Chapter eight
"What?" Anika hissed as she discretely turned around and sure enough, the gorgeous dirty blond spawn of the devil was approaching their section of the cafeteria. His dark blue eyes swept over the tables until they landed on their target. Anika suppressed the shiver that wanted to rake up her spine when he glared at her and for the second time, the cafeteria went dead quiet. A half smirk pulled at her lips when she noticed the gloomy purple and blue bruise on his left cheek.
"Back already?" Anika taunted lowly as she turned to glare at some of their nosy crowd. He let out a dark chuckle and met Anika's smirk with one of his own. Behind her she heard Keira mutter what sounded like an 'oh Lordy.'
"Aren't you just the cutest thing. All riled up already. Like a harmless kitty." Anika's fist clenched in annoyance.
"I wasn't harmless yesterday. What makes you think that I won't do it again?"
"I see even a girl like you made friends." he ignored her question and flashed his gaze at Mel and Keira, smiling appreciatively at Keira who fought not to sigh at his attention.
"Sorry, Skinner doesn't swing that way if that's the reason you came over here for." Anika turned her head to smirk at him, giving the white blond kid a look over. "Though he does dress considerably nice." Skinner smiled and the two girls chuckled at Anika's sarcastic remark. All the guys at Silver lake were given the same choice of grey sweat pants, mesh shorts, a short sleeve white shirt with the camp's logo on it, a red sweatshirt and work boots. Skinner was wearing the lightest clothes being the shorts and shirt, which hugged his slim torso. The girls had a similar style of clothes; grey sweat pants, short shorts, white t-shirt, red hoody and work boots. To swim, the guys had dark grey swim trunks while the girls either had grey bikinis or one pieces.
"I'm not gay." he growled. Behind him there were a few sighs of disappointment and a 'that's too bad'.
"Could've fooled me." Anika muttered to get under his skin even more.
"There you two are!" Gelsey strode over to their table with a hesitant smile when she walked further into the cafeteria. The tension and anticipation of the brewing fight between the two newest Silver Lake delinquents nearly suffocating her.
"I forgot to give you both these." Finally the two managed to tear their glares away from each other to looked at what she had to offer.
"An iPod?" Anika asked confused.
"I guess Mel and Keira-oh hi Skinner-" Gelsey waved over Anika's shoulder and Skinner nodded his head once with a smirk, "didn't tell you about these yet."
"Um... no." Anika took the electronic device from her with a raised brow.
"Well, all of our occupants have these as a reward. During their free time they can do whatever they want."
"But wait, there's a catch!" Keira said in a commercial like tone.
"If you misbehave or cause trouble then your music privileges will be revoked." Gelsey continued.
"Then why does he get one? He's the definition of trouble." Anika went back to killing Ryleigh with her glare.
Gelsey chuckled. "It takes two sides to continue a war. Anyway, have fun with them. You can download all the music your heart desires in the game room on the computers there. Just remember, get in trouble then you get it taken away." With that last warning, Gelsey walked out leaving Ryleigh and Anika to think about what they were going to do next.
"You're not worth it. I'm not going to lose this over some stupid dealer." Anika sneered and turned to sit back down with her new gift. With a scoff, Ryleigh bumped her chair and stalked out of the cafeteria.
"Damn that kid. Even I wanted to punch him." Keira said.
"You have no idea." Anika grumbled pushing her food around the plate.
"And you spent a whole car ride with him?" Mel glared at the exit.
"Yep." Anika sighed and looked up to see mostly everyone around their table staring at her like she was some sort of science experiment ready to blow.
"Can we maybe get out of here?"
"Thought you'd never ask. People around here don't know what's good for them." Skinner said loudly.
"And staring isn't going to help them." Mel added with a bite to her voice as she eyed a group of kids whispering to each other.
"So what's up with these bon fires?" Anika asked once Keira, Mel and Skinner completed their tour around campus.
"All the wings are mixed up and split up into groups of around twenty five kids." Skinner started off and Keira joined in.
"We roast marshmallows and go over stories that happened during the day. Sometimes people share their backstory and surprisingly people listen attentively. Sure you have the few that don't take it seriously but there's always a kind of respect towards whoever is sharing. We all have our demons and it takes a certain strength to bring them out in the light. Sharing is not mandatory but attendance at the bon fires is."
"No doubt people are going to be talking about you." Mel said, bumping Anika's shoulder.
"Great." Anika raised her brows in sarcasm as they stepped out of the forest and into a clearing. Rings of stacked rocks marked where each fire pit was as the few people already there carried wood around and set up the logs for tonight.
"We're early, but we can help." Keira told Anika as she started picked up random sticks and twigs and threw them into the nearest fire pit. After a little while, more kids showed up and started to seat themselves around the many fire rings, sitting on the logs circling the rings.
"Let's grab a seat. All that's left to do is light the fires and we're not allowed to do that anyway." Skinner said and led the girls over to a log.
"Are you going to talk tonight?" Keira asked, watching an older woman scratch a match against a rock and throw it onto the wood. The match slipped in between a crevasse made by two adjoining pieces of wood. Seconds later, smoke lifted into the air as the leaves on the bottom of the pit caught fire.
"Maybe." Anika shrugged.
Truthfully, she didn't know where to start. Should she only tell them why she was here? Because she was a graffiti artist and ran from the cops? Should she even tell anyone about her mom and her drug addiction? Who knows, maybe Ryleigh told everyone about her mother, Anika thought bitterly. What no one knew- not even the hospital or her friends back home- was what happened the day she found her mother. It felt like a lifetime ago but was only a week ago.
It started off like any other night with her mom going to the corner to buy her fix with the limited amount of money she had left. It was only after it started to turn dark outside that Anika had a feeling something was wrong. She left the little nook in one of the many abandoned buildings her and her mother inhabited in order to search for her. The corner was empty with a few cars driving by the dark alleys and streets and she couldn't help the sour taste in the back of her throat as her stomach clenched in fear. Anika had lived long enough in this section of town to know that nothing good comes around once the sun goes down. She tried to keep to the lighted parts of the street but froze when she saw the unmoving figure under a lamppost. The woman's ratty black hair was greasy and snarled, covering her face but Anika didn't need to see her sunken in cheeks or thin cracked lips to know who she was. Fear flooded her veins as she ran to the slumped frail body leaning against the street post. Anika collapsed in a shaky mess and stayed kneeling beside her mother's limp body for minutes, her hand hovering over the woman's shoulder. She sucked in a breath and brushed her fingers down her arm and shivered at the chill of her skin against her fingertips.
The needle was still in the crook of her elbow.
A wild urge to run overcame Anika as she scrambled away from her mother. For the next ten minutes she searched for a telephone booth to call the cops and left an anonymous tip. From the shadows, she watched her poor excuse of a mother being taken away with a white sheet covering her boney figure.
That was the first time Greg had ever seen her cry when she knocked on his door. What he didn't know either, was what happened before she arrived at his house. How could he? Trembling in fear and disgust with herself, she stumbled back to her abandoned building. She changed out of her ripped clothes and stared at the forming bruises on her arms, legs, hips... everywhere. She could still feel their disgusting hands holding her quivering body as she screamed into the night. Never had she felt so alone before.
"You okay?" Keira asked after watching Anika grow paler by the second as she started to shake.
"Yeah." Anika dropped all emotion from her face and voice as she avoided their gazes. No, she decided. I'm definitely not talking tonight.
As if to harden her resolution, a particular blue-eyed delinquent sat across from their log.