something about throwing balls of paper.” He picked up a corn chip and held it near his mouth. “You planning to eat?”
“Oh, um, yeah.” I straightened my tray and leaned my elbows on the table. “So, what’s the deal here anyway, like, social hierarchy? I’m guessing they’re at the top.” I pointed to the group of well-built guys in the corner of the room.
“The guys having the fruit war?” He smiled as a piece of banana hit the glass window then slid down into a pile of pulp on the floor. “That’s the other half of the football team, and yeah”—he nodded, looking away from them—“they’re pretty much the top of the food chain. Fourth on the list would be these guys.” He waved at one of the girls at the table in front of us. “Music class. They pretty much hang out together. The lowest ranking would be the boys behind you.”
“Let me guess.” I smirked, looking at their paper-wrapped sandwiches and milk cartons beside the chessboard. “They’re the geeks.”
David laughed. “You must be psychic.”
“Well, the whole scene is self-explanatory, but the ‘Chess Club’ jacket was a dead giveaway.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. Do you play?”
“Play?”
“Chess.”
“Oh, yeah. I do. Should I be sitting with them?”
“No.” He chuckled. “Unless you want to wear fruit juice home every day.”
I shrugged. “Strawberry would look rather fetching on me, I think.”
“Your hair smells like strawberries,” he said, and I wondered quietly how he could smell that.
“So where do you fit in?” I asked.
David looked to the side. “Well—”
“Hey, guys.” Emily perched herself on the seat across from David.
“Emily.” He nodded his greeting.
“Hi,” I said, then shoveled a mouthful of lasagna into my gob—an offering for the empty hole in my belly where a green ogre dwelled.
“Hey, do you guys mind if Ryan and Alana sit with us?” she asked. “They’ve got new-girl fever.”
“No,” I scoffed, “why would I mind?”
David lifted one shoulder. “Fine with me.”
After Emily signaled them over, she leaned forward and a bright grin lit up her caramel eyes. “So, what d’ya think—a new love blossoming, or what?”
New love? My head burned as if a warm towel had just been wrapped around it.
“I think you might be right, Emily,” David said, a sassy smile twinkling in the corners of his eyes. And as I was about to grab both cheeks and scream like a girl at a boy-band concert, he redirected his gaze to the pair walking toward us, standing as close to each other as possible. “But I don’t think either of them has figured it out yet,” he finished.
Emily sighed, gazing dreamily at Alana and Ryan, while I caught my breath.
“Hey, all.” Ryan bumped knuckles with David, then sat down next to Emily, sliding Alana’s tray closer to his.
“Hi, guys.” I smiled, still feeling silly.
“Hey, Ara, so cool what you did to Mr. Grant today.” Ryan pointed gun-fingers at me. “I’m sure it’ll go down in high school history: The Newbie Bites Back. Part One.” Beneath his docile tones, he made himself sound like the voice-over for a movie trailer.
“I wasn’t biting back,” I said with my mouth a little full, “not really. I was just… politely not taking any crap.”
“So noble.” Ryan nodded, lost in awe. Alana sat quietly beside him, not making any effort to stand out.
“So, Ara?” Emily said. “We just finished French class, are you taking French this semester?”
“Nope. Foreign languages just don’t click up here.” I tapped my head. “My friend tried to teach me some French once. It was bad. I sounded like I was spitting insults at someone who made me hungry.”
Ryan and David chuckled to themselves.
“That’s a pity.” Emily propped her cheek against her hand. “I was kinda hoping we’d have someone to take the spotlight off us for a while.”
“Spotlight?”
“Yeah. Our teacher, Ms. Sears”—Ryan pointed his chip at me—“total cow.”
“You mean grenouille?” Emily said.
“Uh, Em?” David frowned. “You know that doesn’t mean cow, right?”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Uh—”
“Well, what’s being a cow got to do with a spotlight?” I asked. Unless she was a Broadway cow.
“Oh, nothing.” Emily sighed. “I just thought she might play nice in front of a new kid for a while.”
“She’s not nice?”
“Sometimes, but she’s just so finicky. Everything has to be done a certain way. If you don’t follow her rules to the T, she goes all PMS on you,” Emily added, then looked at Ryan.
“Yeah. She’s so stuck-up, Ara, like you wouldn’t believe. She came from some private school in the city, and she just doesn’t understand our ways.” Ryan waved his hands about in the air, making ‘scary fingers’.
Alana shook her head and smiled into her salad.
So I guess they don’t like private school people around here. “Well, I come from a private school. I’m not stuck-up, am I?” I asked.
“You come from a private school? No way.” Ryan leaned back in his seat, making a cross with his index fingers.
“Yes way.” I sipped my milk to wash down my lunch. “It’s nothing like this place. A different world.”
“So where did you go to school?” Alana finally spoke up.
“Really far away.”
“How far?” Ryan asked.
“Very far.”
