Then she hooked her arm through her friend’s. The two of them headed toward the school and she didn’t look back.
I watched her go, up the stairs and into the building, through the gaudy stone archway where some archaic bullshit was carved in Latin long before they even let girls into this place.
Lex, who’d remained mute throughout that entire exchange, took his sweet time wandering over from the passenger side of my car. I could feel his amusement radiating off him as he lit up next to me.
“Who’s the skater chick?” I asked him, because no way was I showing a dog shit’s worth of interest inher.
“Dunno.”
“Find out.” I glanced at him as he exhaled smoke. If anyone could get me intel on a couple of high school girls, it was my cousin, Lex. Anyway, it was the least he could do for expecting me to pick his ass up in the Spider after his piece of shit motorcycle broke down.
He grinned at me, looking more like a jackal than he usually did. Good-looking jackal in a leather jacket, with ruin in his eyes. I often thought about that; where we were both headed in life. Me to victory and him to fucking ruin.
Maybe I was blessed and he was damned, but really, in our family, what was the difference?
I started toward the school and when he didn’t follow, I turned back. “You plan on actually seeing the inside of a classroom today?”
“What do you think happened to that chick’s face?” he said in reply.
“What chick?” I said flatly, like I had no idea what he was talking about.
He knew I did. Wasn’t every day a girl just blew me off like that.
My cousin smiled and did that weird thing he did, touching his tongue to his upper canine tooth. Why girls loved that move, I’d never know.
I turned and strolled into the school, trying to pretend that the most unexpected, unacceptable, and interesting thing to happen to me in a long fucking time didn’t just happen out in that parking lot, courtesy of some chick in a seizure-inducing dress and a hideous facial wound.
I saw her across the foyer with her friend, by the orientation table where new students checked in. Chatting away, like what just happened didn’t even happen.
Like she didn’t give one fuck about the rules. Or about the fact that she had the apparent result of a run-in with a large, jagged object smack in the middle of her face.
Or that the most popular guy in the school was staring at her.
I’d come to West Vancouver from Toronto in sophomore year, and when I stalked the halls of Beaumont Academy at fifteen, the new boy from out east, I made an impression. All it took to impress people around here was the usual, anyway.
Be rich.
Be hot. Or at the very least, be fucking cool.
And of course, be the best of the best.
And I was. Athlete. Straight-A student. Dark-blond, green eyed, and destined for greatness.
I’m not bragging.
All this shit just came naturally, and I wouldn’t say I could credit myself with any of it. My looks came from my parents. The athletic genes came from my dad. The smart genes came from my mom, and so did my money. My family name, Davenport, opened every door for me before I’d even decided to walk through it.
The fact that I was, by a generous stretch, the richest kid at a rich-kid school? That kind of shit made you king before you’d even decided you wanted the title.
My entire life, I’d been treated like the hero of some epic fantasy—and everyone seemed to want a part in it, no matter how small.
Not her.
She’d looked me right in the eye, like I was the villain hiding out in the hero’s clothing, and she saw right the fuck through it.
I didn’t even know why it bothered me. But it fucking did.
Her name was Devi Sereda.