Page 80 of American Hellhound
“How’s it feel sleeping in your car?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Maggie said. If all her proper young lady training had been good for anything, it was her ability to keep cool and disinterested on the outside while fuming internally. “Turns out I’m not the rat, huh? That’s you.”
Stephanie shrugged. “I told you not to fuck with me.”
“Yeah. You did. Did it ever occur to you that maybeyoushouldn’t fuck withme?”
Stephanie snorted.
“I’m serious.” Maggie knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t resist, not when this girl needed a dressing-down. “If you really think I have Lean Dogs connections, it wouldn’t be a smart idea to try and stir shit up with me. Just saying.”
“Yeah right,” Stephanie said with a grimace. “You’re too much of a goddamn good girl.”
Maggie paused, forcing Stephanie to do the same. She sent her her hardest, coldest, best Denise Lowe look. The kind of stare-down that curdled stomachs. “Oh really? Then why am I living with my biker boyfriend? Listen up, bitch.” She took a step forward, gratified to see Stephanie pull her shoulders in and cower a little. “This is your first and last warning. Stop bothering me. Find someone else to harass.”
She whirled away before the other girl could respond…
And almost collided with Vince Fielding. Damn her luck.
“Maggie! Oh, crap, wait, sorry–” He fumbled his books and managed not to drop them. “Maggie, wait up.”
She didn’t wait. She walked down the hall as fast as she could without running.
“Maggie!”
She felt his hand on her arm and spun violently, shaking him off, unjustly angry that he’d touched her. “Don’tgrab me like that.”
“Okay, okay, sorry.” He showed her his empty hand in apology. He was breathing hard from chasing her – he was always chasing her. She didn’t think they’d been designed to occupy the same space at the same time.
“What, Vince?”
He looked constipated. “You aren’t really living with some biker guy, are you? The guy from downtown? With the leather…” He plucked at the front of his shirt and Maggie figured he meant Ghost’s cut.
She sighed. “It’s really none of your business.”
“But, Maggie, those guys are bad news.”
“So’s Stephanie, but nobody goes around warning me away from her. Excuse me,” she said, side-stepping him. “I’m going to be late for class.”
~*~
After Spanish she had history, and ended the day with ceramics. She was abysmal with clay, but it lowered her blood pressure, getting her hands dirty and pretending she could shape a bud vase.
But then the day was over and she walked to her car. Her shiny, powerful, gorgeous car.
In pink spray paint all down the driver side, someone had written the wordsLean Bitch.
~*~
There was a cot she could sit on, but she didn’t want to use it, not until she had to. For starters, there werestainson it. And secondly, one end was occupied by a woman in a tube top who’d fallen asleep with her head tipped back against the wall. Maggie recognized her: Trina the infamous local drunk. Her mouth was open and she was snoring so loud it seemed impossible she didn’t startle herself awake.
She’d seen the holding cells at the police station back when she was ten, on a field trip with her fifth-grade class. She’d never imagined she’d wind upinsideone. But. Well.
In retrospect, she’d acted rashly. But at the time, she’d been too enraged to see straight, much less think that way. It was all a blur: throwing her bag down. Charging back into the school. Finding Stephanie with her clique, andlaunchingherself at the bitch. It had been a fast, nasty tangle. Lots of screaming from the bystanders. Two jock boys had pulled them apart, finally. Maggie had had blood under her nails, and Stephanie had looked like she’d been in a fight with a cat – scratches all over her face, neck, and shoulders. The teachers had shown up. And then the police.
Her parents – hermother– thought it would do her some good to spend the night in lockup and think about what she’d done. An officer had informed her of this, and he’d heard it from a school administrator who’d called her house and then relayed the message before she was put in the back of a squad car.
She’d used her one phone call to leave a message with Rita at Ghost’s apartment. Rita hadn’t sounded too sympathetic.
