22

"Adrian?" Scarlett asked, sliding up to her stepbrother with the sweetest smile she could muster.

"No," he uttered.

She watched as he placed the butter knife he was holding into the sink and wrapped his sandwich.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say," Scarlett whined.

"Yeah, I do," Adrian said, giving a humourless smile as he passed her and exited the kitchen.

She trailed after him as he went and sat in the living room, getting his phone out to check the time.

"Why don't you want Riley and me to date?" she asked.

"Well, because it will get awkward once you figure out he's not what you think and he stomps all over your heart," Adrian said.

"How do you know I won't break his heart?" Scarlett asked, feeling offended by his assumption. "Why is it not conceivable that he could fall for me?"

"Because I've seen him do it over and over. He finds a girl, flirts with her, little playfights and touches, then he bangs her, rips her heart out, stomps all over it and never speaks to her again," Adrian said and shrugged. "This disturbing pattern of behaviour is not something I want you steamrolled with."

Scarlett looked down at her hands, sighing quietly to herself. She appreciated that Adrian was looking out for her but couldn't help but think she could be the one to change Riley's womanising ways. Lots of guys his age were players, or 'fuck boys' as Sienna called them. But they didn't stay that way forever. It only took one perfect relationship to change them.

'I could be the one,' she thought. 'I could be his destined mate.'

"I'm just trying to save you a world of pain," Adrian went on. "Which is out of character for me, so be grateful."

Scarlett smiled but said nothing. With a sigh, she picked up her backpack, loaded with homework and books. The strap dug into her shoulder as she walked to school alongside Adrian.

He was snacking on a punnet of blueberries as they walked, occasionally throwing the squishy ones onto the floor. He also chucked a couple at the neighbour's window as they passed, leaving little pink splats of goo.

"Want some?" he offered.

Scarlett screwed up her nose and shook her head. They were probably her least favourite of all the berries, and she didn't eat a lot of fruit as it was.

"Was it you who pulled up his plants?" Scarlett asked, glancing back at the neighbour’s garden. Spatters of soil peppered the street by the holes that had once contained bushes and flowers. Now they sat empty, like graves waiting to be filled, sprouting tangled roots, and crawling with bugs. Something about the image gave her a chill.

"Yeah," Adrian said. "And when he replants them, I'll do it again."

"Why?" Scarlett asked. Rob was a bit of an oddball, but he was basically harmless. Aside from his cat, he didn't have a lot in his life. In all the years Scarlett had lived next door to him, she'd never once seen him receive a visitor. Not once.

"Why not?" Adrian said and shrugged.

Scarlett was going to continue her line of questioning when Damien and his gang of misfits surrounded them at the gate, taking Adrian's attention away from her.

Erin looked her up and down as she shifted her bag to her other shoulder.

"Oh my God, what have you got in there? Bricks?" Erin exclaimed.

"My book presentation," Scarlett told her.

"Oh crap," Erin said. "I knew I forgot something."

As Adrian bit into a blueberry, he pulled a face. "Eww, sour."

He called out to Sienna, who was sitting with Tamara and Rose, casting little glances in his direction every so often.

When she bounced over, blonde pigtails bouncing and looking all happy to see him, like a well trained golden retriever, he grabbed her face and spat the blueberry into her mouth.

"Eat it," he said.

The others stared in horror as she obeyed, chewing and swallowing the second-hand mouthful.

"Well, hello kink I never knew I had," Damien said with a funny grimace, breaking the silence.

"You like that?" Adrian asked him with a sly grin, then spat another couple of berries into the girl's mouth.

As the bell rang and the group piled into the school building Erin whispered into her ear, "Your stepbrother is... weird."

"Yup," Scarlett replied, not knowing what else to say.

"What is going on with him and Sienna?" the girl asked.

"Lots of weird stuff that we probably don't want to know about," Scarlett said.

"School has been odd since he started," Erin said. "And look, Tom is giving him strange looks now."

Peeking back over her shoulder, Scarlett saw Erin was right. Tom was staring at Adrian as if he'd just fallen from the heavens in a shroud of light with trumpet-playing angels.

"Okay, that is definitely a bit weird," Scarlett admitted with a frown.

