Page 9 of A Scandal in Homeroom
That stopped me in my tracks. “Hold on. Do you think there is something there with Fitz and Beth?”
Janie gave a casual shrug with one shoulder. “I just think, maybe, she talks about him all the time like he’s the enemy and…well, what if that’s cover? For something else?”
I gave her a sly glance. “Or maybe you’re projecting.”
Her expression was perfectly innocent, but she was forgetting who she was talking to. Janie and I didn’t have any secrets. Well, except for the poker game. Which might be considered a pretty big secret to keep from your best friend, but I knew how Janie would react. She’d freak out, worry in ten different ways how this might ruin my chances of going to college (little did she know I wasn’t going to college) and basically would harangue me about it until we ended upin upin a massive fight.
I didn’t want to fight with Janie.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That was very convincing.”
“Reen, how many times have I told you, stop stirring up trouble when it’s not there?”
“A million. I might let this thing go between you and Ed…”
“There is no me and Ed,” she insisted.
“Right. If you told me what really happened between you two over the summer…”
Janie’s jaw got tense. “Nothing. Happened. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Only once. When I know you’re not lying.”
“I’m done with you now,” she said, and walked off with her chin tipped so high in the air, I wondered how she could still see where she was going.
The truth was, as crazy as it sounded since I was keeping something so big from her, I didn’t like that she was holding out on me. Because if I didn’t have Janie, if she wasn’t someone I could trust, who could trust me, then it would feel like having no one.
I loved Beth, I did. However, as much as she tried, there was no way for her to understand where Janie and I came from. We’d been left. By our mothers. Yes, her father had taken off recently, but he’d left them flush with cash and a nice home.
Not so for me and Janie. There were no happy tales we could tell ourselves about how we’d been orphaned either. At least with Janie, her birth parents had died. It had been an aunt who had sent her off to the home when she’d decided Janie was too much trouble.
My mother was a crack whore, and she’d chosen that life over me.
There was no way to put a bow around that. No way for someone who hadn’t been through it to conceive of the internal damage we lived with every day.
Janie and I dealt with our abandonment issues two very different ways, but we each had our own defense system.
Maybe that was why I kept pressing her about the Ed thing. Were her shields really up when it came to him? Because if they weren’t, if something did go down and she wasn’t telling me, that meant he had the power to hurt her.
If he hurt Janie, then he hurt me.
My rules for life were simple.
When someone hurt me, I hurt them back.
I peeled away from the throng of students heading toward the bridge. The bridge was what we called the row of classrooms situated along the front facing part of the school on top of the arched brick gates. Classes in the bridge were always freezing no matter what time of year, so I wanted to get a sweater out of my locker first.
It was a happy coincidence I spotted Locke at the end of the hall speaking to Wick, one of the Snobs and Fitz’s mortal enemy, about something that looked intense. Both their heads were down, close to one another. Clearly they didn’t want to be overheard. Then Wick was keying something into his phone.
Locke’s information?
Locke was going to learn quickly he wouldn’t be able to hang with both Fitz and Wick. It was definitely a one crowd or the other type deal. Not that I expected Fitz, Ed and Heath to start eating lunch with us on the regular.
Yesterday, when the guys had crashed our table to talk about the latest school rumor, that had been an anomaly. It had to be.
Besides, spending any time with Heath was not a good idea long term. Especially for me.
