Page 1 of Scales and Seduction

Asea of bodies presses me into the bus. The air is thick with the musk of sweat and the thump of someone’s music blaring through cheap headphones. It’s always the same, packed to the gills like sardines, all of us desperate to escape the grind and get home. The noises overload my senses and make my skin crawl. I’m completely overstimulated.

“I’m too fucking tired for this,” I mutter, but my words get lost beneath the roar of the muffled conversations around me.

“Don’t be such a downer, Rubes,” Quinn teases as she balances precariously on one of the slick metal handrails. She’s glancing down at her brother, Vince, who annoyingly swiped the only open seat when we got on.

Quinn’s purple hair is tied up in a messy pineapple-shaped bun, and she’s wearing a baggy sweatshirt with jeans. It’s what she typically wears when she’s not doing photoshoots or going to conventions. She hates makeup most of the time and would rather never wear a bra unless she’s forced to.

The bus lurches again, and I tip forward, my elbow nearly colliding with someone else’s. They barely acknowledge me, lost in the “grind.” We’re all drones on autopilot. We see life happening around us, but we hardly ever live it.

“Careful, babes,” Vince chimes in, smirking devilishly. “If you keep swinging elbows, you’ll start a brawl.”

He’s obnoxiously man-spreading into the aisle, but it does give me a little barrier between my body and another stranger’s body. Vince is completely different from his sister. He’s her half-brother and mostly takes after his dad. He has coiled hair on top with shaved sides, and although his skin is three shades darker than ours, his nose, lips, and eyes resemble Quinn’s.

I roll my eyes, fishing my phone from my ratty leather satchel. “Very funny,” I say sarcastically. “I’m sure you’d love the chaos that’d bring.”

Vince kisses the air, making sure I hear his lips smack together. “I’d rescue you.” He gives me a little wink, and I kiss back at him.

“Yeah, yeah, after you started the fight, took pictures and posted them online first,” Quinn snickers.

Ignoring them both, I look down at my phone. “Let me add that to my bucket list right alongside paying off my student loans,” I mutter.

Suddenly, the bus lurches forward as it comes to an abrupt stop. The jolt sends everyone stumbling into someone else. My knees collide with Vince’s, and my phone slips from my grasp. Quinn jerks her arm out to save it, but time seems to slow down as it tumbles to the filthy floor. It lights up with another notification just as a random brown boot crushes it with a sickening crunch.

“Stop!” I shout, but the people don’t listen as they push toward the exit. Foot after foot tramples my brand-new Snapple phone.

Once the aisle clears, Quinn is the first to pick it up. The screen is shattered beyond repair. The sunflower wallpaper I loved is split into a web of black shards. “No, no, no.”

As she hands me the phone, I see the frustration in her eyes as she barks insults at the people leaving the scene. Her words are garbled as the pounding frustration rings in my ears. Anger threatens to spill over into tears, but I swallow it down. I’m embarrassed by the thought of strangers seeing me upset—hell, even my best friends seeing me upset makes me cringe.

“That’s such fucking bullshit!” Quinn snarls toward the front of the bus before I feel her hand gingerly touch my shoulder. “Rubes, is it broken?”

I can feel my friends’ eyes on me, likely filled with pity because they know how hard I worked for this phone. Eight hundred dollars, six months of saving, and all for nothing. The screen flickers behind the spiderwebs of broken glass, but it’s no use—the backlight is a myriad of green and black.

It’s dead.

A shaky laugh is all I can manage as I fight back tears. “Let’s just go.”

There’s no point in placing my phone back in my bag as the three of us trudge up to the front of the bus. “That’s rough. Is that a Snapple sixteen?” a gravelly Scottish voice interrupts my pity party.

My nose wrinkles in irritation as I turn toward the voice. It’s the bus driver talking to me. He’s a tiny, gray-skinned man with sparse silver hair curling underneath an old gray ball cap.

“It was,” Vince replies for me, lifting my elbow just enough to hold up my phone like a war trophy. “Didn’t you see it happen back there?”

The driver scratches his beard thoughtfully, giving me a kind glance. “I saw,” he says before pointing out the big front windshield. “I know a place that can fix it up good as new. Funny enough, it’s just three blocks from this stop if you’re able.”

“Great, because I’m swimming in spare phones,” I say sarcastically. Everything feels overwhelmingly loud and too much. I let out a heavy sigh of frustration. “I can’t exactly survive with it this way though.”

The driver nods sympathetically. “Burney is a wiz with these things,” he says, undeterred. “You’ll have it back in an hour, tops.”

“That sounds too good to be true.” Quinn exchanges a look with me, her eyebrows drawn together in disbelief.

It doesn’t matter if it is or not. I still need it repaired, and the Snapple store will cost me nearly as much as the phone itself.

The driver waves his hand dismissively. “He’s a tech wizard.”

“Or he’s a fraud,” Quinn says under her breath.

Shooting her a look that tells her to shut up, I ask, “What’s the shop’s name?”

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