At least no one’s staring at me, I think as I maneuver through the halls toward my locker.
Someone grabs my arm and says, “Indie?” very hesitantly.
Thea, all four feet nine of her, stares up at me with eyes the shape of saucers as she realizes that, yes, in fact, it is Indie. She drops her hand from my arm as though looking like crap might be contagious.
Heat creeps up my neck and onto my cheeks. “Hi, Thea.”
“What happened to you?” she asks.
I roll my eyes. Does the girl have no tact? I’m inclined to tell her that my chemo has been especially hard this month, just to make her feel bad for asking such a dumb question. Instead, I settle for the vague “I just haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
Thea gives a slow blink. “Oh. Well, where have you been? You missed, like, a trillion cheer practices and you weren’t at the mandatory meeting on Sunday. Did you drop out of the squad?”
“Well, nobody informed me about this mandatory cheer meeting on Sunday, so why would I have shown up?”
I guess I must have said that a little more tersely than I’d planned, because there’s at least a handful of people staring at me now and whispering behind cupped hands. Goodbye, anonymity.
Thea shrinks visibly. “I dunno….”
I heave a sigh—I’m taking out my anger on the wrong person. It’s not Thea’s fault I wasn’t invited. “Anyway, no, I’m not going to be on the team anymore. I’ve realized cheerleading’s not my thing.”
“You mean, it’s not a loser thing?”
I stiffen at the sound of Bianca’s voice behind me.
Snickers bounce along the hallway, and I swear a freaking spotlight descends on me in all my ratty-haired glory. Of course it was too much to hope that she’d died of Ebola since I last saw her.
Heels clacking, Bianca walks around me. Her white-blond hair is clipped back from her face, the rest falling in gleaming strands somewhere between her shoulders and boobs (which, FYI, are on full display in her low-cut tank top).
She gives me a long up-and-down appraisal, and a grin pulls up her lips. Now more than ever I wish I knew how to conjure objects, just so I could make Valtrex tumble out of her pocket. I can’t believe I ever thought this girl was my friend.
“I think you’re conveniently forgetting I chose not to be friends with you, Bianca,” I say.
“Right,” she answers. “And it looks like you’ve been pretty torn up about it too.”
“Ha-ha,” I deadpan. “But actually, that’s one decision I know I’ll never regret. Unlike you, who will probably regret many things, like the incident in Ian’s bathroom last spring, for example?”
Her face burns redder than if her mom had caught her reading Fifty Shades of Grey. I give her an innocent smile. I like to think I wouldn’t stoop as low as Bianca and spread around all the dirt I have on her, but I’m not above threatening to do it, and often, if just to see her squirm the way she’s made countless others do.
“Come on, guys, no fighting.”
As if this morning couldn’t get worse.
Devon sidles up, blond waves flopping around his tanned face and a backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Can’t we all get along?” he adds.
I want to sock my cheating asshole of an ex. Bianca looks like she does too. But then her expression clears and she smiles a deranged sort of smile.
“You’re right, sweetie.” She hooks her hands around Devon’s neck and pulls him in for a deep kiss. For a moment he looks embarrassed, but then he draws her in by the waist, shoving his tongue down her throat like he’s trying to eat her face.
The wind is knocked out of me.
I know I shouldn’t care. I have a much better boyfriend now, and I’m pretty sure all girl codes for dating your friend’s ex are off if you’re no longer friends…But still. Could they have moved on any faster?
Everyone’s looking at me. I fight the urge to call a meeting at the bike racks at three o’clock.
“Well, the plot thickens,” I say flatly, feigning nonchalance.
The bell rings, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I step around the tangled bodies, the crowd giving me a wide berth as I pass like I’m some sort of leper.
I know it’d be easier if Paige were here. She’d laugh at all this. Tell me they were lemmings and who the hell cares what lemmings think. I feel a pang in my gut that she’s not here with me now. That she might never be again.
I’ve been at school for all of six minutes and already I’m counting down until I can leave.
In homeroom, Mrs. Davies drones on about the yearbook committee’s desperate call for members, while Bianca stage-whispers in the back of the class to a rapt crowd about the annual HallowSCREAM! party she’s throwing the weekend before Halloween (she whispers especially loud so I’ll know what I’m missing out on by not being invited). To make matters worse, I keep catching Paige’s transfer-student friend Jessie Colburn staring at me. Even when I’m not looking at her, I can feel her eyes following me like the freaking Mona Lisa. I decide now’s as good a time as any to get the violin.
I raise my hand.
Mrs. Davies pauses reluctantly. “Yes, Ms. Blackwood?”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“Do you ever,” Bianca says, and the class erupts into laughter.
I cut her a glare.
“Bianca Cavanaugh,” Mrs. Davies says, tsking, then turns to me. “Yes, go ahead, Indigo.”
I snag one of the orange lanyard hall passes from her desk on my way out.
“Not too long!” Davies calls after me.
My shoes squeak loudly in the hall, the sound echoing off the army green lockers. It’s empty now, but that could change at any moment. I make a beeline toward Paige’s locker and say a silent thank-you for the MUSIC NERDS RULE! sticker she’s got plastered across the front—I won’t have to waste my time breaking into the wrong locker. I do a quick shoulder check to make sure a teacher isn’t lurking in the hallway, and then take the combination lock into my hands.
I close my eyes and call out to the heat. It responds with a flash of warmth that spreads like fireworks up my body. I whisper the Latin word for “open.”