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I didn’t even make it out of the building before my first challenge came up. It was a big one.
Physically, Monica Morrell was a pretty girl—not as beautiful as she thought she was, but on a scale of ten she was at least a seven, and that was when she wasn’t really trying. Today, she was definitely working for an eight point five, and was probably getting it. She had on a short pink dress and looked . . . glossy, I guess. Girls would probably be able to tell you all the technical details of that, but the bottom line was, she turned heads.
And my first impulse, my very first, was to punch her right in the pink lip gloss.
That was so familiar to me that it honestly kind of surprised me when I considered it, in light of Goldman’s homework assignment. She hadn’t even seen me yet, hadn’t smirked or made a snarky, cold comment; she hadn’t reminded me of my dead family, or dissed my girlfriend, or done any of a thousand things she was bound to pull out to trip my triggers. It was just a reflex, me wanting to hurt her, and I was pretty sure that most people didn’t have that kind of wiring.
I took a deep breath, and as she looked up and saw me getting off the elevator, I held the door for her. I didn’t smile—it probably would have looked like I wanted to bite her—but I nodded politely and said, “Morning,” just like she was a real person and not a skanky murderous bitch who didn’t deserve to breathe.
She faltered, just a little strange flinch as if she couldn’t quite figure out what my game was. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I never would have seen the odd expression that flashed across her face, and even then, it took me a few more seconds to realize what it meant.
She was afraid.
The flash of fear vanished, and she tossed her shiny hair back and walked past me into the elevator. “Collins,” she said. “So, did you rig it to explode?” She said it like she was unimpressed, and stabbed a perfectly manicured finger out at one of the floor buttons. “Or are you just going to throw paint on me before the doors shut?”
I considered saying a lot of things—maybe about how she deserved to die in fire—and then I let go of the door, stepped back, and said, “Have a nice day, Monica.”
She was still staring at me with the best, most utterly confused expression when I turned and walked away, hands in my pockets.
Frustrating? Yeah, a little. But oddly fun. At least I can keep her guessing, I thought. And it felt like a little victory, just because I hadn’t done the first thing that popped into my head.
Walking toward home, I nodded to people I knew, which was pretty much everybody. I didn’t hit anybody. I didn’t even say anything snide. It was kind of a miracle.
I decided to test my luck a little, and stopped in at Common Grounds.
If I’d been relatively unpopular around Morganville before, I’d taken things to a whole new level. Down a level. I walked into the coffee shop like I had a thousand times before, and this time, conversation pretty much stopped dead. The college students ignored me, as they always did; I was a townie, unimportant to their own little insulated world. It was the Morganville natives who were reacting like Typhoid Mary had just sailed in the door. Some got real interested in their lattes and mochas; others whispered, heads together, darting looks at me.
Word was out that I was on probation with the Founder. Somewhere, some enterprising young buck was taking bets on whether I’d survive the week, and the odds were not going to be in my favor.
My housemate Eve was behind the counter, and she leaned over it and waved at me. She’d put some temporary blue streaks in her coal black hair, which gave her some interesting style, particularly when paired with the livid blue eye shadow and matching, very shiny shirt. Over her outfit, which was probably more cracked out than usual, she wore the tie-dyed Common Grounds apron. “Hey, sunshine,” she said. “What’s your poison?”
Knowing Eve, she meant that literally. “Coffee,” I said. “Just plain, none of that foo-foo stuff.”
She widened her eyes, and leaned over to stage-whisper, “Honestly, men do sometimes have cream in their coffee. I’ve seen it on the news. Try a latte sometime—it’s not going to reduce your testosterone level or anything.”
“B—” I was about to automatically say Bite me, which would have been right and proper and comfortable between the two of us; it wasn’t an angry response, just the usual thing I said when Eve snarked on me. I loved her, but this was how we talked. Probably wasn’t covered by Goldman’s rules, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d try to change it up. “Okay,” I said.
That got me a blank stare. “I’m sorry?”