He gives me a curt nod and then turns back to the board to continue his lecture. My face is burning, but I refuse to give anyone in class the satisfaction of me getting up to go to the bathroom or dipping my head to my desk. I hold my head high, my eyes locked on the board and on the teacher.
Even so, I hear the whispers behind me. There’s more than one person talking, but I’m already sure that I know one of them. I have no idea what I did to piss Quinn off this quickly, but something about me just rubs him wrong.
All I can hope is that he and I don’t have any other classes together, or else this year is really going to suck.
Chapter Two
“Madeline, wait!” Madeline is the only person in accounting who showed me even a smidge of friendliness, which is why I chase her down the hall. Most of the other students are moving in groups from class to class, but she’s walking by herself, her head down, cutting through the groups as quickly and smoothly as possible.
She doesn’t pause when I call out, so I do it again. “Madeline! Hey!” This time, she gets caught up in a group of students and I manage to catch up with her. She has on a short skirt and a tight t-shirt that I thought would be against school rules. I feel downright dowdy next to her in an oversized sweater and pair of jeans.
“Hey.” Taking a moment to catch my breath, I flash her a grin. “I almost lost you back there in the crowd! What class are you going to next?”
“Um, science.” She shifts her backpack and looks past me down the hall. “What do you have next?”
Okay, so she’s not the chattiest person I’ve ever met. I can’t help but miss my best friends from my old school, but thinking about them isn’t going to help me survive my time at Trinity Prep. I smile at her. “Same. Care to show me the way? I don’t think that I can handle another public reaming if I’m late to class again.”
This time, she smiles. Good. A little self-deprecating humor is often what it takes to make people warm up to you. I’ve learned that the hard way, but at least it seems like it’s going to work.
“Sure, if you thought that Professor Thiel was bad, then you definitely don’t want to piss off Mrs. Scarlet. She thinks that she’s God’s gift to science, but let me tell you, she’s just kinda crazy.”
“Aren’t most science teachers?” I fall into step beside her and listen to her talk. She keeps up a steady stream all the way to class, filling me on how the students think that she had an affair with the director of the school but nobody can prove it, and how the teachers have a mini-bar in the teacher’s lounge.
I gasp at that. There was no way that that would have been allowed at my old high school. “Are you sure that that’s legal? It doesn’t sound like teachers drinking on the job is the best idea, right?”
She laughs and tosses her hair. “Yeah, it’s definitely not, but nobody really cares. As long as Trinity is able to turn out artists and professionals then parents just kinda…look the other way. Anyway, this is it.”
The science lab isn’t like anything that I’d ever seen before at my old school. Where we had had old tables and half-rusted equipment that we had to use for experiments, the equipment at Trinity Prep is all top of the line. There was no doubt that they value providing a great education, even though the main focus was the arts.
“I had no idea that science classes were such a big deal here.” Following Madeline into the room, I drop my backpack on the floor next to hers. “I mean, this is insane.”
Madeline sighs and leans close to me. From here, I can smell her sweet bubblegum perfume. It is light and airy. When she moves, I see a faint sheen of dust on her clothes, and it hit me that my new friend is a sculpture. “Listen, Abby, there’s something you need to know. Everything at Trinity Prep is a big deal. Everything. If you can figure that out and play by the rules then you’ll probably be fine. I think.”
“Like staying out of Quinn’s way?” I ask. Madeline’s not stupid. I’m sure that she saw how he reacted to me coming to class.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Quinn’s a dick, Abby, okay? You don’t want to get involved with him, trust me. Everyone here is out for blood, and he leads the charge.”
That is a hell of a warning. Opening my mouth, I want to ask her more, but before I can say anything, Mrs. Scarlet walks into the room. She’s holding a huge book and drops it to her desk at the front of the room with a loud slam.
Immediately, everyone in the class sits up straight and turns to the front of the room. Mrs. Scarlet doesn’t command the room quite like Mr. Thiel, but there’s something fascinating about her. Maybe it’s the way her dress is just a little too short. Maybe it’s the oversized jewelry that she has on. Maybe it’s the fact that when she talks, she makes really aggressive eye contact.
Whatever it is, something about Mrs. Scarlet immediately intrigues me.
It’s just the second period of the day, but it’s already easy to see that I have a lot to learn about Trinity Prep.
***
After science I have history, but Madeline wanders off to the art hall. “I’ll see you at lunch, Abby! Good luck with history!”
Waving, I can’t help but smile to myself as I turn away from her. Science wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought that it would be. Mrs. Scarlet is full of herself, but at
