“Or their stupid teachers.”
“I like my teachers.”
“Or their stupid history. Their stupid laws. Their stupid sciences.”
“Rid.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not for us Casters. Not where we’re going. Not with the kind of life we’re gonna have.”
“It matters to me.”
Ridley slammed her cousin’s locker shut. Lena could just make her so mad sometimes. She was a punching bag for Mortals. She had begged to go to Mortal school—she tried so hard to please them, all the time. And she was just so bad at it.
Better not to try.
Better not to expect to be invited to their birthday parties and their trips to the mall.
Better to know the teachers weren’t going to call on you.
Better not to care.
But as soon as Ridley slammed the locker door, she regretted it—not only for the look on her cousin’s face, but for the crowd it attracted.
She had forgotten the first rule of going to Mortal school: Lay low.
Even for a girl who hated rules, that was the one rule Ridley had the hardest time with. Who wanted to lay low when you had it in you to fly high?
Only Lena.
Who was now being circled by a crowd of girls so skinny-legged and straight-haired and mean-spirited that they made their own mothers look friendly.
“Cute sweater, Lena. Where’d you get it?” The girl closest to her, Caitlyn Wheatley, purred. She pinched the greenish-gray sleeve. Lena just stood there letting her do it. She always let them do it, which was why they did it in the first place.
“I don’t know,” Lena mumbled.
“Maybe your mamma knitted it for you from prison?” That wasn’t Caitlyn. That was Sandra Marsh, who never could resist a good whupping, so long as she wasn’t on the receiving end.
Lena didn’t say anything.
Ridley sighed.
“Maybe your old granny knitted it for you in the old folks’ home? Isn’t that where you live with her?” Caitlyn moved closer. The rest of the hallway began to look on with interest. It was a familiar scene. They knew they were just getting to the good part.
Lena tried to walk away. The little posse of girls followed.
Caitlyn raised her voice. “You look like cat puke, you know that? Like a big old hair ball my cat just threw up onto the carpet.”
That was it.
Ridley slammed her own locker door, and Caitlyn stopped in her tracks. “I’m the only one around here who gets to say what looks like cat puke, and I say it’s your face.”
The hallway started to laugh.
“Don’t,” Lena said, looking at her cousin.
Ridley shrugged as she slipped a piece of bubble gum out of her bag and unwrapped it.
“And you want to know why I say that?” Ridley kept on going. “Because I was there, Caitlyn, when your own cat puked it up, and I was there when you ate it.”
More laughter.
Ridley popped the pink square of gum into her mouth.
“Shut up,” Caitlyn said. “Liar.”
“Yeah,” Sandra said. “You’re makin’ that up, and it’s disgustin’.”
“Am I?” Ridley asked. She looked from Caitlyn to Sandra. “Caitlyn, tell Sandra the truth.” Ridley began to chew.
“What are you talkin’ about, freak?” Caitlyn glared.
“Tell Sandra what you did at your house yesterday. Right in front of me.” Rid looked encouraging. She chewed harder.
“Rid,” Lena pleaded. It was the same warning she always gave, and the same one Rid always ignored.
“Tell all of them.” Ridley smiled, blowing a round, pink bubble.
Caitlyn had a strange look on her face now. She looked up at Sandra like she herself was the one about to be sick. Then she looked out to the sea of faces in the hall of Albert Einstein Middle School.
“I ate cat vomit.” The words were strangled in Caitlyn’s throat. Sandra looked at her, disgusted.
“She’s just joking,” Lena said. No one listened.
“And?” Ridley said, encouraging.
“I ate cat vomit, and I liked it,” Caitlyn mumbled, looking stricken.
“And?” Ridley asked.
“And I’ll do it again tomorrow.” Tears ran down Caitlyn’s face.
The laughter was so loud that it was hard to hear her.
Lena ran away, out the door of the administration building, through the gates of the school.
Rid didn’t catch up to her for three more blocks.
By the time she grabbed Lena’s arm and forced her to stop, Lena was no longer crying. Her face was red and her eyes were flashing.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because,” Ridley lied, “I can.” It wasn’t the only reason. It was just the only one Lena expected her to say.
Now she was holding her cousin by both arms.
“I can, and they can’t. It will always be like that. You will never be one of them. Neither will I. They’ll never be good enough or bad enough for either one of us.”
“Why does it always have to be like this?” Lena looked as tormented as Caitlyn Wheatley, in her own way.
“Does it matter? You can’t change the way it is. Stay away from Mortals. They bring out a bad, bad side in us.”
At least, Ridley thought, in me.
Bad to the bone.
Bad to the bone and I haven’t even been Claimed yet.
They never went back to that school again, but Ridley didn’t care. She had already learned everything she needed to know.
Ridley woke up thinking about Caitlyn Wheatley for the first time in years. She wondered what had happened to her. Maybe she’d ask Nick the Nerd Warrior to find out. These days, she had much worse problems than Caitlyn Wheatley. Far more annoying Mortals were bringing out her bad side now.
Even if the one she was thinking about wasn’t completely Mortal, and there had been a time, not that long ago, when he would’ve gladly said he’d eaten cat puke for her.
Just as Ridley had made Caitlyn Wheatley say it for Lena. And after Caitlyn Wheatley, so many others.
Ridley lay back in her bed.
She had
been the one to do it. She had always been the one.
I had to be.
I was Dark so Lena could be Light.
It was who they were, but it was more than that. It was who their world had expected them to be. After a while, it was who they expected themselves to be.
Has it always been that way? Does it have to be?
Rid pushed the question from her mind. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t change the way these things worked. She should’ve remembered the basic rule of living among the Mortals: Lay low or stay away.
Otherwise they’d always burn you.
CHAPTER 23
Comfortably Numb
Sirensong was on their way to rock the house.
Ridley hadn’t wanted to go back to Sirene. Link avoided her now, like she was worse than Emily Asher, but Rid refused to send him into Lennox Gates’ club alone and unprotected.
So she was Sirensong’s first groupie.
First, and most hated.
This is not how I imagined my “regular” life, Ridley thought.
“I don’t feel so hot,” Necro said. She leaned her head back against the rough stone of the Underground. Her face was pale, and as she closed her eyes, she looked weaker than Ridley remembered.
Floyd looked at Necro sideways. “You want to go back?”
“I can take her,” said Rid quickly, fidgeting in her sixties silver shift dress. She and Necro hadn’t exactly been speaking lately, and it bothered Ridley more than she cared to admit. Besides, Sampson and Link were already at Sirene. Floyd could still make it.
Necro shook her head. “No way am I going to not show for my own gig.”
“What’s that?” Ridley reached for the collar of Necro’s leather jacket. Necro yanked her hand away before she could even touch it.
“Personal space, Siren.” Necro glared.
“Wait, you’re bleeding.” Rid moved Necro’s collar down. Blood was spotting the white tank beneath Necro’s black leather jacket, and Ridley wondered why they hadn’t seen it before.
Necro touched her neck, and her fingers came away a deep, dark red. At least, that was what color Ridley thought it was, though it was more deep and dark than red. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You’re hurt. What happened?” Floyd looked worried.