Cardan
Jude returned to the cabin some two hours later, when the room was filled with the chainsaw snores of sleeping campers. Astonishingly enough, she managed to be even unfriendlier than usual. She didn't so much as utter a word to him, stopping only to shoot him a nasty look before stalking into the now-empty bathroom.
Cardan briefly considered trying to decipher Jude's yoyo-ing moods and then decided not to bother.
"Prynter stopped puking his guts up about an hour ago," Cardan called into the bathroom. "Thanks for your help, Madame Commandant. Really super. Nice job fucking off to the dojo and doing nothing."
Jude spun on her heel and stared at him.
"You're the one who gave him access to that vodka to begin with, you twat," she snapped. "You're one to lecture me about responsibility."
She paused. The harsh unfriendliness that had been playing over her expression wavered a little. There was an odd look on her face, like there were all kinds of things she wanted to ask him. Probably about the painkillers and the vodka and God knew what else. Knowing Jude, she'd never be able to swallow her giant-ass pride long enough to ask.
She opened her mouth. Cardan wondered if he was about to be proven wrong.
"How the hell did you know I was in the dojo?"
It was a safe question. An icebreaker of sorts, maybe. "Locke told me," Cardan answered honestly. "Said something about you beating the shit out of a training dummy."
There was a moment of quiet as Jude stripped out of her training clothes. The sweaty long-sleeve fell to the floor in a damp heap and Carden felt his cheeks flame. Every movement of her arms sent the muscles in her back rippling fluidly underneath smooth, unblemished skin. She tugged a clean shirt over her head and gave him a withering look.
"Get a grip, Greenbriar," she said snidely. "It's not like you saw me in a towel or anything."
Humiliation flared hot, because it was for the preserving of her modesty he'd looked away. And maybe to prevent adding fuel to the fire of his already raging crush, although that ship seemed to have sailed.
"One might think you're trying to come onto me, Duarte," he hissed back. "Stripping down in front of people sends a certain message, in case you didn't know."
That hit a nerve.
Her jaw visibly clenched and the look on her face grew steely, and Cardan found himself wondering what exactly about that comment had so successfully pissed her off. Whatever it was, he'd have to remember it.
Maybe it was jibe about her being inexperienced? He mulled the thought over in his head for a moment, considering the possibility that Bitch Supreme Jude could be a virgin.
There was something weirdly appealing about the idea, and so he shoved it down for later.
"I'm not one of your hoes," Jude said briskly. She stepped over the sweaty shirt on the floor, bringing them face to face. She was close. Too close.
Her damp hair, freshly washed, smelled of caramel and pistachios and coconut shampoo. She smelled, in essence, like a sexy beach dessert. It was incredibly distracting.
He could have counted every mole, every scar, every freckle.
"I'm not Nicasia," she said frigidly. "I'm certainly not Taryn. And I think twin fetishes are weird."
What the fuck?
What twin fetish?
Cardan was just wondering if he should bother correcting the mistake when Jude stalked past him and began busying herself with her bed. Every once in a while, she eyeballed Prynter, who was passed out in his bunk.
"You were bullshitting me, right?" she asked, some five minutes of silence later. Her voice a mix of accusation and disbelief. "His name's not actually Printer."
"Prynter with a Y," Carden informed her carelessly. "P-R-Y-N-T-E-R."
"That's the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard," she muttered, yanking her covers out of their neat military tuck and getting into the bed. She lay like that on her back, her arms folded over her head, staring contemplatively at the ceiling. Cardan folded his too-long legs into his own bed and stayed quiet, nestling down into a sandpapery pillow and waiting.
Would she say something?
For a brief moment, the hostile air between them had lifted just a little.
In the dark, he could barely make out her shifting in bed. And then she spoke, barely audible over Prynter's hiccuping snores and the beating of the ceiling fan blades.
"You'd better not be hungover tomorrow. You're on your own if you are."
"Too squeamish to be dealing with two people's vomit, are you?" Cardan asked drily. "Don't worry. I've practically perfected hangovers to an artform."
"That's not something to be proud of, fuckwit," Jude grumbled into her pillow, and promptly fell asleep.
…
Dealing with Jude Duarte was like trying to run on hot sand.
For every step forwards you took, you slid back at least five. And you sashimi'ed your foot on a rock for your trouble.
Maybe the exhaustion of the evening had worn down her defenses or maybe Cardan had caught Jude in a rare moment of weakness, but by the next morning Jude Duarte had reverted fully back to her usual prickly self. She brushed him off with icy indifference that morning at breakfast. She led the campers of Cabin 4 to the same table as Taryn, then gave Cardan a frigid glare. "Your girlfriend's over there," she said, gesturing to Nicasia who had abandoned her counseling duty and left Taryn alone. "Fuck off."
"Maybe you recall, but I'm actually a Cabin 4 counselor too," Cardan said tartly.
"Maybe you recall, but I don't like you," Jude retorted, mimicking his tone. "I don't want you around. And neither does Taryn."
She leaned forward then, as she said her sister's name, to breath a threat into Cardan's ear. "Stay the fuck away from my sister," she hissed. "So help me God, Cardan."
Then she sat down at the lunch table next to Taryn and turned her back to him. Cardan faintly heard Jude mutter something about a "twin fetish" and saw Taryn throw up her hands in exasperation.
