The cafeteria at Crestwood was bigger than the entire ground floor of Mila's old school.
She stood at the entrance for two seconds too long and Tessa grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the food line before she could think about it too hard. They got food.
Mila got a chicken wrap and a juice because it was all she thought she could keep down and found a table near the far windows, away from the noise. Just the two of them. Mila was relieved.
She had barely unwrapped her food when Tessa leaned forward with her elbows on the table.
"Okay. Fast version. Because things happen in this cafeteria and you need to know before they happen to you."
"Things like what?" Mila asked.
"Just listen." She tilted her head toward the center of the room. "You see the big table over there? Middle of everything?"
Mila stretched her neck and looked. She had already clocked it when they walked in. It was perhaps the loudest, most visible table in the room. The kind of table that took up space even when it was half empty. "Yes." She said.
"You don't sit there unless you're invited. You don't approach it. You don't make prolonged eye contact with anyone at it unless you know exactly what you're doing. Those are the rules."
"You don't need to worry because I have zero interest in that table."
"Nobody ever does." Tessa looked at her steadily. "And yet."
She looked back at it. The girl at the center of the table was dark-haired, sharp-faced, and laughing at something one of the girls beside her had said. The kind of laugh that was louder than it needed to be. Two girls flanked her like they had been placed there.
"The one in the middle is Bianca Harlow. Her family funded the new sports complex so basically she owns this school and everyone in it. The one on her left is Sienna; she smiles at everything but she's the one who actually does the damage. The one on her right is Petra. She's mostly decoration but she repeats everything she hears."
"Umm, got it" Mila said with a (I don't really care about that) voice.
Then she took a bite of her wrap. "Noted. Moving on."
Tessa laughed - a proper one. "I like you."
"How is that possible? You don't even know me." Mila replied.
"I know enough." She picked up her fork. "You remind me of me when I started here.
Except I didn't move fast enough and Bianca made my first month a nightmare, so learn
from my mistakes."
They ate in easy quiet for a moment and Mila felt something in her shoulders loosen for
the first time all day. Tessa was real. Someone she was beginning to consider a fruend. This table was safe. She could do this.
Then Tessa went still.
It was a small thing, just a fraction but Mila caught it. She looked up from her food.
Two boys had just walked into the cafeteria.
The whole room didn't stop. But it shifted. Just a little bit. That thing that happens when enough people feel something at the same time without deciding to. The background noise dropping half a volume, heads turning and then snapping back. Mila had never seen a room do that for two people before.
The one in front moved like he was the only person in the space. Not aggressively, just like the room arranged itself around him without him needing to ask. Dark hair,
sharp features, hands in his pockets. He wasn't performing anything. That was
somehow the most unsettling part.
The one beside him was talking, gesturing, grinning at something he'd just said himself.
Sandy hair, built like someone who played sport but didn't make a big deal out of it. He
looked like the kind of person who could make you laugh before you realized you'd
decided to like him.
"The one in front is Zane Calloway," Tessa said. Her voice was careful. Measured. "He's
..." She paused. "He's complicated."
"And the other one?" Mila asked.
"Ace Monroe. Zane's best friend." She paused again, like she was picking her next
words deliberately. "Zane is cold. You always know exactly where you stand with cold.
Ace is warm. Warm is how people get caught."
Mila watched them move through the cafeteria without watching them too long.
Zane pulled out a chair at the center table without looking at Bianca. Bianca looked at him the way someone looks at a door they can't decide whether to open.
"What's the deal between Zane and Bianca?" Mila asked.
"That," Tessa said, "is a very long story for a different day."
Mila turned back to her food. She had been here one morning and could already feel
the weight of this place - who held what, where the pressure points were. She had
seen versions of it before. She wanted no part of it though.
She picked up her wrap."Don't look now," Tessa said quietly. But Mila looked.
Ace was looking directly at her. Not the table.
Her specifically. He tilted his head - not a smile, just something that registered her and then turned back to whatever Zane was saying.
She looked away. "I said don't look," Tessa muttered.
"You said it after I already looked sorry" Mila picked up a sweat.
Tessa picked up her drink. "This is exactly how it always starts."