Crooked Crows by Elena Lawson

By the timelunch rolled around, my legs were stiff from my run and my brain was absolute mush from second period history.

Left with only my baser instincts, I followed the smell of roast chicken like a stray dog, practically panting as I found the entrance to the dining hall.

Dear sweet baby Jesus, I was starving. How long had it been since I’d eaten anything? A day at least. Probably more. My stomach burbled loudly as I made for the serving line, eyes saucer wide as I took in the heaps of steaming, glistening goodness along the self-serve counter.

Every kind of salad you could imagine. Not one but three different soups. Sandwiches with little toothpick flags sticking out of their tops. Steaming trays of lemon and herb chicken. Seared tofu. Artfully cut fruit that looked too pretty to actually eat. Sushi. There was fucking sushi.

“Drool much?” A girl sneered as I got into line behind her. She abandoned her tray, leaving the line presumably just to get away from me.

Her loss was my gain. She’d already filled one small plate with salad, and not knowing where she’d gotten the tray, I helped myself to hers, adding a bowl of creamy soup and three sandwiches to the pile. I promised myself I’d come back for some sushi after I was finished when I realized there wasn’t room on the small black tray for anything else.

I spotted Becca as I turned and blew out a breath, glad to see a face that wasn’t staring at me like I might be contagious. She flashed a smile my way, and I slid into the seat next to her, barely getting out a ‘hey,’ before stuffing the first sandwich in my mouth.

Becca picked at an orange on her plate and watched me with an amused look on her face.

“What?” I managed between mouthfuls.

“Just get out of prison?” she joked, eyeing my plate and mayo coated fingers.

I laughed around the bite in my mouth, swallowing it down with a grimace. “I might as well have.”

I winced, realizing I’d said that out loud, but Becca didn’t comment or question, just snagged a grape from the top of one of my salads and plopped it into her mouth.

The girl from this morning strode in a moment later with three other girls strutting behind her. They had to be related, I thought at first. All three were blondes, though after closer inspection it was easy to tell at least one of them wasn’t a natural. Her brows were too dark and her roots were beginning to show. I assumed it was a prerequisite to join her clique and snorted, going back to my lunch.

“I heard about this morning,” Becca said, drawing my attention back to her.

Why wasn’t I surprised?

“People are saying Bri has it out for you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah. She’s sort of like the queen of Briar Hall. A legacy student. Her family has been going here for generations.”

Woop-de-freakin’-do.

Becca licked her lips and scanned the students in the dining hall like she was considering how she might want to chop all their heads off.

“You look murdery,” I commented, wiping my hands on a napkin before swapping out my sandwich for the soup.

Her expression softened, and she smirked, one corner of her deep crimson lacquered lips tipping up as her eyes leveled back on me. “A bad case of resting bitch face,” she explained. “Inherited from my mom. I checked and there’s no cure. I always look stabby. Probably why bitches like Bri generally steer clear of me.”

“Teach me?”

She chuckled. “Maybe. If you’re lucky.”

I set the spoon down in favor of drinking the rest of the soup straight from the bowl, wondering if it was too soon to go back for seconds. So much fucking food must get wasted here. Enough to feed all the students from Lennox High who couldn’t afford a proper lunch. It looked like most of them weren’t even eating, going straight for the sparkling water and not much else.

“So, you were going to give me the low down,” I said, sitting back in my chair to give my stomach a moment to adjust itself before I attempted to pile anything else into it. “Anyone besides Bri I need to be wary of?”

She jerked her head to the side, gesturing toward the door. The three guys from my homeroom were just entering the cafeteria. The one who’d colluded with Bri to accuse me of theft scanned the student body, making heads spin away from him as though they were afraid to be caught staring.

When his cold stare found me, I stared back, tipping my head to one side, raising a brow.

His jaw twitched as the blond one said something, and the trio went to sit at a table in the back corner of the cafeteria. I didn’t miss how it was the one vantage point that would give them an unobstructed view of the entire room, and ensure no one could slip behind them undetected. It was where I would have sat. Where I did sit when I actually ate in the cafeteria at Lennox High.

