Beastly (The Ever After Collection) (2 page)

He ignored the stares and the teacher completely, shuffling to the back of the room to one of the numerous empty seats. It was far away from where Emma sat, and she could admit to maybe being just a tad disappointed.

Unfazed by the boy's bad manners, Miss Blanchett greeted her new student warmly. "Ah, you must be Mr. Heath Thompson. I'm not one for forced introductions, but be a dear and pull down your hood for me. I like to be able to match a face to a name."

Emma heard the derisive snort all the way from the front of the room. She wished she could say she was different from the rest of the curious girls in class, but she found herself slyly glancing over her shoulder exactly like the rest of them.

Her eyes widened when he tugged down the hood.

Emma could feel her previously steady heartbeat increase to a disjointed gallop as an unexpected shock of desire flashed through her. Heath was... well, he was the most handsome boy Emma had ever seen.

Emma wasn't even sure he could be called a boy. His chiseled jawline with just a hint of scruff screamed man. Like all teenagers – like all of
them
– Heath should have been stuck in that awkward stage between adolescence and adulthood, but there were no gawky, gangly limbs or fatty baby cheeks to be found. She dazedly took note that she hadn't been right about his hair color. It was neither blond nor brown, but a beautiful caramel color. By far the most handsome feature of Heath’s, however, was the fierce set of blue eyes glaring heatedly at Miss Blanchett from under heavy brows.

"Satisfied?" The boy – this Heath – asked, his timbre as scruffy as his outward appearance.

Ignoring the brazen attitude, Miss Blanchett awarded him a dazzling smile. "Very. Now, as I was just explaining to your fellow classmates, we're going to start class today with a rather fun exercise. We just finished
The Scarlett Letter
. It’s a rather dreary novel in which the main character is forced to wear the letter ‘A’ out in public so that she and all the other members of the community may never forget her sin of adultery. We humans aren't always so kind to one another."

Wasn't that the truth?

"It got me thinking that we could all use a little reminder of our good attributes. So you're all going to pair up, pick a letter – any letter of the alphabet will do – and using that letter, come up with some complimentary words that describe each other. After fifteen minutes, you'll all share the wonderful compliments you came up with aloud, okay? Are there any questions?"

The feel-good exercise sounded exactly like something Miss Blanchett would come up with. It was horribly tacky, but Emma could deal with it as long as she wasn't partnered with Gunther.

She tuned back in to Miss Blanchett when she heard her name being called. "Emma, be a dear and partner up with Heath, would you?”

Ignoring the nerves suddenly gnawing away at her insides, not to mention the sullen, jealous glares thrown her way by well over half the females in class, Emma quickly nodded her consent.

When Miss Blanchett was finished pairing up the class, Emma gathered her books and made her way towards the mysterious boy in the back of the room. She grabbed a nearby desk and turned it around, wincing at the squeaky noise the legs made dragging across the linoleum floor. She sat and faced him. The boy. Heath.

And dear God, he was even prettier up close.

When Heath remained stubbornly quiet, arms crossed defensively over his chest, Emma bit the bullet and introduced herself. "Hi, I'm Emma."

He raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Yeah, so I inferred."

O-kay
.

"And your name is Heath?"

The other eyebrow crawled up to join the first as if to ask, “Who the hell else would I be?”

Caught between feeling stupid and annoyed, Emma tried again. "Well Heath, you heard Miss Blanchett. The first thing we should do is pick a letter. Did you have one in mind?"

The only response she received was a blasé blue stare. Maybe he was shy?

Or, you know, an asshole.

Emma powered through. "Well, I think we should probably choose a common letter, like ‘S’ or ‘T’ perhaps. Nothing impossible like ‘Q’."

When Heath remained steadfastly silent, Emma's eyes narrowed. "You know, it's going to be hard to complete this exercise if you don't talk to me at all. We don't know anything about each other. You're going to have to share something about yourself so that I can-"

He cut her off with a scoff. "Sweetheart, I don't have to do anything. And believe me, I know enough about you just by looking to complete this stupid assignment."

Emma was irritated with herself when she felt her face heat up at the word “sweetheart”. Heath may have been handsome, but she was quickly getting fed up with her uncooperative partner. "Oh really? And how is that?" she demanded.

