Of course I had to go home to get this freaking paint off. I wasn't going to wash this off in the school bathroom. There was just no way it would work. Five-foot-five me was too big to fit in one of those sinks. I needed to wash the blue out of my hair. Blue paint and red hair didn't mix well. No, you didn't get purple. And I was eighteen, so I could sign myself out and leave campus if I had a car.
I froze on the front steps.
Crap.
I didn't have a car.
"Need a ride?"
I whirled around, arm immediately cocking, and I almost swung before I realized that it was that guy - Lily's boyfriend. Great, was he going to hassle me? Was he the truancy police for Principal Showalter? So I hadn't signed myself out like I was supposed to. So what? My parents paid over ten thousand dollars to pop me into this school.
What a waste of money.
"What?"
"Do you need a ride?" He repeated as if I were dumb.
"No."
"Sure about that?"
"Yeah."
"Can you speak with words longer than one syllable?"
Against my will, I smiled and nodded, dropping my arm. I wasn't getting The Vibe off of him. You know The Vibe - that sense of malice and cruelty that you pick up from some people. If I hadn't been so distracted when I ran into Lily, I'd have felt it off her. But it wasn't on the boyfriend. Maybe he wasn't so bad. Maybe he was just stupid.
He was dating the blonde, after all.
"Sorry. New school."
"You always act like you're in a war zone when you hit a new school?" He asked.
"Yeah."
"Good," he replied, surprising me. "You'll fit right in. Lemme give you a ride."
Pursing my lips, I thought about it. Walk home in the sweltering heat with paint drying in my hair, or ride around in a car with a strange psychopathic boy I didn't know who was dating some girl who'd slapped me for no reason?
I snatched my can of Mace out of the depths of my backpack. Tossing it up and grabbing it out of the air, I nodded and smiled.
"Yeah, I'll take a ride."
He didn't even bat an eye at the Mace.
