you’re dipping your toe in the XY gene pool, there’s a new girl.” He motioned with his coffee cup toward her neck.
“Jake.”
Unrepentant, he winked at me and pressed on. “Hey, she’d be the first one asking us if we showed up with fresh hickeys like that.”
“I don’t give you hickeys like that.” Quite the opposite actually, but we were not having that conversation here.
“You’re making his point for him, babe,” Archie said with a slow smile, and even Coop laughed.
“Not really,” Rachel said as she flipped through her phone, clearly no longer interested in the conversation. “What she’s saying is that if you showed up like that, I’d be gutting you because she doesn’t leave hickeys like that.”
There was a painful moment where all four of them paused, and Coop lifted his coffee cup and said, “Touché, Your Majesty. Touché.”
I was in the bathroom between classes when a few new girls took it upon themselves to remind me that yes, we were in high school. There were three of them, and someone should really tell them that trying to coordinate outfits like they were in some teen flick went out with the nineties.
Though, everything old was becoming new again.
Honestly, though, I wasn’t in the mood. Coop still had a hangover. Archie was firmly in silent plotting mode, I could read it in every tense line of his face. Jake and Ian were both keeping a steady hand on the wheel, but Jake was spoiling for a fight. It seemed to vibrate with his every step. Without football to burn off some steam, I was thinking about the offer he’d made over Christmas to work on my punching.
Maybe I needed to suck it up and get him into the gym.
The girls slanted looks at me. Three juniors and one sophomore. Poor thing had two of their book bags slung over her shoulder like she was their personal pack mule.
That told me all I needed to know about these bitches. I dried my hands as the first one opened her mouth. “So you’re the girl banging four guys, right?”
“I’m Frankie,” I told her as I turned to face her and her friends. They really did look like carbon copies of each other. It was kind of creepy. Same hair style, same lip shade and eye shadow, even the same cats eye shape to their contouring, though apparently, one of them favorited pink, the other teal, and the third one a kind of minty green.
Pack mule apparently didn’t get the memo on the matching outfits, but the poor thing had tried. I didn’t know that girl, but man, I felt for her. As for these three…
“We know what your name is,” Mint Green Accents piped in. “Not that we care. Usually people just call you the slut.”
They all tittered with laughter, and I rolled my eyes. So original. I slid my backpack onto my shoulder and glanced over at the pack mule. “If you want to dump their stuff, feel free. No one should make you carry their damage or their trauma.”
“Excuse you?” Pink Accents demanded. “Don’t talk to her. For all tents and purpose, she isn’t in the room.”
“For all intents,” I corrected. “Not tents, like something you use for camping, or tense, like we’re discussing verbs. But intents. As in you’re all intent on getting your rocks off by pretending to be the biggest bitches on the campus. Newsflash, you’re not, and you won’t be next year either because you’re trying too hard and you’re more than a little fake.”
Teal blinked. “That’s what she said.”
“No,” I informed her. “You might need a hearing check or a diction lesson.” I really didn’t have time for this or for them. “As for you…” I focused on the pack mule. “What’s your name?” Their names I didn’t care about. The girl letting them treat her like crap, she mattered.
“It’s not important,” she murmured. Despite the quiet voice, I hadn’t missed the flash of humor when I corrected the coiffed terrorists.
“Sure it is, because a name is an identity. Everything else is a label. I’m Frankie,” I said, and pushed right between Pink and Teal like they weren’t there. Though I never quite turned my back on them.
I wasn’t stupid.
Girls were mean.
In third grade, one chick had come after me when someone told her I was making fun of her parents. I hadn’t been. But she’d grabbed my pony tail and yanked so hard, I thought I’d lose hair after that. It was one of