The Anna Dressed in Blood Duology by Kendare Blake

Author:Kendare Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

C HAPTER F IVE

From what I can gather, Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate & Vocational is just about like any high school I was ever at in the United States. I spent all of first period working out my schedule with the school counselor, Ms. Ben, a kindly, birdlike young woman who is destined to wear baggy turtlenecks and own too many cats.

Now, in the hallway, every set of eyes is on me. I’m new and different, but that’s not the only thing. Everyone’s eyes are on everybody, because it’s the first day of classes and people are dying to know what their classmates have turned into over the summer. There must be at least fifty makeovers and brand-new looks being tried out somewhere in the building. The pasty bookworm has bleached her hair white and is wearing a dog collar. The skinny kid from the track team has spent all of July and August lifting weights and buying tight-fitting t-shirts.

Still, people’s eyes tend to linger on me longer, because even though I’m new, I don’t move like it. I’m barely looking at the numbers of the rooms passing by. I’ll find my classes eventually, right? No reason to panic. Besides, I’m an old hand at this. I’ve been to twelve high schools in the past three years. And I’m looking for something.

I need to be plugged into the social pipeline. I need to get people talking to me, so I can ask them questions that I need answers to. So when I transfer in, I always look for the queen bee.

Every school has one. The girl who knows everything and everybody. I could go and try to insta-bond with the lead jock, I suppose, but I’ve never been good at that. My dad and I never watched sports or played catch. I can wrestle the dead all day long, but touch football might knock me unconscious. Girls, on the other hand, have always come easy. I don’t know why that is, exactly. Maybe it’s the outsider vibe and a well-placed brooding look. Maybe it’s something I think I see sometimes in the mirror, something that reminds me of my father. Or maybe I’m just damn easy on the eyes. So I scour the halls until I finally see her, smiling and surrounded by people.

There’s no mistaking her: the queen of the school is always pretty, but this one is downright beautiful. She’s got something like three feet of layered blond hair and lips the color of ripe peaches. As soon as she sees me, she dips her chin. A smile comes easily to her face. This is the girl who gets everything she wants at Winston Churchill. She’s the teacher’s pet, the homecoming queen, and party central. Everything I want to know, she could tell me. Which is what I hope she’ll do.

When I walk by, I pointedly ignore her. A few seconds later she leaves her group of friends and jumps in beside me.

“Hey. Haven’t seen you around here before.

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