Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(4)

At the exit he held the door for me. I stopped and regarded him before I walked through. He pressed his back against the door to keep it open.

“Did you learn that at cotillion?” I asked.

“I don’t think they have cotillion classes in Harrisburg,” he said.

“Then what is up with the southern gentleman act? It’s a bit much for around here,” I said.

“I was born below the Mason-Dixon line,” he stated.

I walked through the door just as a train of women headed our way, leaving him holding the door for all of them. “I still didn’t get your name,” he called after me. I laughed in response and kept walking. I hoped he would be stuck holding the door all day. Let him pay the price for having excessive manners.

It was a beautiful late summer morning, a blue sky without a trace of clouds and crisp air that smelled like leaves and hinted at fall. The sun warmed my skin as I headed down the steps. I still felt unnerved, gripped by the urge to get away from Emmett’s sight. He had already seen my scar—that wasn’t it. Maybe I was uncomfortable with the fact that it didn’t seem to affect him.

A ten minute walk took me to the slanting parking lot across from the looming Field House, a hundred-year-old arena. Tuba was waiting for me outside the stadium entrance. She was our starting setter, my house mate, and my best friend. Tuba’s real name was Christine, but no one ever called her that just as no one ever called our middle hitter Mac by her real name, Molly, or our outside hitter VanBree by Vanessa.

“Bryn’s starting today,” she reminded me, her brown eyes filled with excitement at the prospect of our new offensive weapon. Bryn DeNeuville was a transfer, fresh off of summer training camp with Olympic coaches in La Jolla, California. I hadn’t met Bryn yet, but I had seen game film. If she played half as well as she looked on tape, our team wanted to make her feel very welcome.

The familiar damp concrete smell invaded my nostrils as we made our way through the tunnels to the women’s volleyball locker room.

The minute I set foot in the doorway I looked around the locker room for our new outside hitter. I had seen enough of Bryn’s image on screen to vaguely recognize the new junior seated on the rug, one impossibly long leg stretched out in front of her and the other bent like a pretzel as she twisted across her perfectly muscled thigh.

Mac was deep in conversation with her. Mac was the tallest girl on the team. She was also a local girl. Both her parents were cops, her dad a mere six foot two, her mom a badass six four. They were both usually armed, and some of their scary law-enforcement authority must have rubbed off on Mac because despite her rosy cheeks and strawberry blonde hair, she could be intimidating.

Whatever Mac was saying to Bryn, VanBree was agreeing with. VanBree grew up in a tough suburb of Chicago. She was the other girl on the team who you did not want to mess with—other than me, that was. And she was focusing all her do-not-mess-with-me juju on Bryn, leaning into her ear, speaking low.

Bryn looked back and forth between them, eyebrows raised. I couldn’t tell what expression was on her face. She didn’t look intimidated. Mostly just sweet and blank. I wondered what nickname Bryn would go by. Bambi? The door swung closed behind me.

Mac rose from her triangle pose to see who had walked in. She nudged the transfer. “Bryn. This is CeCe. Team captain.” She cleared her throat. “I told you all about her, remember?”

“Sorry we weren’t able to connect earlier.” I smiled as she looked up and met my eyes. Her sweet blank face fell, literally fell, her mouth agape and her eyes wide. The room went dead quiet, as if every living body—even the fruit flies the custodial staff couldn’t seem to get rid of—was holding its breath.

“Oh my God!” Bryn cried as she rose to her feet, managing to be graceful despite her obvious distress.

Shit. Were we really going to do this?

Her beautiful eyes were glued to the one very noticeable feature on my face. I looked over at Tuba and she slowly shook her head. More faces cautiously peeked out from the aisles of lockers and the bathroom. But Bryn, the little shit bag, didn’t notice any of the signals. Maybe we should have gotten this first meeting over with on neutral territory. Instead we were doing it in front of most of the volleyball team. And I could occasionally be explosive.

She took a few steps toward me, cocking her head to the side as she examined my scar. I filled my lungs and counted as I slowly released my breath.

“What did you do to your face?” she cried as if her own face was throbbing in pain.

I think I heard a sound, or maybe it was just in my head. It was a ping, like the snap of a tightly wound fiddle string. As I looked into her utterly sincere eyes, my tension simply broke. I think I might have laughed. Did she actually think I did this to myself?

“I mean, they said you had a bad scar,” she said. “But, I didn’t realize it was bad, bad.”

The words should have made me want to slap her stupid. But she was already there. Was she some type of wise fool? A modern-day idiot savant?

I looked past Bryn’s shoulder at Tuba while I steadied myself. She was wincing. Bryn was still staring. This time I really did laugh, if a bit maniacally. I mean, honestly, I had to consider Bryn’s word choice. Bad, bad?

“Could we try another adjective?” I asked Bryn. “Like revolting? Horrific? Macabre?”

“I’m not that good with words,” she said.