"You're a pretentious teenage girl who thinks you’re better than everyone else because you happen to have been born with a pretty face and, I’m only assuming here, a semi-functioning brain." Glancing at her chest, he sneered. "I suppose I should just be grateful that you at least have your assets under control."

The fact that Heath had just compared her to Maribeth was not lost on Emma. Her ears were practically ringing in the sudden anger that enveloped her. "You bastard-"

"Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"

Before she could even think of censoring herself, the words broke free. "My mother's dead."

The words shocked him much like they were meant to. His mouth snapped shut. But instead of the standard apology she was used to receiving when the subject was accidently touched upon, his mouth stayed shut. Instead of looking away uncomfortably like most people did, his eyes remained trained on hers.

At least they did until Miss Blanchett cleared her throat from the front of the room, demanding everyone's attention. "Fifteen minutes is up. Is everyone ready? Emma, why don't you and Heath start us off?"

Emma was usually an exemplary student so she couldn't even really be mad at Miss Blanchett for calling on her first, but that didn’t change the fact that she and Heath hadn't even begun the assignment. An embarrassed blush began to creep up her neck.

She was beyond bewildered when Heath confidently got to his feet. "Emma and I decided to be daring and chose the letter ‘Q’."

…What?!

"Ultimately, I decided that my darling partner was a quietly quaint queen.”

The fact that his tone was sugary sweet and completely mocking seemed to go right over Miss Blanchett’s head. "Excellent job, Heath. Emma, dear?"

Emma stood, ignoring the heat still licking at her cheeks. "Heath is quipping, quick-witted, and quite the quality person.”

Heath’s brow drew together in surprise.

What? Did he think she was dumb?
She'd suggested an easy letter earlier for his sake, not hers. Not that she should've bothered apparently.

"Great. Now who would like to go next?"

Emma and Heath took their seats as another duo stood to reveal the words they'd thought of for each other. Glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, Emma couldn't help but think that though Heath may have been beautiful on the outside, on the inside he wasn't the quality person she’d claimed him to be.

No.

On the inside, he was beastly.

CHAPTER TWO

That afternoon Emma was pleased to discover that she shared no further classes with the new boy. When the intercom buzzed to life at the end of her last class and announced the candidates for homecoming royalty, however, all thoughts of Heath Thompson fled her mind.

Luca had been right.

Emma was officially up for homecoming queen against one Maribeth Campbell.

Perfect.

Graciously accepting a few well-meaning congratulations from her classmates, Emma booked it out of her Health class and spent only a minute at her locker gathering the textbooks she’d need to complete her homework. Her hope was that if she moved fast enough she’d be able to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation with Maribeth in the hallway.

And…
success!

On her way out of the school, however, her two friends managed to corner her in the student parking lot, crowding her near her beat up pick-up truck. The behemoth of a vehicle was quite the eyesore, its faded blue paint overcome by rust near all four of its wheels and the passenger side door colored a completely different shade of blue from the rest of the truck. Oliver – the name she’d lovingly bestowed upon the monster – loyally got her from point A to point B, however, which as far as Emma was concerned, was the whole point of the thing.

She manually unlocked her truck’s driver’s side door, trying to ignore the way that Collette and Luca were both grinning smugly.

“I told you so!” crowed Luca.

“I almost wished I shared my last class with Maribeth just so I could have seen the look on her face when your name was announced right after hers. I can just picture it.” Collette scrunched up her face in such a way that it resembled either a very disgruntled cat or an outrageously angry beaver. Possibly even a disturbing hybrid of the two.

Emma glowered at them. “Well, I’m glad you two are enjoying this at least.”

“What are friends for?” Collette quipped. “Besides, it’s not like you’ve been drafted for war, Emma. You’ve been nominated for homecoming queen. A lot of girls would kill to be in your shoes.”

“Yeah, so turn that frown upside down.” Emma was unimpressed when Luca attempted to physically shape her mouth into a smile, grabbing her face and digging his thumbs into her cheeks as he did so.

Still, she couldn't help the smile that threatened to break free at his silly antics, and she light-heartedly swatted his probing fingers away. “Yeah, I know,” she acquiesced. “I just don’t really care one way or another about all this school spirit stuff. And then there’s the whole Maribeth issue.”

“Pfft,” Collette scoffed. “What can she do about it? Nothing.”

