Rafe and Gemma stopped right in front of Violet and Chelsea and Jay. Violet was still speechless, unable to push her voice past the clog in her throat.
Chelsea had no such dilemma. “Sooo . . .” she said, looking from Violet to Rafe and back again. “This is sorta awkward.” But there was nothing in her tone to indicate she was the slightest bit uncomfortable. She wrinkled her nose. “Well, since Violet seems a little . . . tongue-tied, let me be the first to welcome you. I’m Chelsea.” She held out her hand, her grin extending to Rafe—and only Rafe—as if Gemma weren’t standing there at all.
He cast an uncertain glance down at her hand, which wasn’t held out for a handshake, but was palm up instead. Rafe turned to Violet, frowning.
Chelsea’s brows rose impatiently. “Your phone,” she explained, extending her hand even farther as she waited for him to hand it over.
An amused expression crossed his face, but he reached into his back pocket and dropped his cell phone into her awaiting hand. Her fingers moved quickly as she unlocked the screen and opened his Contacts list, deftly adding her name and number before handing it back to him with a satisfied grin. “There. That’s better,” she stated, as if he’d asked for her phone number. “Now I just need to know your name and we’ll be all set.”
“Rafe,” he answered, a sly grin finding its way back to Chelsea, and something uneasy settled in the pit of Violet’s stomach. The last thing she’d wanted was for these two worlds to collide, she thought, as she stood there in the hallway of her school and watched that very thing happening.
“So, Rafe,” Chelsea drawled, making his name sound practically p**n ographic coming from her lips. “What made you decide to come to White River High?”
“He’s not,” Violet finally managed to choke out, but she wasn’t really talking to Chelsea. She was glaring at Rafe now, her gaze intense and unwavering. “You can’t just drop in and wander the halls of my school whenever you feel like it, Rafe. There are rules. You have to check in at the office first. You have to show ID and get a visitor’s pass.”
But Rafe just stood there, grinning back at her. It was Gemma, her eyes locked solely on Jay, who responded to Violet. “Mmm, actually, we can,” she countered, raising her perfectly tweezed brows. “Your little friend’s right. We’re students here now. We can come and go as we please.” She puckered her lush red lips as she shot a satisfied smirk in Violet’s direction.
Fire crackled through Violet’s veins as she scowled at the other girl, and then at Rafe, trying to decide who she was angrier at: Gemma for being such an ice princess, or Rafe for just standing there pretending to look utterly innocent in the matter. Violet knew better—Rafe was anything but innocent.
“And you are . . . ?” Chelsea cocked her head, appraising Gemma, in the same way a snake might appraise a baby mouse. “His sister?”
Gemma’s lips curled and she glanced at Rafe, his black hair almost as far from her pale blonde as was possible. “Yeah,” she agreed abrasively. “Something like that.”
Violet looked at the two of them and wondered if there was a person alive who would buy that they shared a single strand of DNA. Chelsea appraised them suspiciously.
At the moment, though, Violet couldn’t care less about that. “What is she talking about?” she demanded, ignoring both Chelsea and Gemma as she turned to glare at Rafe. “Why are you here . . . really?”
Rafe just shrugged, and Violet felt her blood simmer. “Gemma’s right,” he admitted, and then he pulled out a rumpled class schedule from his pocket and held it up, as if confirming Gemma’s statement. “We’re students. This is our first day too.”
Violet grabbed his schedule and looked it over. She felt her stomach drop when she recognized four of the six classes. They were identical to hers. How the heck did Rafe—Rafe who Violet was pretty sure hadn’t even attended school last year—get into AP Lit?
“Is this some kinda joke?” Jay asked, and Violet wondered if he’d noticed the same thing she had—the similarities between the class schedules—or if he was just referring to the fact that Gemma and Rafe were actually planning to attend White River High.
Gemma looked dejected as she held out her schedule, not rumpled at all, toward Jay. “Look, we have classes together too,” she said in a voice that Violet had never heard her use before. A soft voice. Almost a nice voice. She pouted, and Violet couldn’t tell if it was calculated or genuine. “I thought you’d be happier to see us.”
Jay hesitated, probably as taken aback by the switch he’d seen in her as Violet was—although probably not nearly as suspicious of it. And then his brows creased. “How did you know we had classes together?” he asked.
Gemma plucked the slip of paper from his fingers and tucked it into the pocket of her shiny patent leather book bag. She did a complete 180 then, her disposition changing from dejected to aloof in a matter of seconds. “You have your ways, I have mine.” And then she wriggled her fingers at them in a wave that showed off her nails, which were flawless and glossy and as perfectly manicured as everything else about her. “I wouldn’t want to be late on my first day!” she exclaimed before strutting away on her too-high-for-high-school heels, looking as if she were walking a Paris runway. Every male head in the hallway except for Rafe’s and Jay’s turned to watch her go. They were too busy having a good old-fashioned stare-down to notice anyone else.