“Yeah, you have a bit of an accent there. What is that? British?” Emily leaned in slightly, as did Ryan and Alana, and the eager curiosity in their eyes made me want to smile—until I looked at David. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t care, or didn’t want to know, but he sat still, with his fingers clasped just in front of his simple smile, as if he wasn’t interested in the slightest.
“Okay. Promise you won’t laugh.” I pointed at each one of them in turn.
Ryan crossed his heart. Emily crossed her fingers, laughing already.
“I’m from Australia.” Almost closing my eyes, I awaited the onslaught of giggling and pigeonholing, but they just gawked at me.
“No way, you’re all the way from Oz? You’re totally like Dorothy,” Ryan said.
“Yeah, and that makes David Toto.” Emily laughed.
“Yeah, um, Dorothy was from Kansas,” I said. “If anything, I’d be the Cowardly Lion.”
“No, the Tin Man. Didn’t that Aussie guy play the Tin Man in that play?” Emily looked up at the ceiling as though her answer would be there.
“No way—Tin Man? Ara has too much heart,” Alana added. “You saw her play the piano.”
I tilted my head and sighed mockingly. “Aw, thanks.”
When Alana ditched a piece of lettuce at me, David’s hand shot out and caught it—right in front of my face. My mouth dropped and everyone else burst out laughing. “Nice catch, David.”
/>
“He used to play baseball,” Emily said.
“Really?” I turned to look at him.
“It was”—he stood up and reached across the table to drop the lettuce on Alana’s plate—“a long time ago.”
“So, all the way from Australia, hey? You don’t sound Australian,” Emily teased.
“Actually, I do. Just not so much anymore.” I smiled softly. “I’ve spent the last month or so working on my accent, but you can hear it when I get upset.”
David shifted awkwardly in his chair.
“Are you ashamed of it?” Alana asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “I just didn’t wanna draw any extra attention to myself.”
“So, is it different over there to, like, how school is here?” Emily held a forkful of carrot just in front of her mouth, waiting.
“Yeah. In ways. I mean, we have our school year from January to December, and we break for summer as well, except it’s over Christmas.”
“Christmas in summer?” Ryan stared into the distance. “Weird. But cool.”
“Actually, it’s not cool,” I said. “It’s really bloody hot.”
Emily and Ryan stared at me blankly.
Alana stifled a soft giggle. “Summer is hot, Ryan?” She nudged his arm. “Not cool.”
I looked at David, who shook his head. Emily and Ryan did the same, half smiling.
“Okay, that goes in the vault as the worst joke of the week.” Ryan pointed at me again with his ketchup-covered chip.
I feigned insult.
“But you did sound very Australian when you said bloody,” Emily added.
David chuckled beside me.
“Yeah, say it again?” Ryan leaned forward, turning his ear toward me, making a funnel of his hand.
“She’s not a circus freak, Ryan.” Emily pushed his hand down.
“Thanks,” I mouthed, and with my belly full, all my pre-rehearsed questions came flooding back. “So, where do you guys normally sit?”
“Well,” Emily chimed in, “David sits with the giant, incredibly gorgeous guys throwing food at each other.” She grinned at David. “More like gorillas, really. And I sit with that group out there by the tree.” She pointed to the windows covering the back wall of the cafeteria. Outside in the sunshine, a large group of cliché-ridden boys and girls gathered under a big oak tree, laughing and throwing water.
David leaned closer and whispered, “Second in command.”
I wondered where that placed me if I hung out with one from each group.
Emily’s voice trailed back in suddenly with my attention span. “Ryan hangs out on the basketball courts, mostly.” She looked at Ryan for confirmation; he shrugged with a small nod. “And Alana hangs with those guys.” She pointed to the music class kids.
“Cool.” I nodded. “Well, thanks for keeping me company today, you guys. I would’ve felt like a total loser sitting by myself.”
“That would never happen.” Emily tilted her head to the side. “Someone would’ve come and talked to you. If they could get past David, that is.” She threw him a mock-annoyed stare.
David grinned and leaned back in his chair, resting his hands behind his head, making his cologne obvious again. “Can you blame me? I kinda like fresh meat.”
I jokingly inched away from him as if he might eat me, and a sudden whoosh of air brushed past my hair, impacting something that screeched loudly.
Silence washed over the room.
We all turned to the kid behind us, who sat straight again, rubbing his head.
“What gives?” His friend stood up, aiming his voice at the gorillas.
“What up, losers? Mommy forget to pack your helmet?”
Apple pulp covered the boy’s hair and Chess Club jacket, while the remainder of the offending fruit rolled around on the ground just near his feet. “That’s it,” he said, and with his fists tight by his side, he jumped up and grabbed the apple.
“Just leave it, Dominic. It’s not worth it,” one of his friends said.
“No. I’m sick of this.” His knuckles turned white around the apple.
No one in the room seemed to have moved. I think they were bracing for an all-out war. But someone should have done something. If even one person stood up for that boy, just once, maybe those jerks would leave him alone.
