Page 40 of Fractured Fates
Winnie smiles at me. “Next time, though, if you get pissed off like that, don’t storm off. Come find me. Seriously, I’ve been searching for you everywhere. I was going to just call you but I realized we never swapped numbers.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Did you leave that behind too?”
“No, I’ve never had one.”
Winnie’s face spasms. “N-n-n-never had one. How? How can you live without a phone?”
I give her a hard stare. “You can’t live without your phone?”
“No, not really.”
“Why? What’s so vital about it?”
“It’s … well … I need it for … it just is, okay? And we’re going to need to get you one. We’ll swing by Trent’s after lunch. He’s got all sorts of gadgets for sale. I bet he has an old phone or two.”
“How much is that going to cost me?” I think of the piddly allowance the authorities have deemed to give me each week. It’s barely going to be enough to buy a bag of sweets and I’m going to have to find food for Pip.
“Don’t worry about that. Trent’s one of the nice guys.” She says the words a little misty-eyed and I wonder if she likes him.
Lunch is pretty similar torture to breakfast. Everybody stares at me and whispers as I walk past with a large cheese baguette and bowl of soup, only this time there’s the added bonus of my new nickname: Pig Girl.
Plus, someone has kindly printed out pictures of me with my snout face and pinned them around the Great Hall.
I ignore it, wolfing down the soup and a few bites of my baguette and saving the rest for Pip.
“Aren’t you going to eat that too?” Winnie asks as I stuff bits of bread into the pockets of my blazer. “I’m starving after skipping breakfast.”
“I am too but I need to save some for Pip.” Winnie stares back at me blankly. “My pig.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” she says. She chews on a carrot stick. “Shouldn’t you be feeding him pig feed or something?”
“And where am I going to get my hands on that around here?”
“Well,” she grabs my elbow, “that is something we can solve right now.”
Trent’s room is in a similarly grotty block as our own, although he must have more money than Winnie and me, because he’s not sharing a room.
Several boys stare at us with suspicion as Winnie knocks on Trent’s door and we wait for an answer. However, no one actually tells us to get out. So much for those rules.
After a long minute, Trent opens his door. He’s tall and skinny with a mop of hair that falls over his eyes which I don’t think he’s combed today. In fact, he looks like he just got up.
“Hey Winnie,” he says, scrubbing his hand through the tangles, “I was napping.”
A nervous smile hovers on her lips. “Sorry, we can come back if–”
“Nah, I had to get up for class in five anyway. What’s up?”
“This is Rhi. She’s new.”
“Hey,” Trent says, jerking his chin my way.
“Hi,” I reply.
“She needs a phone.”
“I don’tneeda phone,” I mutter.