So this was it.
The cause for her prickliness, then? She thought he was fucking Taryn?
It certainly explained a lot.
He threw a glance back at her, muttering angrily at a purse-lipped Taryn, and wondered if he should try to clear the misunderstanding. Then, deciding that he wasn't much in the mood to be publicly yelled at for something he hadn't even done, Cardan sought out his friends.
Nicasia and Locke had indeed claimed a lunch table for themselves- a lunch table so far away and obscured by grass that it was hard to see.
That seemed to suit everyone just fine- Jude and Taryn had joined forces with Vivienne and her Pinky-Pie girlfriend to keep watch over Cabins 1, 3, and 4. Valerian grumpily lorded over the campers of Cabin 2, chasing them toward the lunch table. The Bomb, the Ghost, and the Roach were herding lost looking campers to their own table, which was already overflowing with gleefully shouting kids. Distantly, Cardan was aware that those kids were probably his responsibility. Just then, he found he didn't give a fuck.
Cardan slammed his breakfast tray onto the table, making his yogurt slosh violently in its container, and sat down.
Nicasia, Cardan noticed, looked as though someone had stuck something stinky under her perfect ski-slope nose.
Cardan settled down next to her, saw her puckered face, and decided the best course of action was to stir shit.
"So what's with you and Taryn?" he asked, nodding at the table where the Duarte family plus Heather were gathered. If he was gonna piss off Nicasia, he might as well get some information out of it. "We're practically sitting in the boonies." He grinned conspiratorially. "Aw Nic, did you get you kicked out?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Cardan," Nicasia said moodily. "Which twin is that even? I can't tell."
Her eyes were practically boring into the twins, but especially Taryn. It was like Nicasia was sucking up every detail about her- her carefully styled curls, her heavily blushed cheeks and highlighted cheekbones. Taryn was the picture of soft, pretty femininity. Then her eyes shifted to Jude, analyzing and angry.
Cardan couldn't help but notice how she scooched a little closer to Locke.
And then it clicked.
Nicasia was jealous.
Jealous of the twins, for stealing away Locke's attention. But especially of Taryn.
Suddenly, it was quite clear who Taryn's mystery boyfriend was.
…
"Cardan!"
Cardan, sweating miserably and wheezing like a geriatric tow truck, turned to find his new least favorite person jogging up beside him. To make things worse, Locke didn't even look slightly winded. His red hair still sat in that annoying coif, where it framed his completely sweat-free face.
Madoc's impromptu mile run didn't seem to be winding him much at all.
"What," Cardan panted, as a sunscreen-infused trickle of sweat ran into his eye. That had been the goddamn Supergoop sunscreen. He'd expected better, for $40.
Next to him, Locke cantered along with embarrassing ease. Cardan's eye stung.
"A little birdie told me," Locke began, and Cardan immediately experienced his stomach drop to his ankles because any sentence that started like that never ended well. "That you've been seen getting friendly with one Jude Duarte?"
"Your little birdie must be blind," Cardan said bluntly. "She hates me. That's not exactly a secret."
Locke leered. "That is true. But the same can't be said of you, can it?" Cardan said nothing. "You like her," Locke carried on, blithely ignoring Cardan's discomfort. "So I've come to be a pal and ask your permission."
"Permission for what?" Cardan said suspiciously.
And when he turned, Locke was smiling at him, shark-like. "What can I say," Locke purred. "Twins are hot."
Somewhere inside him, the rage flared hot. The words "twin fetish" bounced around the inside of his skull like a runaway rubber ball. "What about Nicasia?" Cardan groused.
Locke shrugged unconcernedly. "What about her?"
Cardan hadn't known Nicasia for long at all. She was as two-faced as they come and wildly ambitious to boot, but at the end of the day, they were cut from the same cloth. They were exactly the fucking same in so many ways- snark and cruel humor and the same shitty home life.
She'd become a friend in the few days they'd known each other, and truth be told, Cardan didn't have a whole lot of those. And now, the thought of a fickle jackass like Locke playing with her feelings colossally pissed him off.
"She likes you," he said icily as he stumbled along the track. His hair lay plastered flat in a mass of sweat.
"I know," Locke said, flippant. "That's what makes it interesting. I just adore a good love triangle."
He smiled at Cardan then, his stupid fucking fox smile. The one where his eyes didn't move and only his lips pulled back to reveal the too-sharp teeth and cruel tongue of a predator. Cardan realized that Locke might actually be the worst person he'd ever met, and that was quite the accomplishment because most people in his life sucked in one way or another.
"You don't mind if I have a go at her, do you?" Locke asked breezily, and Cardan's rage seemed to jump furiously into his throat.
Locke had laid him a trap.
It was a lose-lose: if Cardan made it clear that he did fucking mind, then he'd be giving the fox-faced asshole all the more ammunition to make things "interesting" in one way or another. And if he didn't? Then Locke would spin the same sinister web around Jude as he had around Taryn. Jude would have her heart broken either way.
If he repeated the offense that had gotten him sent to camp to begin with, how pissed off would his father be?
It took the entirety of his willpower to school his face into a mask of indifference. "It makes no difference to me," Cardan said, the lie slipping out with practiced ease. With that, Locke jogged off, and Cardan was hard-pressed to stuff down the sense that something horrid wasn't far off.
End Chapter 5