How To Ruin A City

Chapter Nine

Which...doesn't sound great now that I explained.

Nic smirked. "Oh, no worries. We are."

I rolled my eyes. Ginger and Blonde Boy instantly started to hit it off, so I decided to go throw my trash away while they discussed how horrible their English teacher was.

I ran into Zack by the trashcans and stopped when I realized he was staring me down. I raised an eyebrow.

"Can we talk?" Zack asked, shuffling his feet.

Narrowing my eyes, I replied, "Why?"

Zack sighed and walked into the empty hallway. I glanced around for any hall monitors but there were none to be found.

"What is it?"

"You ran into Cyanide the other day, right?"

I crossed my arms and leaned against a locker. Maybe in movies it looks cool, but I was uncomfortable and had a lock digging into my back. "Yeah. Why do you care?"

"I have a proposal for you."

I waited, watching his face closely for any hints of what it might be.

"I want you to help me take down the a few supervillains."

I choked on my own spit.

"Polar Ice and Blazing Sun. It would be easy for you to interact with them as Glacier."

I started laughing so hard I doubled over, thinking I'd puke. I looked up at Zack, still laughing as I said, "There's no way in Hell I'd be caught dead doing that! I value my life!"

"Cat, please-"

"I said no."

"Come on!" he exclaimed. "This city is turning to Hell and all you're doing it running around with Nic, making it even worse than it was before! People like you are the whole reason the Saviors even became a thing!"

I scowled, a cold feeling washing over me. It took over for a second. "Fuck off, Zachary. If you try anything like this again, I'm going to stab you in the neck with an icicle. STOP BOTHERING ME!"

Zack stormed away without responding.

I huffed and waited for the bell to ring.

"Hey, Cat," somebody said from down the hall. I looked up to see Cassandra and smiled. "Wanna walk to class?"

"Sure thing."

I glanced at a bruise on Cassandra's face and frowned.

"How's your sister?"

Cassandra shrugged, still smiling. "Sofia's being...Sofia. We don't talk much."

Not knowing what to say, I let us fall into an uncomfortable silence.

Nothing else eventful happened until the end of the day when I met up with Nic, unless you count Cassandra starting another grease fire by accident when we were cooking.

"I'm annoyed," I complained, walking up to Nic when I spotted him standing by the flag pole. "I hate school so much. Math class is killing me."

Nic sighed. "What a fucking mood."

"Looks like we both left our backpacks in our lockers. That means you have the ability to be a good friend and carry me home."

Nic shot me a glare. "Yeah, it also means we're not going to do our homework. Are you serious about the carrying you home thing?"

"Yeah."

"Fine. On one agreement."

"What's that?"