“Yeah. Kind of figured. They were in my homeroom,” I mused as the blond guy went to pile a plate sky high with food and carry it back to the table. Grey. I thought he was going to share it—the bitch boy going to get everyone’s lunches—but he kept the tray to himself, immediately diving in. Demolishing the mountain of food like a starved beast.

The guy was thick with muscle, but if he ate like that all the time, you had to wonder where it all went.

“You shouldn’t stare,” Becca said. “They’re the Crows.”

I lifted a brow.

She leaned in, her brown eyes cutting to the table in the corner and back again as though she were afraid they might hear her from this far away. “They’re Diesel St. Crow’s adopted sons.”

I knew that name. Where the hell did I know that name from?

“The Saints,” Becca said when she saw I was having trouble catching on. “The Thorn Valley chapter. Diesel’s one of the original three. This was ground zero for the gang. Now there are chapters all over Cali. One in Phoenix, too, I think.”

Heat licked up my back, and my appetite for food vanished, replaced with something more savage. Of fucking course they were part of a gang.

I thought I was escaping that bullshit when I agreed to leave Lennox and come here. I should’ve known better.

“They’re members then?”

She nodded, absently picking at the orange on her plate. “What’s his deal?” I asked. “The one who keeps staring.”

“Corvus? He’s kind of their leader, I guess. Hot as fuck, but still a psycho. Totally a Scorpio.”

“A what?”

“Scorpio,” she repeated, her cat eyes taking in the long line of him before flitting to the guy next to him. The scary sexy one with the dark hair and the lip ring. “And that’s Rook. I have him pegged as Aries.”

“What about the one eating like he’s on his way to death row?” I asked, curious. I never paid much attention to horoscopes or whatever, but clearly Becca lived by them.

“I’m not sure. I go back and forth between Gemini and Taurus for him. He’s a hard one to read.”

“And me?”

She pursed her lips, considering as she eyed me up and down. “I haven’t decided yet.”

I opened my mouth to tell her, but she stopped me with a look. “No, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out.”

A knot began to form between her brows, and I sensed she had more to say, and it wasn’t to do with which star sign I fell under.

“What?” I prodded.

She readjusted herself in her seat, her face pinching as she considered how to say something.

“Thorn Valley can either be the safest place you’ve ever lived—or the most dangerous.”

“Depending on what?”

Her eyes flicked up to meet mine and then zeroed back in on the Crows. “Them.”

“So, hypothetically, if I’d already maybe pissed one of them off—”

“You did what?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly do anything. The guy looked like he wanted to erase me from the face of the earth the moment I walked into homeroom, and then he helped Bri set me up.”

Her eyes widened. “Which one?”

“The tall one with the permanent scowl.”

Her cheekbones flared. “Shit, girl. If Corvus James has it out for you, you should just leave.”

I barked a laugh, but the sound died in my throat when her stony expression didn’t crack.

“I mean it. It isn’t worth staying.”

My fingers automatically went to my lap, inching lower toward the blade hidden beneath the hem of my jeans. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her lips quirked up at one side. “Then you’re an idiot.”

I shrugged. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

“Something tells me you aren’t lying.”

She inhaled deeply after a moment, biting on her lower lip. “Fine. If you’re staying, then it’s only fair I give you a proper welcome.”

Becca eyed my clothes. “Friday, there’s a party. Maybe you can make peace with the vultures…What size are you?”

I looked at her in question.

“We might have to go shopping first,” she explained. “There’s a place in town here that I love. I’ll take you after school.”

I cringed even thinking about buying something at a place where she shopped. Not because I wouldn’t like it; the price tag and I might have some differences of opinion.

But if they didn’t have alarm tags on them then…

“Shit. I can’t,” I huffed. “I have detention.”

Her lips parted in surprise. Clearly the whole story hadn’t circulated yet.

“On the first day? I mean, I’m impressed. Took me a full week to earn mine.”

This girl just kept surprising me.

“Took the queen down with me, too. I have detention all week, but she has detention today, too.”

Her eyes lit up.

“Brianna Moore has detention? That’s new. She’ll probably find a way out of it, though.”

Becca glanced conspiratorially across the table. “Okay, so here’s what you do. Ms. Wood runs detention, and she’s an ornery fucker, but lucky for you I’ve learned how to tame that dragon. Listen closely and you’ll have her eating out of the palm of your hand by the dinner bell…”