Emma sighed, allowing her stiff shoulders to relax for the first time all day since her… well,
tiff
, she supposed, for lack of a better word, with the new boy – Heath Thompson. She frowned at the direction her thoughts had taken her, shaking the image of Heath from her mind. “You’re probably right,” she agreed.

“We usually are,” Luca agreed before stepping around her and opening the driver’s side door of Oliver. “Your carriage awaits, your majesty.”

Emma glared. “I take it back. You two are assholes.”

* * *

All too willing to put her hellish afternoon behind her, Emma rushed up the stairs of the modest two story she shared with her father and collapsed onto her bed as soon as she got home.

Well, as soon as she’d fed Sawyer, her needy pet lab, his afternoon treat at least.

Pulling her mint green comforter up over her shoulders, Emma immersed herself in her Algebra homework. Math in all its forms was the embodiment of evil in her expert opinion, but it took a leap from being simply malevolent to truly satanic when letters were added to the already confusing equations.

Giving up on said equations an hour later, Emma ventured downstairs and was idly stroking Sawyer’s head and flipping through the channels of the television in the living room when she took note of the time.

5:00 PM.

It meant that her father would have to take off for work soon.

After raiding the cupboards and refrigerator in their small but efficient kitchen, Emma started up the stovetop and began preparing a simple supper of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. It was one of the few meals in her arsenal that she could make and not burn to a charcoaled crisp. Needless to say, it was a staple in their home.

Emma liked to make sure that her dad got some warm food in his belly before heading in to work. Like many of the residents of Maple Valley, Miles worked at the nearby meat processing plant. He worked long and hard hours, typically from six at night to six in the morning at least five days a week.

Emma was just flipping the last sandwich of the batch – she had three others warming by the stove – when she heard her father’s lumbering footsteps on the stairs. “Something smells wonderful,” he complimented her as he entered the kitchen, fishing himself out a drink from the refrigerator before taking a seat at the kitchen table crammed into the corner of the room.

“It’s nothing fancy,” Emma assured him. There were pitfalls to growing up without a mother after all. Her father was rubbish at cooking, and with no one else around to teach her, Emma had been forced to teach herself. Well, either that or survive off of school lunches and takeout her entire childhood and adolescence.

“I’m not a fancy man,” Miles reminded her.

Emma stacked a plate high with sandwiches when the last one was finished and filled a large bowl with soup before handing them off to her father. Sawyer quickly ducked under the table where he took up his typical evening routine of begging for food from her father.

“Thanks,” her dad muttered appreciatively before digging in.

Emma sighed fondly when she caught him slipping some crust under the table.

“You going to be alright tonight?” he asked while he worked on polishing off his first sandwich.

It was a question that he had asked every night since he’d first taken up working the graveyard shift at the plant when Emma was twelve. It was also when he’d brought home Sawyer. While Emma suspected he was meant to be a guard dog of sorts, he ended up being more of a fur covered, four legged little brother who followed her around like a second shadow than anything else.

She loved him to pieces.

Abruptly realizing that her father was staring at her and that she’d yet to answer his question, Emma hastily spit out an answer. The same answer she’d responded with since he’d first started asking her the question when she was twelve. “I’ll be fine.”

She grabbed a sandwich and bowl of soup for herself before plopping down next to her father. “You’re not going to forget to bring your lunch to work again like you did last night, are you?”

Miles grumbled, giving his daughter a sideways look. “Who’s the parent here again?”

Emma smiled. “You.”

“Well, you let me worry about me then.” He paused, shoveling a spoonful of soup into his mouth. “And you, for that matter. Is there anything I should be worrying about? You know…” he paused, squirming uncomfortably, “boys or anything like that?”

Emma nearly choked on her sandwich, gulping down a mouthful of milk after somehow managing to swallow it down. “Dad!” she protested. “No! Just… no, okay?”

“Mmhm,” he agreed skeptically.

Emma closed her eyes and hoped with all her being that this conversation wasn’t about to take a sharp turn into Awkwardville. Her dad had already given her the birds and the bees talk years ago, and she
still
wasn’t completely over it.

“Now, don’t go around letting just anyone pollinate your flower.”

That was
literally
what he had said to her. She was pretty sure she was allowed a little mental scarring.

“I know they probably follow you around like lost puppies, honey. You just let me know if anyone really starts bugging you.”

“Sure, Dad,” she quickly agreed, her red cheeks giving away how flustered the words had made her. “Just don’t forget your lunch again, okay?”