Seats scraped across the linoleum flooring as the students filled the English classroom, finishing up their conversations as Miss Walter entered and coughed loudly.

"So book reports," Miss Walters announced. "Who's first?"

She looked about the room, her eyes landing on Tom because was the only one still openly chatting to his mates.

"Tom, which book did you review?" she asked.

"Erm, well, I couldn't find any of the ones on the list, so I did Stephen King's It," Tom said.

The look on Miss Walter's face made the class erupt into giggles.

"What?" Tom asked, appearing genuinely confused at their reaction.

"You can't review IT, Tom," she said, sighing heavily. She had that teacher look on her face; the one that begged the question, 'Why did I ever get into teaching?'

"Aww, let him do the review," Damien spoke up. "I bet he put a lot of hard work into it."

"His reviews are the funniest things ever," Damien added in a quietened voice, smirking.

"Yeah, what did you think of IT?" someone else asked.

Tom shrugged and shuffled about on the spot, blushing as he realised he was being teased for his lack of academic ability. This didn't happen often. More commonly it was Tom doing the teasing, and usually about people's looks or oddities.

"It's just a lot of homophobia really," Tom said, shaking his head.

This statement caused Damien and the others to laugh like hyenas.

Miss Walters shushed them.

"There is a lot of homophobia in the book to be fair," she said. "I was happy that the film remake dealt with that issue."

"And here I thought it was about a killer clown," Jay said.

"Pennywise is an alien, actually," Tom said.

"Actually, he's a demigod," Damien quickly corrected.

Tom shut up and sat down, unwilling to argue with Damien. Nobody bothered to argue with Damien, even if they thought they were right. He had this way of twisting things around to make himself right and always seemed to know more about any given topic than his opponent.

"Okay, erm, we have a new student I see," Miss Walters said, spotting Adrian for the first time.

"Hello LadyGreyTwenty," Adrian said with a faint smile.

As the students frowned, Miss Walters coughed, shuffled her papers and turned to Erin with a strained smile. "Erin, please go ahead."

"Erm, I'll go," Scarlett said, standing up. She knew Erin had forgotten her work and to be honest, she wanted to get hers out of the way.

As she read her report on The Great Gatsby, looking out at the sea of bored faces, she noticed Miss Walters staring into space; her eyes glazed and unblinking.

'I wonder what Adrian meant,' she thought but had to keep her mind from wandering too far.

As she finished, she stood, letting her cards drop to her sides as she smiled awkwardly, waiting for the teacher to say something.

"Oh, erm, great job, Eri—erm M—erm, sorry Scarlett," Miss Walters uttered, shaking her head.

The teacher continued to act distracted for the remainder of the lesson. As the bell rang, she sprang to her feet and tapped Adrian on the shoulder as he went to leave.

"Can I speak to you for a moment, please?" she asked him.

Scarlett hovered outside with Damien, sneaking peeks through the glass and trying to overhear what she was saying to him.

"Do you know what that is all about?" she asked Damien.

"I don't I'm afraid," Damien said. For some reason, she got the feeling he was lying. It was hard to tell with Damien. Most people were easier to read but not him.

Unable to overhear anything, she passed the time by checking her social media. She noticed Riley had commented on one of Adrian's posts and was so tempted to add him as a friend. Her finger hovered over the add button as she bit her lip, wondering if it was a good idea.

Wincing, she bit the bullet and pressed add, then regretted it as soon as the deed was done.

'Maybe I can cancel it,' she thought, grasping the phone in her sweat-slick hand. Just as she went to undo the friend add, a notification popped up.

'Riley has accepted your friend request.'

"Oh," Scarlett gasped, then smiled. She pocketed her phone when Damien flashed her a questioning look.

"N—nothing," she mumbled.

When Adrian finally left the English classroom, he looked her up and down, apparently able to read the guilt on her face.

"What's up with you?" he asked.

"Never mind that," Damien interrupted, saving her. "What was that all about?"

Adrian frowned with suspicion at Scarlett briefly before turning to Damien and answering, "I'll tell you later."

"That's fine, I don't want to know anyway," Scarlett huffed under her breath.