I pushed my chair out, and as I took a step toward him, Emily squeaked, “David? Don’t!”
My eyes flicked from Dominic’s suddenly empty hand to the other side of the cafeteria, where apple juice rained in a shower over the ducking gorillas, a million tiny pieces of pulp sticking to the wall behind them.
A cool silence lingered. David’s arm came back down to his side, his shoulder still leaned into a throw I hadn’t even seen him take.
The whole room erupted then. Every person, sitting or standing, started clapping and cheering. Even the gorilla that threw the apple raised his thumb.
David took a few pats on the back and shook a few hands, and when he looked at me again, his eyes oddly round with anger, I closed my gaping mouth and walked up to the damaged kid.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he moaned and sat back down, rubbing his head. “Those guys are just assholes.”
“Yeah. They had no right to do that. I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t moved, it would’ve hit me.”
“Guess it’s good you moved then.” He gave me a smirk, his whole face still red.
“Nah, I can handle embarrassment pretty well.”
“Lucky you.”
I smiled softly at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He nodded, and shifted his black knight to another square on the chessboard. “I’m used to it.”
“Yeah, but you owe David for saving your ass like that, Dom,” one of the other guys piped up, still laughing.
“Saving it?” I said.
“David’s friends with those jerks, so he can get away with it, but if Dom had thrown that apple, those guys would make his life hell!”
“And they don’t now?” I asked.
He glanced back at David before quickly looking away, and the fear in his eyes tipped a bucket of realization over me. “David doesn’t normally stand up for people, does he?”
The boy just moved his next chess piece, ignoring me.
“We’d rather not say.” His friend put his head down too. “Can you just leave us alone now before you get us in more trouble?”
“Sure,” I said, backing away, feeling heavy with the idea that maybe I was wrong about David. Maybe he wasn’t all that great.
David dropped his head as I turned around, tension making a stiff line across his shoulders. I sat down beside him again and waited, but he didn’t look at me. “So you’re a bully—like those fruit-throwing jerks?”
“Really, Ara,” Emily said. “He sits with them, but he’s not like them at all. Anymore.”
Anymore? I searched his face for a second, but he kept his gaze on the table between his wrists, darkened by what I read to be shame, as if maybe he knew how strongly I felt about this sort of thing.
“Those kids behind us clearly disagree,” I said.
Emily took a breath to speak, but David cut in. “Look, I was a jackass, Ara. When I first came to the school, I used to do stuff like that all the time.”
“But not anymore?” I blinked, studying the side of his face.
“It takes a long time for people to forget,” Emily said. “And—”
“I had hoped it might be some time before you learned of this. You know what they say—about first impressions.” David looked at me with those big green eyes, and all I could think was how unfair it is that guys have thicker, darker lashes than girls.
“I doubt Ara’s first impression of you is that you’re a jackass, David,” Ryan said.
My eyes went from him to David again, humor-laced confusion making them smaller. David Knight, school heartthrob and easily the most gorgeous personality I’d ever come across, had no
thing to worry about. I was the one doing the worrying. “Why the hell would you be worried about my first impression of you?”
David exhaled slowly through his nose.
I wanted to laugh. “Look, even if you were a bully once, what you did for that kid today was really nice. Jackasses don’t generally do things like that.”
“And neither do fragile, very breakable young girls.” He grew taller in his seat, his tone sharp. “Do you have any idea what those guys would have done to you if you’d thrown that apple at them?”
I inhaled a huff of insult. “I can take care of myself, thank you,” I scolded. “How’d you even know I was gonna throw it back at them?”
“I could tell—from the way you charged forward, guns blazing.”
“Really, Ara. You should avoid revenge throws when it comes to fruit at this school,” Emily warned.
“Yeah,” Ryan added. “We’ve had kids hospitalized with lemons in places they don’t belong.”
I cringed, hiding my disgust. “Well, I went to an all-girls’ school. I know how to hold my own.”
“Sure. Until you hit the wrong person in the head, and they come after you,” Ryan said.
I doubted they’d come after a teacher’s daughter. “I’d be okay. I’ve done self-defense training.”
“Seriously?” Emily sat taller.
“Yeah, kind of. My friend’s a cop, so he taught me how to fight off rapists and stuff.”
“Cool. You should teach us some moves.” Emily motioned to herself and Alana.
“Won’t matter, Ara,” Ryan said. “If they know you’ve done self-defense, they’ll make a point of showing you how weak you really are. And you’re like”—he presented me with a flat palm—“tiny. They’d pin you in two-point-one nanoseconds and they have no qualms about hitting girls.”
David glowered at Ryan then looked back at me, turning his whole body to face mine. “Look, the fact is, they don’t care who you are or who you hang out with. If they get it in for you, you might as well leave the school.”
“Then I’d just leave.”
“Precisely why it was better for all if I turned it into a game.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 6