The Merciless (The Merciless #1)(2)

Still, beggars can’t be choosers. So when Brooklyn winks at me and says “Later,” I smile and wave back.

Charlie shakes his head as Brooklyn walks away, and a few strands of floppy brown hair fall over his eyes. His arm brushes against mine as he leans over the food counter to grab a fork and napkin.

“Don’t take Brooklyn seriously,” he says, flashing me a half smile. A dimple appears in his cheek. “It’s not so bad here, I promise. See you around?”

My heart does a little flip inside my chest as he walks away. I’ve been bouncing around long enough to know my crushes never turn out the way I want them to, but I still manage to fall in love every time I meet a new guy with a great smile. I should have learned by now that high school romance isn’t in the cards for me. My mom’s been a medical technician for the army since moving to the States. I’m at a new school every six months, like clockwork.

This time it’s Adams High School, in the tiny army town of Friend, Mississippi. Friend feels like the inside of an oven. The grass is brown, I hear insects buzzing wherever I go, and there are more churches in my neighborhood than grocery stores. I’ve lived in nicer places, but in the end it always comes down to the people. I hesitate near the cafeteria doors and glance back over my shoulder at Charlie. Heat creeps up my neck. This place has potential.

The students at Adams eat lunch outside, so I take my tray through the side door and head toward the bleachers. Adams High is a one-story-high building made of cream-colored brick with mud-brown siding. The classrooms are all outdated, with peeling linoleum floors and rickety desks. In fact, the only impressive part of the whole school is its football field, a deep-green stretch of Astroturf surrounded by shiny silver bleachers. Above the bleachers hangs a blue-and-white sign that reads ADAMS HIGH SPARTANS. A Mississippi flag billows in the air next to it.

As I look around for a place to sit, a gasp of hot wind blows my curls into my face. I lift a hand to push them away, immediately noticing the smell. It’s like milk gone bad, or moldy cheese.

I take a step toward the bleachers, and the smell gets worse. Now it’s chicken that’s been in the garbage all night, fish left out in the heat. I pull my T-shirt over my nose and make my way under the bleachers.

That’s when I see it.

It’s a cat. A dead cat. Skin’s been peeled away from the cat’s body in strips. Flies buzz around its head and inside its mouth, crawling over its tongue and teeth. Red paint clings to the stiff grass beneath the cat’s body, and candles surround it, cemented to the ground in pools of black wax. It takes a minute for me to see that the paint is in the shape of a star, with a black candle at each point—like a ritual.

I don’t notice that I’ve started picking at the skin along my cuticles until I feel a sharp stab of pain and look down to see blood pooling around another fingernail. The cat’s clouded gray eyes watch me, and the flies’ constant buzz fills my ears.

“What are you doing?”

I whirl around, immediately spotting the dark-haired girl from the cafeteria—Riley. Her brown curls pool around her shoulders in perfect spirals, and her eyebrows start wide and taper to needle-thin points, as if they were drawn with a calligraphy pen. There isn’t a single crease in her blue dress. It looks like she never sits down.

Riley looks past me, her pale blue eyes finding the skinned body of the cat. One of her eyebrows lifts, but her face remains otherwise unchanged.

“Gross.” There’s no inflection in her voice. She could be talking about the lasagna they served at lunch. I take a step away from the cat, nearly tripping over my sneakers.

“I didn’t . . . I mean, that wasn’t me. I didn’t do that.”

Riley turns her eyes on me. They’re so pale they change her entire face, making her dark hair and brows seem severe. If I were going to paint her I’d have to use watercolors—only a drop of cerulean for her eyes, keeping them as light as possible.

“Of course you didn’t.” She glances down at the cat and shudders. “You’re new, right? Sofia?”

“Yeah,” I say, surprised she knows my name.

“Riley.” She points to herself and her eyes grow several degrees warmer. “This is disgusting. I’m impressed you didn’t hurl.”

“Me, too.” I wrinkle my nose. “Though I’m not sure I’m past the hurling stage yet.”

“Right. Let’s get out of here.” Riley slides her arm around my shoulder and turns me away from the cat. “Come sit with me and my friends today.”

She pulls me out from under the bleachers without waiting for an answer, which is probably a good thing because for once I don’t know what to say. Girls I’ve known who look like Riley don’t make friends with the new kid. It’s a law of nature—Earth revolves around the sun, summer follows spring, and pretty, popular girls form cliques that are harder to break into than a bank vault. If attending seven schools in five years has taught me anything, that’s it.

But Riley seemed genuine when she made her charity announcement in the cafeteria. Maybe she’s different. Maybe Friend will live up to its name.

“We have the best spot for lunch,” Riley explains. A few people smile and wave as we climb past them, and though Riley smiles back, she makes no move to stop and sit. “You can see everything that happens.”