Chapter 14
June
“June!”
Tiptoeing into the house didn’t do me any good.
My mom was already home, sitting like a ravenous lion ready to eviscerate a gazelle.
And I was anything but graceful. I dropped a set of keys, bumped into the bookshelf, and barely avoided tripping over paintbrushes after the impact.
What sane person had paintbrushes on display for decoration?
“June? Were you vaping?” She turned on the living room lights, aimed a lamp at my face, and went straight to giving me the third degree.
“No, Mom, what are you talking about?” My innocent little angel act had no effect on her.
“You’re an hour late, and you reek of—” I saw her sniff my sweatshirt suspiciously. “Smoke. What the hell is that?” All of a sudden, she turned into a fierce bloodhound.
“Mom, other people around me were vaping, maybe that’s why I smell like it.”
“Right. Because there’s no law prohibiting vaping in public places, right? Do you think I was born yesterday?”
“Is it my fault if other people smoked?”
Rage contorted her face into even more wrinkles than normal. She threw her reading glasses onto the couch and tore me a new one.
“All right, well you’re not going anywhere like that again!”
“But . . .”
I didn’t have the energy to argue; I just wanted to go to bed.
“Do your new friends vape?”
“I’m seventeen, and I don’t vape. If one of my new friends did, why would you have an issue with that? It’s not like we’re little girls.”
“The problem is that you came home an hour late, you’re talking back to me like that, and you smell like a frat house,” she yelled, making me laugh.
“I’m going to bed. I have school tomorrow.” I cut her off.
“June!”
I bolted upstairs.
The next morning, I rolled out of bed at a snail’s pace. I didn’t hear the alarm go off, but unlike what usually happens, my mom didn’t come to wake me up.
Was she still pissed at me about last night? This was a clear declaration of war.
“Mom! Why didn’t you wake me up?” I shouted down the hall, in the middle of a meltdown.
I hadn’t been at this school for even a week and I was already risking getting marked down. I brushed my teeth with one hand and took my pajamas off with the other.
“You’re seventeen. You’re not a kid anymore. Or am I wrong? If you don’t hear the alarm, it’s certainly not my fault,” I heard her mock me from downstairs. This was her favorite parenting technique to use: waves of resentment packaged in the form of clichés.
“You have to write me a note excusing me. I’m so late that I’ll miss first period,” I whined as we headed off in the car. I couldn’t function without breakfast.
“You’ll figure it out. With great power comes great responsibility. Start getting used to it, June.
“You didn’t even brush your hair, and—” My mom looked at me from head to toe and stared at my clothes. “Where’s your uniform?” she demanded as she pulled over by the school gate.
My eyes widened as I realized that I’d forgotten to put on my uniform.
But we were already at school, and a half hour late to boot.
Mom and I said goodbye quickly, and I ran toward the entrance.
It was weird to see the hallways completely empty and hear my footsteps echo against the walls.
Without a note justifying my being late, I dawdled at my locker.
I didn’t want to walk into class right in the middle of it.
I wasn’t in the mood to get told off, and I certainly wasn’t in the mood to have the whole class staring at me.
A dull thud startled me, bringing me back to reality. James Hunter punched his locker door again but it still wouldn’t open.
He hit it again. I shivered. At that point, the locker opened, and James flung the door back and threw his cell phone inside. I saw him use his palms to massage the nape of his neck, which was bruised from last night’s events. He either didn’t realize I was there or chose to ignore me.
I didn’t want to admit it, but deep down I felt guilty for punching him. It had been the culmination of all the frustration and irritation that he’d provoked throughout the evening.
I moved closer.
Hunter was wearing a pair of track pants and a white hoodie.
“James?”
“What the fuck do you want?”
I bit my tongue, immediately regretting saying anything to him. I moved back, but I was stunned when he turned around.
His cheekbones were black and blue and his jaw was swollen. His straight nose pointed upward and seemed like the only part of him that was intact in the middle of all the cuts and blotches.
“Why the fuck are you always staring?”
His words fell on deaf ears; I was too stunned by what I saw. None of his wounds had cleared up even a bit? Nobody took care of him?
“Let me get this straight, your parents didn’t say any—”
It only took him two steps forward to loom over me. “Look, Snow White, listen to me loud and clear. Stay away from me.”
The tension from his gaze was too much to handle, so I lowered my eyes again.
“Your hand’s bleeding again.”
