Pieces of You

Chapter Fourteen

Blaire | Before

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'Stress is bad for the skin, you know.'

Lena looks up from her laptop, face covered in white, luminescent light. When she realises it's me standing over her, her lips part in what I can only describe as shock. A blush slowly buds its way up her neck and her eyes widen for a fraction of a second, flickering over my shoulders as if she expects Anna or Megan to be standing behind me.

I withhold a smile as she grits her teeth and turns back to her laptop, deciding the best of her options is to ignore me, like I'm a fly buzzing around her ear that she can just swat away.

She's more like Anna than I give her credit for.

This is going to be so much fun.

'Do you know what's also bad for the skin?' I ask when she doesn't answer.

  She swallows – the only sign she gives that tells me she heard me.

  'Being stuck inside all day,' I continue, pulling out a chair, its legs shrieking against the library floor. I place myself next to her with a simple smile, leaning my chin into my hands. 'You're missing out on all that Vitamin D. I bet you don't even know what the weather's like outside. Tell me,' I reach forward and close her laptop, nearly trapping her fingers inside, 'is it raining or sunny today?'

Finally, she gives in.

Lena glances up at me – her body is tense, shoulders stiff and brows knitted into a tight frown. 'What do you want?' she asks, her words so quiet they're almost whispered.

Lena's entire physical disposition gives me the sense of someone who's wary, someone who has spent their entire life believing nobody could be nice to her without a hidden motive. She likes to make herself small, invisible. Even down to the clothes she wears – a grey, muted jumper partnered with a pair of old and ragged jeans – suggests she's someone who doesn't want to be noticed, someone who is happy slipping through the gaps of the high school social ladder.

But there's potential there.

I saw it inside that hospital room, in that flare in her eyes that burned right through me. Nobody – especially someone like me – would expect that to be simmering beneath the surface of a girl like Lena Vashee, a girl who most people don't even know exists.

And it's a hidden weapon like that, one that is unexpected or even underestimated, that I need. Because if I didn't expect fight inside Lena, then whoever's stalking me won't either.

And something like that – someone like that – will give me an advantage.

'Tell me,' I start slowly, each word calculated, 'have you ever considered trying out for cheer?'

Lena laughs like I made a joke, but when she realises that I'm not smiling, that my eyes are completely serious, her lips tighten into a straight line. She shakes her head and reaches for a book that sits by my elbow, one I faintly recognise as the book I was supposed to start reading last week for Henderson's History class, and turns it open halfway.

'You're insane,' she says bluntly, opening her laptop back up. 'Do you know that?'

'And I think you'd make a great flyer.' I shut her laptop again. 'Do you know that?'

She sighs, frustrated. 'Can you please stop doing that?'

I smile. 'Only if you agree to try-outs tonight. And top tip, it's me judging. I can give you a place like that.' I snap my fingers.