“Who allowed you to have an opinion, emo freak?” Monica asked, and gave Eve a scorching head-to-toe look. “Somebody needs to nine-one-one the fashion police, because that’s a felony.”
“I really wish you would call, because I’m pretty sure this is a hooker-shoe-free zone. Also—news flash, you really need to stop taking style tips from people with sex tapes.” Eve said it with all the warm concern she could manage, which only made Monica angrier, of course. If they’d been alone in the locker room, or even in front of a bunch of girls, Monica would probably have slapped her, and then it would have been on, but Shane loomed at Eve’s back, and Michael, though not as hair-trigger on temper, was definitely tense.
Monica was mean. She wasn’t stupid. She gave Eve a clear Later, loser look, and tossed her shiny hair. “For your information, the blood drive’s for Morganville General Hospital. Not for the blood bank.”
“You got that in writing somewhere? I mean, somewhere that doesn’t include your contract with your dark lord, Satan,” Shane said. “Because you doing something just out of the goodness of your heart sounds about like . . . Wait, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right. Bullshit.”
Monica made a kissy face at him, and he made a retching sound. Eve thought she might have been the only one to see the flash of hurt that raced through Monica’s expression. God, she thought, stunned. Tell me the Queen Bitch doesn’t have a total crush on Shane Collins! That would be . . . wrong. And also dangerous, because as far as Eve could tell, Shane wouldn’t even consider a hate-you makeout with Monica, much less anything else, and Monica didn’t take rejection all that well.
“Don’t forget the sign-up sheet in the cafeteria,” Monica said to all of them, but her attention was totally focused on Shane. “I want to see all of you strapped down and giving it up.”
Now Eve felt like vomiting, too, given the way Monica seemed to roll that around on her tongue. It was a welcome relief to hear Michael say, “Don’t you have some fifth graders to menace, Monica? It’s getting boring now.”
“Watch it, Glass,” Monica’s bestie, Gina, said, and leveled a really well-manicured finger at him. “You can’t talk to her that way.”
“Yeah? Wait until you see how I talk to you,” Michael shot back, and slammed his locker door. Funny. Shane was all instant violence . . . explosive, but quick to be over it. Michael got mad slow, but he burned a long time, and everybody knew when that tone came into his voice, it was time to back the hell away. “Clear off. Now.”
Gina might have pushed, but Monica knew better; she grabbed her friend’s arm and shoved her forward, moving with the flow to the other end of the hall. It was first lunch; the smell of overdone meat loaf and waterlogged vegetables was starting to sour the hallway. “They’re heading for the cafeteria,” Eve said to the boys. “What say you to tacos?”
“I say yea,” Shane said, and held up his hand for a slap. When she went for it, he yanked it too high for her to reach. “Too slow and too low.”
She punched him in the stomach—not hard, just playing—and he let out an exaggerated woof and bent over, still holding up the hand. She slapped it. “I can always cut you down to size, Shane,” she said. “Come on. Primo comida awaits.”
? ? ?
The taco stand a block away from the school—brilliantly, it just read TACOS in big red and yellow letters—was crowded with teens and adults alike, but Shane shouldered his way up and ordered while Eve and Michael grabbed a small table that had just been abandoned. He came back balancing a bag and three sodas. The bag held nine tacos and about half a gallon of hot sauce, which was a smart move on Shane’s part. They all loved hot sauce.
Lunch didn’t require a lot of chitchat, at least for the first two tacos apiece, and then Shane mumbled around a mouthful of shell and spicy beef, “You think the blood drive’s legit?”
“Hell no,” Michael said. “There’s got to be something going on there. Monica Morrell never did a nice thing in her life unless there was something in it for her.”
“Well, they’re using the Bloodmobile,” Eve pointed out as she slathered more hot sauce on her taco. She liked them gruesome. “That alone tells you the vamps have a stake in it. Pun intended, by the way, because I am awesome like that.”
Michael gave her a smile. A genuine smile, one that made her tingle inside and out. She smiled back, and for a second—a beautiful, amazing second—it felt like they were really communicating.
Then Michael looked away at Shane and said, “What would the vamps get out of a blood drive for the hospital?”
“Maybe they’re planning on having some kind of cocktail party fund-raiser, and we’re providing the drinks.”
“Ugh,” Eve said.
“So I take it neither of you will be signing up on the donation sheet,” said Michael.