Radiant Blue | Jack Gilinsky

1.

BLUE RAYNE

"Mr. Gilinsky, you're late- again." The stern snap of Mrs. Levi echoed throughout the quiet English class. With a hand on her hip, she watched with an unimpressed scowl as Jack Gilinsky carelessly weaved through the occupied seats and sat at the free desk at the back of the class.

"Sorry, Mrs." He answered, "I had a problem to deal with."

Feeling the bony elbow nudge my ribs, I glanced to my left at my model-like best friend, Ashley Pleb. Her bouncy blonde locks cascaded down to her waist, her glistening blue eyes striking envy each time I looked into them and her immaculately aligned pearly whites. She mouthed the words Chantelle Campbell - Jack's newest toy. Giving her a nod, she rolled her ocean like blue eyes and turned back to the blabber Mrs. Levi was talking.

"Did she go down?" The voice of Jack Johnson spoke in a mumble from the seat behind mine. He, Sammy Wilkinson and Jack Gilinsky were the three musketeers of Greenway High. All on the football team, all friends from diapers and all the sex-crazed teenage boy you expected.

"She always does." Jack boasted with the overly cocky smirk. Ashley faked a quiet gag causing my lips to lift and a giggle to hurricane at the pit of my throat. "Not her best - think it's time I let her go."

I rolled my chocolate brown eyes. This was Jack's game - pick a random girl, play with her until he got bored. He kissed them, even had sex with them but not once did he commit himself to one girl.

He and I both had that in common.

"I wonder who his next victim is." Ashley whispered, her neat writing scribbling across the lined paper. "There is only four girls' left on the cheer squad that he hasn't fucked and chucked, and that is me, you, Frankie and Chloe."

"Chloe is far too innocent and her father would kill her if she even tempted to go near any boy never mind him." I replied, jotting down the notes sprawled across Mrs. Levi's board. "And Frankie is committed to her boyfriend - William, was it?"

"Oh yeah, the snobby one that goes to the private school." Ashley mocked, rolling her eyes. William was a posh boy, extremely wealthy and educated in a private school costing more than my life savings each semester. He didn't approve of Frankie's friends - including Ashley and myself. "She needs to ditch him and actually live like a normal teenager."

I quietly scoffed, "Like that will happen."

"Anyway, the boy is certainly not crawling to me - he's more infected than an actual STD."

Giggling, I slapped a hand over my mouth as Mrs. Levi's attention was drawn to me. Cocking a brow, she folded her arms. "Miss. Rayne, you want to share with the rest of the class?"

"No thanks, Mrs. You wouldn't understand what we were talking about." I answered boldly. Mrs. Levi or any other teacher in this trashy school scared me - detentions were purely the norm for me, even suspension a few times.

The class rumbled lowly with laughter as the pudgy woman with badly grey roots glowered. "Less of the attitude Miss. Rayne. We wouldn't want to start the semester off with a week long of after school detentions, would we?"

Growling beneath my breath, I prepared to return to my work as the heavenly bell sounded. Following the rush out into the busy hallway, Ashley groaned at my side, fixing the strap on her shoulder.

"I swear, they must be training us to be some kind of bodybuilders with the amount of books they give us." She whined, "It's like they actually want us to bust a shoulder before the first week is out!"

I laughed, continuing to head in the direction of the gym for physical education. A group of childish teenage boys, dressed in the typical varsity jackets and high top sneakers with snapbacks and big faced watches, stood at the lockers. The banging of metal screeched through my ears as one of the jocks - Matthew Espinosa - bodyslammed Jack into the lockers exactly in front of Ashley and I.