“I told you to ride with me,” she says playfully, standing up and turning around to lean her butt against the center island. “Danyella drives like a ninety-year-old woman.”
“You know I’m capped out at thirty miles an hour,” Danyella responds mechanically, like she’s regurgitated this line about a thousand times already. “Don’t be jealous that my parents are instilling the ideals of hard work and self-sacrifice into me.”
Lumen scoffs and tosses her blond hair, her skirt riding dangerously high up her thighs as she lounges in the Schaeffers’ kitchen as if she’s as comfortable here as Chasm is at the Vanguard’s. I’m still not entirely sure what Danyella and Lumen’s relationship is really like. From what I’ve heard, they’ve known each other since kindergarten, but they don’t exactly hang out on the grounds of Whitehall.
“Rumor has it that Parrish assaulted you in the hall on your way out,” Lumen continues as Danyella opens the fridge and offers me a drink. It looks like a supermarket drink aisle threw up in there. Must be a rich people thing, to have a half-dozen of every flavor and brand and type of beverage ever created. I choose a bottle of red Gatorade while she hands Lumen a Fiji water without even asking.
“He tried,” I say with a long-suffering sigh. “He seems pissed about the …” I can’t even say it without blushing. My boobs are already beet red beneath my uniform, I’m sure.
“The kiss?” Lumen guesses, and then she laughs. The sound is like tinkling bells or the beating of fairy wings or something. She’s almost too perfect to be real. The smile she gives me is mysterious, almost coquettish. “Don’t tell me that was your first?”
That beet red color my body seems so fond of entertaining spreads across my breasts, cheeks, and forehead. Luckily, Lumen and Danyella can’t see the worst of it.
“No, it most definitely wasn’t,” I respond slowly, thinking about Parrish. Again. My mind seems to circle back to thoughts of him in an unhealthy way. I should be working to build friendships, not daydreaming about a lazy, entitled asshole. I clear my throat, but Lumen’s laughing anyway. Danyella gives us both a weird look.
“This is why I think dating is better left for after college,” she says, rolling her eyes to the ceiling with a sigh. Her words from that first day come filtering back to me, the ones she said about Lumen. “I wouldn’t call her a mean girl or anything, but I also wouldn’t confess my deepest secrets to her, you know?”
I keep that in mind. Frankly, I’m surprised that they’re friends at all. Danyella is introspective and intellectual while Lumen is outgoing and gregarious. Then again, Lumen is apparently neck-and-neck with Chasm for the top spot in the academy. For juniors anyway. Danyella, as far as I know, is the top-ranking sophomore. When the time comes that my grades are posted online for everyone to see (a practice that I don’t agree with), I won’t be looking. A ranking of dead last would not surprise me.
“After college?” Lumen asks, opening a cabinet and sourcing some liquor. She unscrews the top without even asking and starts making drinks, much to Danyella’s irritation. But she doesn’t stop her friend from doing it, so I figure she knows her parents well-enough to know that we’ll get away with this. What would Tess think, if she knew? I imagine I wouldn’t be allowed to come over here ever again.
I bite my lip—imitating Maxx yet again. Ugh. I force myself to stop.
“Yes, after college. Education is far more important than hormones and meaningless sex.” Danyella leans back against the cabinets, this look of challenge on her face that makes me wonder if this isn’t a common occurrence for the two of them, this verbal sparring.
Lumen snorts a laugh, splashing juice into the cups and then shoving one across the counter toward me. She takes the other for herself and offers nothing to Danyella.
“Are we going somewhere later?” I ask, and Danyella lifts a brow at me.
“Why would you think that?” she replies, glancing over at Lumen.
“Because I know you drink—I saw you at the party—but you’re not drinking now. So you’re driving. Where are we going?” My heart swells at the idea of escaping the school and that awful house. I was about to freeze to death inside of the walls of the fucking ice cavern. I curl my hands around the glass and drag it closer. Bottoms up, I guess, downing the entire drink in one go before launching Tetris on my phone and resuming my previous game. “What?” I ask, glancing up to see the both of them staring at me.
“You could be a detective,” Danyella finally says with a smile, just before Lumen grabs my arm and gapes at my phone screen.
