Girls Chase Girls | #1 [COMPLETE]

chapter 6 (new)

Phaedra

Phaedra stepped out of gym class and into the most idiotic showdown since a bunch of undercover vice cops from downtown mistook the Wild Girls for a drug smuggling ring. Her hair was still damp, she was out of gel, her wallet was home which meant no lunch, and her baby, her 1967 Camaro SS —black finish, white stripes on the hood—was making a funny sound when she took left turns. Suffice it to say, Phae wasn't in the mood for a lot of BS today, yet here they were.

"We're not doing it," Tré hissed, propped on the trunk of her Chrysler. She was glaring fire down the line of classic rides occupying the parking lot. It was Wild Girl territory; nobody dared trespass.

"Who died and put you in charge?" Hunter challenged through a ring of smoke. Phaedra's fingers twitched. She didn't regret giving up smoking for her baby sister Dacia, but sometimes she had to admit she missed it.

"Nobody—yet. You volunteering?" Tré was giving off sparks and not just from the clover cig tucked between her lips. The campus police had given up raiding her car for the contraband; they grew in her pockets like fruit.

Hunter snorted at Tré; she never took her seriously as she should. Fearless like she had a death wish, that one. "I'm at UCLA in six months. I can't even bother."

"That's what I thought." Tré still stared at the red-haired girl for another minute until she was sure she'd made her point. Lucia, parked between them, sighed, catching Hunter's attention. The girl backed down at once.

Phae snagged the lit cig from Tré's fingers before her friend burned herself. That was why Tremaine was so gun-shy. Hunter was going to UCLA, too. Hunter 'Strange Days' Matthews was Lucia Prasad's best friend and most people at Webber thought the girls were bound for wedding bells as much as any couple on campus. Never mind that Hunter didn't look at anybody the way Tré looked at Luce. Hunter was happy and aro and lived to shit stir until someone snapped, but that wasn't Phae's business to tell.

"God, it's called being a legal adult, Tré. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it—eventually." Lucia turned another page in her ever-present book. She was the pretty sore thumb that stuck out of their group. She'd moved to town from England when her ex-pat legal eagle parents had been invited back to join a firm in the States. She'd come along for the ride, but she'd not for one moment pretended to be happy about it. Not that that stopped Tré from falling head over heels for the posh accent and the deep-set brown eyes. Lucia had spent years not noticing. Phae did not need this.

Garvey trotted from the cafeteria side door, bearing sodas smuggled in her jacket pockets and sleeves. Thank god, sugar. Calories.

Garvey had news. "Ronnie Jensen's b-ball idiots are giving swirlies to the chess team again."

"Uh oh," Luce muttered, in a rare move, actually lifting her eyes from the words in front of her. Phaedra put down her can unopened, ready to intervene if she could. She was in charge of her players on the field, not here; the Wild Girls and the volleyball team were far from interchangeable. She was the leader because people followed her, not because he had a chance in hell of keeping anybody in check. Nadine Figueroa was in a six-week suspension right now for a fight Phae hadn't been able to stop.

Mickey B. hopped up from the sidewalk to smooth her slicked hair and to pop her knuckles. "I really don't need another citation. I already have community service for punching out the last jockster twit who thought doing a panty check on freshmen girls was going to get him a date. Freaking creep." Mickey had a problem with anyone couldn't respect boundaries. She handled her problems by throwing hands. It was her thing. Their thing.

Where you go, I go, Phae thought, clicking her tongue. Mickey jerked her chin in acknowledgement. They never had to say the words. They went back near as far as Phae and Tré, but they had something else in common. They knew what it was like to be anything but white in this school and this podunk town. They had the rap sheets to prove it.

"Ronnie Jensen is gunning for you," Hunter remarked, because Hunter talked too much. She got the unflattering nickname 'Strange Days' because she didn't go fifteen minutes without saying something weird. Lucia loved her anyway, in her own way, and so Hunter had stuck around even as her friendship with Tré soured.

"He's a jock. That's what jocks do," Phae countered. She wanted to be the voice of reason here. I am never the voice of reason, ever. She had fading handcuff scars on her wrists from a cop she'd pissed off by calling him a pig. Yeah no, she was not the reasonable one by any stretch.

"Ronnie Jensen doesn't know who he's playing with," Mickey sniped. "I'll deal with him." She stopped her forward march, pivoting on the heel of her Converse.  A textbook about-face. She was her mommas' daughter. "Don't tell the colonel." And then she was off, striding across the green and into the cafeteria, a storm of skinny jeans and hoop earrings.

Phae whistled past her toothpick. This ain't gonna be pretty.

Mickey, a JROTC cadet captain, knew a thing or two about putting dickheads in their place and the resident jocks weren't immune to her right hook. Truth was, they knew it too well and they kinda liked it. The kids at this school were weird as hell.

Rabi Chanh, the youngest in the crew, shortest, too, had nodded off on the front row bench seat of their Cyclone Spoiler II , 1969, rose red racer stripes swerving along a body of stainless steel white. They'd all figured out quick that the Spoiler was where Rabi slept best, so they let 'em sleep. Home wasn't much of an option for rest, and the teachers had started handing out detentions for in-class snoozing.

Tré slapped the bubble hood of her 300, shocking Rabi from sleep with a groggy yelp. "Did that seem helpful to you, Matthews? You couldn't have been a little more useful at cooling her down?"

"I didn't do anything wrong, it's not like I lied." Hunter was good at sulking and bad at apologizing, two things Tré could not stand as a big sister in charge of little tyrants at home.

"You egged her on. If she gets into trouble, it's on you."

"She was going to beat Jensen into the concrete no matter what I said," Hunter contended. "You know what she's like when she gets all mama bear for the freshmen." This wasn't about Mickey, not really; everybody except the smartest girl in the group seemed to pick up on this.

"This isn't helping!" Lucia interjected, annoyed.

Phaedra rubbed her temples. She had been hoping to sneak over to Xia's locker after school, just to say hey. Nothing big. "None of this is helping!"

Their collective squawking lured Rabi from the Cyclone Spoiler's bench seat bed, and they rose blinking from behind the dashboard. They rubbed their eyes and leaned out the driver's side window. "W'as up?"

Garvey emptied her can of pop and burped. "Your mentor's about to pummel Ronnie Jensen, or get her second strike. Your pick." Garvey had all of Hunter's candor and 72% less of her word vomiting habits. Not actually helpful.

Credit where it's due, Rabi only stumbled getting out of the car. For being five-one, they made good time getting to the cafeteria, leapt clear over the bike rack in front of the door. Whether they were going to stop Mickey in her tracks or play backup was a whole other story.

Sable stared at the dust trail their pint-sized pal had left behind. "Cadets got that sticking together thing down right."

Phaedra threw down her toothpick, sick of the stench of stupid muddying the air. "Wild Girls, too." She popped her collar and took off for the caf's swinging doors, a roll of quarters jammed in her fist. Looks like nobody's playing this Saturday.

Phaedra was not gonna have fun explaining this one to her parents.