Four girls surround a much smaller girl—freshman, probably, based on the terrified-deer look in her eyes—who’s clutching her backpack to her chest like it’s the only thing keeping her alive. One of the bigger girls grabs for it.
“Don’t!” the girl says again, dancing backward untilshe runs smack into another member of the mean-girl pack. Caged in. Classic predator move.
“She’s been cuddling it like a baby all day,” jeers the tallest girl—a big redhead with thick thighs and a ponytail curled into identical ringlets to match the other three. Like they coordinated in a group text.
“What is it?” asks the one I immediately clock as Queen Bitch, based on the way the others orbit around her. She sidles to the center of the group and gets right in the freshman’s face. “You got weed in there? Ritalin? Or is it just your baby blankie you still carry around because you’re missing Mommy?”
The girls around her crack up like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
I roll my eyes. What a cunt.
Still, not my business. I should really just keep walking.
Where the hell are the teachers anyway? It’s lunchtime and apparently an “open campus,” something the guidance counselor who handed me my schedule this morning gushed about, like it was some kind of privilege instead of an obvious lawsuit waiting to happen.
Looks to me like it’s just an opportunity for bullying without any adult supervision.
“No, don’t!” the freshman screeches as the redhead succeeds in wrestling her backpack away. “Don’t open it!”
Something in that voice—that desperate, trapped sound—hits me wrong.
“Hey!” I shout, anger boiling over before I can think better of it. I stomp toward the little group with my mostimpressive resting bitch face locked and loaded. “I just told one of the teachers I heard fighting out here. They’ll be here any second.”
“McKenzie...” The redhead looks worriedly toward Queen Bitch. “Maybe we should?—”
But McKenzie—of course that’s her name—just crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at me like I’m something she scraped off her designer shoe. “She’s bluffing. Open the bag.”
“Wait!” the freshman shouts one last time, but Redhead’s an obedient little soldier. She unzips the backpack.
Baby kittens immediately start jumping out.
Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.
Neither did Redhead, apparently. She yelps and drops the bag when a little gray kitten with snow-white feet leaps at her face, tiny claws out like a fuzzy ninja.
“Pansy!” the freshman yelps, lunging for a kitten as it scampers for freedom across the open courtyard. “Sox!”
The white-footed kitten scampers down Redhead’s body—who’s still screeching like she’s being murdered—and makes a break for the doorway I just came through.
I leap left and dive, hands out, just barely managing to swoop up the little wriggling ball of fur before it escapes inside the building. My knees scrape concrete, but the kitten is safe, and I pull it against my chest as McKenzie and her pack point and laugh, already hurrying away from the scene before they’re associated with the kitten jailbreak.
“What bitches,” I mutter, cuddling the kitten to mychest while I push back to my feet. The little thing is purring so hard I can feel it vibrating through my ribs.
“Here.” I hand it back to the freshman, who receives the kitten gratefully but is still looking over her shoulder, panic written all over her face as she tries to figure out where the other two kittens went.
“You want me to help you look for them?” The offer’s out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
I’m not really hungry anyway. I don’t usually eat lunch. Plus, I’ve got a couple of Helen’s cookies stowed away in my backpack if I get hungry later.Never leave delicious food behind—a survival rule I adopted back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and Darlene would forget to buy anything besides bottom-shelf tequila.
“Really?” The girl looks up at me with these wide eyes, like I just offered her a kidney. “You’ll help?”
“Sure. I’m Harper, by the way.”
“Marie,” she calls over her shoulder, already taking off across the courtyard with the backpack clutched to her chest.
I run after her.
First, we track down the orange cat—Leo, according to Marie’s frantic calling—before we’re hunting for the third and last escapee. Marie is actually a sophomore, not a freshman. She just skipped a grade because she’s smart. Nothing like small talk as you chase kittens around a quad.