Hemlock reached over and whacked the button that turned down the speed. Jared pulled his earbuds out, annoyed.
“What the hell?”
Adam shrugged. “Just thought we could chat.”
“I’m not much of a chatter.”
“That’s a shame. There’s been a lot of it about you.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Jared said easily, slowing down to an easy walk. The run had done him good, much better than posing with the weights. He grabbed his towel and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.
“People are intrigued about you, Rawell. You’re in with Chris and Clare already, and those are two tough nuts to crack.”
“Chris is cool,” Jared said with a nod. “Clare is a class-A bitch.”
Adam laughed, a sharp, clear sound. “Yeah. God, I love that girl.”
With the machine slowing to a stop, Jared stretched his calves, and his neck from side to side, then shook out his aching limbs.
“Well, it’s been nice and all….”
“Wait. I’m partying on the weekend. You should be there.”
“Jesus, you’re arrogant.”
Adam grinned. “Be there,” he repeated and turned the speed up on his treadmill.
In the locker room, Jared was pleased Adam hadn’t followed him in; most of the boys were done in the showers and were finishing preening or leaving already. The last thing he wanted was rumors circulating about him and the only other openly gay guy in school. Especially when he’d vowed to Clare and her fellow witches he wasn’t going to give Adam the satisfaction.
There was clearly something going on with Clare, and it wasn’t as simple as her wanting to be completely in control. Jared wasn’t stupid—he could sense a trap from a mile away, and it might have been a while since he last had to deal with manipulative women, but he’d grown up with a mother and two older sisters who were masters at getting their own way, so he was familiar with the concept.
Since he could, and apparently it was bugging the other kids, Jared walked into the cafeteria and immediately found a seat at Chris’s table, sitting down without being invited.
“What up,” Chris said.
Jared grinned.
“You been messin’ with these basic white kids in gym?” Chris asked, then offered him a fist-bump across the table. Jared laughed.
“I ain’t getting into a testosterone-fueled, look-how-big-my-balls-are contest,” Jared said, cracking open his Pepsi. “If anyone wants to take a look, they can suck on ’em.”
Chris laughed and threw his arm around Clare’s shoulder. She looked for a moment like she was going to throw him off, then decided against it.
“So you got on a treadmill,” Clare said. “Big fucking deal.”
“I know, right?” Jared said. She seemed confused that he’d agreed with her. “Something going down at Hemlock’s this weekend, so I hear. You supplying?”
Chris nodded. “Fo’ sho.”
“I’ll take an eighth,” Jared said. “Keep some back for me?”
“A’ight.”
“Can’t make it Saturday,” Mia said, sliding into a seat at the end of the table with a plate of cheese fries and a bottle of Odwalla. Jared shook his head in disbelief at her lunch choice and stayed purposefully silent on the topic.
“You better have a decent reason not to be there,” Clare said. “Or Hemlock won’t let you in to the next one.”
“There’s a family thing,” Mia said. “Ben’s home, and—”
Her words were drowned out by the collective groan of the dozen or so people at the table. Jared raised an eyebrow at Clare, trusting her to explain, while Mia looked extremely put out by their reaction.
“Mia’s cousin is Ben Haggerty, better known as Macklemore,” she said. “For fuck’s sake, don’t be impressed. You’ll get dropped so quickly, you won’t know what happened.”
“I didn’t know I’d been picked up,” Jared drawled.
Mia sniffed and dunked a fry into a pile of ketchup. “You say that now, but I bet it’ll be a different story when you want me to get him to play at prom.”
“Nah, we gettin’ Sir Mix-a-Lot this year,” Chris said with a wide smile, leaning back in his chair. “Baby got back.”
“How the fuck are you going to book Sir Mix-a-Lot?” Clare asked, pushing his arm off now. “You talk so much shit, Chris.”
Jared watched their argument with interest, wondering who he’d be able to grill for more information on their relationship. They seemed like one of those established power-couples, but they didn’t appear to be romantically linked at all. There was definitely something simmering there, and Jared wondered if it was a “Daddy won’t let me date a black guy” situation. Clare certainly was Snow White pale, and he imagined race relations in this snobby, upper-class town were tense.
“So, when did you get pulled in?” Chris said, directing his question at Jared.
“Huh?”
“You split yesterday. When did they pull you into the office?”
“I didn’t get pulled in anywhere,” Jared said and drained his Pepsi. “Why, was I supposed to?”
There was a general “oooh” around the table.
“What?” Jared repeated.
“No one skips here,” Clare said. “They have this whole thing about truancy and zero tolerance. I can’t believe they didn’t catch you.”
Jared shrugged. “Either no one noticed, which is fine, or no one cares. Which is even more fine.” From the look on Clare’s face, he could tell she was reluctantly impressed.
“That never happens,” she said slowly. “It’s a boarding school. They catch everyone.”
“I’m not a boarder, though. Neither are you guys.”
“A few of us were, when we were younger,” Ryder said. “I told my mom I wasn’t going to board from my sophomore year onward. So she moved here.”
“No one cares, Ryder,” Clare said in a bored voice.
“I have a feeling my dad is paying Hadley serious money to keep the house,” Jared said, playing with the ring-pull on his can and interrupting Clare’s vitriol. “There’s no way she’d still be here otherwise. She likes the heat too much. All this rain would drive her crazy.”
“That’s Hadley Saunders, right?” Mia asked.
Jared nodded. “Yeah.”
“You’re living in the old Saunders house.”
“Yeah.” There
