Страница 172 из 219
54
Concealer
Sha
"Don’t ask," I warned when I found Claire standing outside the girls' bathrooms on Wednesday morning, with a horrified expression on her face.
Snaking my arm through hers, I tugged her into the bathroom. "Just help me hide it."
"Sha
"Please," I snapped, dropping my bag on the bathroom floor and catching her hands. "Help me."
Tears filled her eyes.
"Don’t do that," I begged, squeezing her hands. "Just help."
She continued to stare at me for the longest moment with an almost trance-like expression before finally snapping out of it.
"Okay," she sniffled and then offered me a bright smile. "I have just the trick."
I exhaled a huge sigh of relief. "Thank you."
Twenty minutes later, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and hardly recognized myself.
"I had to go full smoky-eyed, glamor-puss on your face to match the shade of foundation I used to cover your…" Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat several times before adding, "Well, what do you think?"
"Whoa," I breathed, touching my red painted lips. "My lips are huge."
"Yes, they are," Claire agreed. “Women pay thousands of euros for lips like yours and you don’t even appreciate them."
"And my eyes." I shook my head and gaped at myself, fluttering my eyelashes admiringly. "Whoa, those are –"
"Gorgeous?" Claire offered, coming to stand beside me. "Because you are sickeningly gorgeous."
"It's the makeup," I assured her, embarrassed.
"It's the girl," Claire corrected as she slung an arm around my shoulder.
I flinched from the contact, still tender from my father's outburst, and Claire's face fell.
"Sha
The bathroom door creaked open and Lizzie stepped into the bathroom, causing Claire to snap her mouth closed and me to sag in relief.
"Come on, girls," she said, waving a hand at us. "We're late for class."
Never in my life had I been more grateful to see her as I was in this moment.
"I'm going to kill that bitch," Lizzie hissed later that day during lunch.
Word had spread around school about the incident with Bella yesterday and my friend was peppering with anger.
"Seriously," Lizzie added, glaring at the table at the opposite side of the lunch hall that seated at least fifty students – one of whom being Bella Wilkinson.
"If she looks over here one more time, I am going to go over there and rip those shiny new extensions out of her hair."
"They're pretty bad," Claire agreed with a grimace.
"Bad?" Lizzie snapped. "It looks like she attached black seaweed to her hair." Muttering something else under her breath, she added, "She's a troll."
"Just ignore her," I pleaded, choosing to keep my eyes trained on my sandwich and not the table I was receiving death glares from.
It was safer to keep my head down.
All day, everywhere I went, curious eyes followed me.
I didn’t know how to handle this sort of attention.
I needed to not rock the boat.
And spending time with Joh
I had bumped into him no less than three times between classes today, and each time he'd given me that beautiful, double dimpled smile, asked me how my day was going, and then told me he'd catch me later.
I could feel his eyes on me right now from across the room.
And it terrified me.
For the first time in my academic life, I had been given a beautiful cloak of invisibility at Tommen.
Joh
All the goodness of last night had been sucked away by the threats of my father and the fear of Bella's wrath.
Now, I was afraid again.
Of Bella.
Of my father.
Of the other girls at this school.
Of my feelings.
Of Joh
Of my own damn shadow.
"And she had the nerve to call you a slut," Lizzie continued to rant, with me and Claire looking on helplessly. "She's the one straddling Cormac Ryan over there."
"It doesn’t matter," I quickly told her, praying for her to just let it go.
"It does matter, Sha
"Liz," Claire said in a low warning tone. "Leave it alone, okay?"
"We're getting our holidays Friday," I whispered, more to myself than the girls, as I desperately tried to calm myself down. "Two weeks of no Bella."
"Exactly," Claire offered gently. "Everyone will have forgotten about it by the time we come back."
"I can't believe you," Lizzie snapped, glaring at Claire. "How are you okay with that bitch talking crap about our best friend?"
"I'm not okay with it," Claire replied evenly. "I just know that making a scene is the last thing anyone needs."
"Do you know what everyone is saying?" Lizzie demanded, and then continued before either of us had a chance to respond. "They are all saying Sha
"Great," I groaned and dropped my head in my hands.
Claire placed a soothing hand on my shoulder. "Well, it's not true."
"I know that," Lizzie huffed. "But Bella's been going around saying that Sha
"Don’t!" Claire hissed. "Don’t repeat it."
"I'm going home," I blurted, pushing back my chair, ready to bolt.
"No," Claire replied calmly, pushing me back down in my seat. "You're not."
"Like hell you're going home," Lizzie growled. "You haven't done anything wrong."
Wrong or not, I wasn’t staying here.
Shaking off Claire's hand, I shoved my chair back and stood up.
"I'm sorry," I choked out, glancing at my friends. "But I can't do this again."
"We'll come with you," Claire called after me. "Shan, just don’t run –"
"No, it's okay," I mumbled. "You guys stay. I'm just…I'm going to go now." Swinging around, I pushed past the tables and chairs blocking my way and bolted for the exit.
However, I did not anticipate the hand that snaked out from the rugby table at the doorway and grabbed my wrist, pulling me to an abrupt stop.
"What's wrong?" Joh
Shaking my head, I pulled on my hand but Joh
Instead he pulled me closer to him, making this so much worse.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"I, uh, need to go home," I squeezed out, glancing around nervously and finding several pairs of eyes trained on my face. Turning back to Joh
"Home?" Joh
"Take a look around, Mister Fucking Hotshot," Lizzie hissed, coming to stand beside me. "Or better still, open your ears."
"My eyes are open," Joh
"Lizzie," I croaked out, shaking my head. "Just drop it."
"No, if she has something to say to me, then she can say it," Joh