Burn Before Reading(11)
“Hey, Wolf.” She smiles. “What’re you up to?”
She – like everyone else in the school – knows I don’t like people who touch my bike without my permission. And yet she’s doing it. I’m still unclear about what these women think being near or on my bike will get them. My attention? Perhaps. Though why they’d want the attention of a short-tempered asshole like me, I have no idea. This girl has decided to skip respect and move straight to goading me for attention. And she’ll get it. Just not in the way she wants.
“Move,” I request. The girl winks and strokes the handlebars.
“Oh, come on, Wolf. We’ve been in the same class forever. The least you could do is give me a ‘hello’, or a ‘hi, beautiful’.”
“Why would I do that?” I drone.
“To be polite, maybe.” She inspects her nails.
“I don’t do polite.”
Her laugh is nice, even if her entire personality isn’t. “That’s why I like you. So I guess it’s fine. For now.”
“Move,” I repeat, my words hard and biting. “Or I’ll punish you myself.”
She blushes. “Well, if you insist!”
I knead the space between my brows. She’s starting to give me a headache. If I was Burn, or Fitz, I could easily move her to the side with little damage on either of our parts, but that’s not an option for me. It never has been. My words and eyes alone have to burn her so badly she wants to move. I’d perfected burning people to an artform to survive. But it’s just not happening, today.
A muffled crashing noise makes us both look to where a girl desperately scoops up several fallen textbooks from the ground. A girl who happened to chew me out, this morning. Beatrix Cruz.
“Oh god, not her,” Miranda groans. “I was so pissed off at her for what she said to you, Wolf. I’m seriously going to fight her.”
“Touching,” I drawl. “But I don’t need you to defend me.”
“She’s so full of herself!” Miranda points at Beatrix. “Just look at her!”
I do. Beatrix cradles the textbooks in her arms gingerly as she makes her way to her dusty, accident-scarred car. The way she walks is always a little unsure, but determined. The wind plays with her hair, some of it stuck in the corner of her cold-flushed lips. The uniform suits her in a way it rarely does girls – it makes her look younger than her world-weary eyes betray. It’s easier to overlook the heaviness she carries in her shoulders when they’re covered in a stiff navy blue blazer. At the right angles, when she’s caught up in some textbook or another and smiling at something she read, she almost looks like the carefree teenager she’s supposed to be.
The enchantment of the moment is lost when Eric walks up, offering to help her carry her books. My skin heats. She has no idea what he’s done – and so she lets him help, their hands touching, her smile completely unaware of the evil that lurks beneath his.
“That’s so hilarious,” Miranda laughs. “If she seriously starts to hang out with Eric, and he tries to do what he did again –”
“Move, now,” My voice feels like acid in my throat, and Miranda jumps up.
“Geez, okay.”
I put my helmet on and rev my bike loud enough to have the whole parking lot looking at me. Beatrix and Eric included. Reminding Eric of my presence is enough to have him making some excuse to Beatrix and scuttling away. Good. Beatrix - as ignorant as ever - looks less than pleased about it, shooting me a nasty look as I glide towards the parking lot exit. Fine. Let her be angry at me. What’s one more drop of hate in the sea of disgust she’s already formed for me?
If things had been different – if I’d handled it differently – if she and I had met some other way -
I shake my head and stop at a stoplight. It’s pointless to think like that. What’s done is done, no matter how much I want it to have gone differently.
“There’s our boy!”
I look over at the voice to see Fitz, sitting in Burn’s convertible, with Burn driving. Fitz waves at me, his curly hair askew from the wind.
“What’s with you today? Why all the ruckus? I could’ve sworn you wanted people to notice you, or something, but that can’t be right. You’re the antisocial brother! You’ve got a reputation to maintain!”
I roll my eyes and say nothing. Burn nods at me, and I nod at him.
“Dinner, tonight,” Burn says simply. I shrug. He isn’t wrong – it’s that time of month when Dad tries to get us all together in one room to eat. Sometimes it’s a restaurant. Sometimes it’s at home. But it’s always the same – food cooked by a chef, not him. Conversation desperate for answers. Pitying gazes and self-righteous screeds. Herculean attempts at manipulation.
And the worst part? We can’t avoid it even if we want to. Well, we could. We used to, sleeping in Burn’s car on the side of the road, but that meant the next day would be even worse. And the day after that. Avoiding The Dinner just made four more Dinners to avoid, so we’d agreed to attend just the first one and have it over with.
The light is about to turn green, and Burn shoots a smirk at me.
“Race you.”
I nod, and rev my engine. He does the same. Fitz clutches his seatbelt for dear life.