“Alright,” he agreed easily enough, and they finished their meal in a comfortable silence.

Once Miles was finished, he dropped off his plate in the sink and made a point to grab the lunch she’d packed him in the fridge – just some leftover spaghetti, but it was better than nothing – before pressing a quick kiss into Emma’s hair. “Call me if you need anything,” he reminded her over his shoulder as he slipped on his boots.

“Of course. See you, Dad.”

She heard the tell-tale sounds of the front door closing and her father’s truck – it was a slightly newer model than her own – starting up and pulling out of the driveway.

Emma finished her soup and sandwich before rinsing the dishes and loading them into the ancient dishwasher under the sink. She reclaimed her spot on the couch in front of the television while Sawyer made himself comfortable on the other side of the worn corduroy sofa. After flipping through the channels, she settled on some trashy reality show for background noise as she forced herself to finish her Algebra homework. She also suffered through a three-way phone call with Collette and Luca, during which the latter repeatedly reminded her that tomorrow was wacky hair day and that as a homecoming queen candidate, she’d better dress up.

After the phone call, Emma took a quick shower and headed to bed. She snuggled under her covers, Sawyer’s comforting body heat radiating from where he lay beside her.

She was asleep by nine.

* * *

Praying that Tuesday would contain a bit less fanfare than the Monday that preceded it, Emma was awake by seven. Pulling her chocolate brown locks into a plain old ponytail – nothing wacky about that, thank you very much – she slipped on a pair of jeans and grabbed a random blouse from her closet. Once dressed, she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen where she dug out a package of strawberry Pop-Tarts from the cupboard (the breakfast of champions), grabbed her thermos of orange juice that her dad had dutifully filled and left for her in the fridge when he got home from work, and was loaded into her truck and on her way to school in record time.

Emma was simultaneously walking to her locker and brushing the crumbs of her now decimated Pop-Tart from her pants when her hopes for a less dramatic Tuesday were abruptly dashed. For there, standing in front of her locker, was none other than Maribeth Campbell. In honor of wacky hair day, the blonde had her golden strands pinned back into two pigtails, mismatched scrunchies and all.

At least her lackeys were missing in action, Emma supposed, and bravely continued forward. “Hey, Maribeth,” she greeted her cautiously.

A sugary sweet smile was plastered to the girl’s face as she looked up from the compact mirror she’d been examining her make-up in. “Oh, Hey Emma,” Maribeth returned the greeting cheerfully, like it was perfectly normal for her to be loitering in front of the other girl’s locker. “I hope you’re having a good morning. I missed you yesterday afternoon, so I thought I’d catch you before class to extend my congratulations.”

Maribeth’s lips dipped into a near frown at Emma’s responding blank look.

“On your homecoming queen nomination, of course,” she finally elaborated.

Oh.

“Oh.” Emma paused. “You too,” she returned the sentiment awkwardly when the blonde continued to stare.

If possible, Maribeth’s smile grew more strained. “Thanks. I just hope you aren’t getting your hopes up as far as actually winning the title goes. I mean, you
are
up against me. I’m the most popular girl at this school and you… well, you should be honored to have even been made a candidate.”

The compliment – if it could even be called that – was so backhanded that Emma could almost feel the sting on her cheek from the verbal slap.

“…I’ll keep that in mind,” she finally managed to mutter in response.

“Great! I’d just hate for you to get your feelings hurt is all.”

Before Maribeth could say anything more, both girls spotted Collette making her way towards them from the other end of the hallway. Maribeth managed to slink off before Collette could reach them, but the redhead had clearly seen her and raised an eyebrow at Emma when she arrived at her locker, surreptitiously glancing around for Maribeth.

“What was that about?” she demanded.

“Oh, you know,” Emma sighed, entering the combination of her padlock before throwing open her locker and depositing her book bag. “Just Maribeth being her usual, pleasant self.”

Collette frowned. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Emma assured her friend quietly. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Collette’s frown didn’t ease, but she shrugged helplessly. “If you’re sure. You ready for Art?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Without further ado, the two girls headed to class.

Emma’s day took a turn for the better after that. Art, along with Honors Algebra and Chemistry, came and passed quickly, and lunch was spent good-naturedly teasing Luca about his rainbow colored hair. “Are you trying to tell us something, dear?”