“It’s not doing anything. It’s a flesh wound,” he spat dryly.
“Those cuts look pretty deep. If you don’t take care of them, they’ll keep opening up. You better see the nurse,” I murmured with a jolt of courage.
He lowered his head as if he wanted to recapture my attention.
“You really care that much, huh?”
I looked up, and our eyes met, confusing me. His words were tinged with subtle sarcasm, and his lips were curled into an insolent grin, confirming my suspicion.
“Come with me,” he said, taking a step back.
“Where?”
“This is an opportunity for you clean up the mess you made yesterday, White. Need I remind you?”
James took me by surprise, but I decided not to let him see that. I followed him to the nurse’s office without saying a word.
“Do you really care, or are you putting on a front so you can go to bed with a clear conscience?” He borrowed my exact words, which gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.
He remembered what I’d said again.
The nurse’s office was a narrow little room with a strong smell of disinfectant. James sat on a stretcher with a mattress that seemed like it couldn’t hold his weight. I stood.
I had no intention of apologizing. I wanted to make him understand that since I had my reasons for doing what I did, there was no reason to make me pay. We were even.
“Look, Hunter. About last night . . .”
Without any warning, James grabbed the end of his sweatshirt and pulled it off. He was shirtless, and I looked at him skeptically.
I didn’t know what he gained from stripping in front of people, but he did it often.
“I’m hot, don’t give me any shit about it,” he barked. “Carmen?” he yelled loudly.
A stocky middle-aged woman poked her head out from the nurse’s office.
“Oh, you again. I’m coming,” she groaned in a thick accent.
Peering beyond the curtain that separated the stretchers, I noticed she was wearing a white coat.
“You’re in good hands now. I’m gonna head to class,” I whispered, as James put a vape pen between his lips.
“Where’s my uniform, White?”
“Um.”
The shirt had come out of the wash wrinkled, not to mention the jacket. I would’ve made my mom iron it, but I knew how she’d react if she found out we had a guy’s uniform in her house.
“I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”
“How about yours, White?”
He dangled his long legs and stared at me.
At first, I stared back at him, appreciating his bare chest. James’s abs were well-defined, protruding from his smooth skin without bulging too much.
I lingered at the veins twisting along his lower stomach and disappearing under the edge of his pants.
I abruptly looked up, but he made it clear that I wasn’t that slick.
I felt his gaze on me like a waterfall. It caressed my lips, went down to my throat, brushed against my breasts and then my legs.
Usually everything was black and white for me, and there were no happy mediums. But at that moment I barely understood the sensation I was feeling.
The nurse walked in, interrupting the strange moment of stillness.
“Oh, Edward, I see someone decided to let you have it.” I looked around, lost. We were alone.
“White, get lost. Carmen will take care of me now.” James dismissed me as soon as he noticed my facial expression. But he couldn’t get rid of me that easily.
“Normally he’s the one sending people to the nurse’s office and giving me a ton of work to do,” said Carmen, washing her hands in the sink on the wall.
“And the principal never expelled him?”
The two exchanged a conspiratorial look.
“Careful, honey. I don’t see anyone else here!”
He didn’t say anything.
They seemed to have a friendly rapport.
“No vaping in the nurse’s office,” Carmen reprimanded good-naturedly.
“Let me get this straight, I can have sex here but not smoke?”
“I gotta go to class. Bye,” I sputtered before slipping out.
“Oh, I loved that time when guys fought over me,” the woman let slip, causing James to whine in disgust.
“What do you mean? Do you think I fought for her?”
I left the door ajar, hesitating before I headed out.
“You get in fights about anything that breathes. You couldn’t fight for a girl as pretty as she is?”
I peeked through the crack in the door and held back a chuckle when I saw Carmen come at James’s eyelid with a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol. James didn’t want to stay still, so the cotton ball landed in the middle of his left eye.
“Fuck!”
“Why’d you bring her here?”
I caught him as he curled his lip and then shrugged indifferently.
“She’s cute,” continued Carmen, making me blush.
“The ones I bring here, you mean. Not her. She’s a meddling bitch, that one.”
“If you say so. But be careful, Edward.”
I stayed behind the door, eavesdropping.
“Are you still playing Romeo?”
“Taylor keeps bugging me with that shit.”
“You can’t just take the good without the bad when it comes to the ladies. And watch your mouth,” she scolded with a maternal tone.
“What can I do if girls are just a pain in the ass?”