Bittersweet (Book #1 Evening Wings Trilogy)

Chapter 3

3

“Not so scary anymore, now is he?” Heidi spat to Xander as he passed her in the hall.

Xander rolled his gorgeous eyes at her and kept walking, shoving his big hands into the pockets of his abused denim jeans.

“Shut up, ” I hissed at my friend. I hated being like this but she was getting ridiculous.

Heidi rolled her eyes. “Chill out . It’s just damage control.”

“Remind me why you’re doling out damage control again?” I rolled my eyes.

“Like I said, chill out .” She said, frowning at me. “Stress much?”

“I’m not stressed out.” I snapped and glared at her. “I’m pissed off.”

“Hmm, wonder why.” Heidi giggled; my answering glare silenced her laughter.

“I know you two don’t actually agree on basically anything, but could you please lay off him? It’s not like he’s annoying us or anything stupid like that.” I said sharply.

Heidi rolled her eyes but nodded. “I don’t know what you guys see in him though, he’s just trouble.”

“God, you sound like my mom,” I groaned. “Stop calling him ‘Dr. Death’. You don’t like it when Zaria calls you ‘Miss Melodrama’.”

Heidi frowned darkly. “Because I’m not melodramatic!” she argued.

“Sure,” I laughed. Her answering frown was as dark as mine had been.

“Whatever Heidi,” I grinned. “I’ve got Geography now. See you after school, Kay?”

“Wait!” she called. I turned around.

“What?”

“I’m holding a slumber party at my house on Friday. Wanna come?” she requested hopefully.

“Um, sure—if my mom says okay,” I replied embarrassed that I was probably the only person who still had to ask their mother’s permission to go somewhere.

“Awesome.” Heidi replied as she tugged on her knit cap and skipped to her next class.

I turned to head to my own class, just quickly enough that I dodged Xander as he hurried to his next class. Our eyes locked for a fraction of a second, and then he was looking at his tennis shoes… and not me.

I frowned as he strode up the hall, a flurry of darkness. Maybe Heidi’s nickname for him was fitting, because right now, he did seem like a Dr. Death type.

Mrs. Gomez got my class to work with a map of the US, an activity for half our grade, which I badly needed. We had to fill in all the states, which wasn’t that bad, because I’d lived in a third of them at some instance in my life.

When the bell rang, I turned in my sheet and headed to English, where I would spend the next two hours working on creative essays and sharing the class with Dr. Death himself.

I was early for class today, and Mrs. Dupree was already scribbling the creative writing topics for the day on the chalkboard.

I took a seat in the middle of the class, a bit desolate because none of my friends—or at least any of Heidi’s followers—were in this English class. It was just me, all by myself.

I ran a hand through my thick curls, which I hadn’t been able to brush out this morning before school and opened my sketchbook. That was something to do before class officially began.