fuck?” Ranger spits, and then he shoves me unceremoniously off of him. Oh, that's right. He thinks I'm a dude. And he's a straight dude. Who hates me. “Ah, shit, I'm bleeding,” he grumbles, reaching up to wipe some blood from his lower lip.
“Sorry,” I moan, rolling to one side and sitting up. I'm facing in the direction of the path, but there's no sign of the shadow man with the knife. Did you just hear yourself, Chuck?! You said shadow man … with a freaking knife?! Kind of a big deal. I'm still panting, my heart racing furiously, as I peer into the darkness looking for my own, personal boogeyman.
There's no sign of him.
I sigh with relief.
“Are you fucking insane?” Ranger snaps, grabbing a discarded cigarette off the ground and lighting up. He doesn't look at me as he takes a drag. “What the hell are you doing careening around campus at two in the morning?”
“It's two?” I ask, and then feel my jaw clench with anger. No wonder my neck hurts so bad. Not only did I just have a head-on collision, but I was trapped in that stupid trunk for like five freaking hours.
“Yeah, numb nuts,” Ranger quips, and I decide that's pretty much the first time I've ever been called numb nuts. “What are you doing out here?”
“What are you doing out here?” I repeat, realizing that the reason I can't see anything out there in the darkness is because my glasses have gone missing. With a curse, I end up on the ground like Velma in Scooby-Doo, patting around the gravel as I look for my—hopefully—unbroken glasses.
“What does it look like I'm doing?” Ranger repeats in this snippy asshole tone that I'm well-familiar with at this point. “Smoking a goddamn cigarette.”
“Can you help me find my glasses?” I ask, ignoring his insulting tone. I'm starting to panic here. If I lose my glasses, Dad will kill me. And then he'll make me wear my contacts, and I'm sure the whole school will know if I don't have the big, ugly frames to protect me.
“No.” Ranger continues to stand there and smoke, one foot up on the bench that was carved by some long ago students out of a fallen log. He's dressed in a black and white striped nightshirt that's completely unbuttoned.
Or at least … I think that's what he's wearing. He's a bit blobbish right now. Glasses, glasses, glasses, I repeat to myself as I crawl around on my hands and knees.
“I want to know why I have a bloody freaking lip, Carson. What's your problem anyway?” Ranger continues to bitch at me as I crawl around in a desperate search, panic clawing at the inside of my throat.
I was just chased by a guy with a knife.
What would've happened if he'd caught up to me?
Would I be … dead right now? Worse?
“Hey.” Ranger pushes at me with one of his big combat boots, putting the dirty sole on my shoulder. He knocks me over into the gravel, and that's when I start to cry. I don't mean to; it just happens. Silent tears slide down my face as I get back on my hands and knees and keep searching. After a minute, Ranger scoffs, bends down and snatches my glasses up, handing them out to me. “You are freaking pathetic, you know that?”
I slip the lenses up my nose and sigh in relief when I find them unbroken. Thank god. My gaze slides up to Ranger's closed and darkened face. He stares down at me with tight lips, a tattoo visible on his chest that I didn't notice before. It says Jenica with little hearts on either side.
His dead sister.
His suicidal sister … or his murdered one.
“Why do you think she was murdered?” I blurt, and Ranger's blue eyes go wide. He grits his teeth, and I cringe slightly when it looks like he might hit me. Instead, he flicks his still lit cigarette in my direction.
“None of your damn business, Carson,” Ranger sneers, looking down at me like I'm the scum of the earth. His blue-streaked dark hair hangs in razored waves over his face. With the black plugs in his ears, and the tattoos, he actually looks less like an emo-douche and more … badass or something. “Just stay the fuck away from me, okay? Don't come to Culinary Club on Thursday.”
Maybe he thinks that's a punishment … it's not.
But as he walks away, I scramble up to my feet and