Under Your Skin

Chapter 2

Little Miss Snappy

Carlos closed the door behind her, laughing. The look on her face when he said that was priceless. Once he was in the car, he noticed that she was sitting on the far side of her seat with her body angled as far away from him as possible. That was a good start to things. He sat there staring at her, willing her to notice. Not that he liked her or anything, or wanted her to think he liked her, but he wanted to annoy her. He wanted her to hate him, to hate him so much that she would complain to Mrs Carlson that she wanted someone else to show her around and help her out. Then he’d be free to slack off, well, as much as he could before, and hang out with his mates and not care about anything. He didn’t understand why he had to do it anyway, why had she picked him? And it was still the summer holidays. In theory, he didn’t have to be there, but his parents had agreed to it and so there was no way out of it.

Her eyes flickered over to him and he smiled brightly at her, rolling his eyes. He saw her look at him for a few seconds, before her bottom lip edged forward as her lips went into a pout, and she turned her head back to blankly stare out of the window.

“Having fun back there? It seems a bit too quiet,” Mrs Carlson called from the front seat.

“Yep, lots of fun, miss,” Carlos told her, and he saw Lana let out a sigh.

“Good good. Lana, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself? She suggested.

“C’mon Lana. What a good idea!”

He saw her scowl at him before starting to speak, her words directed solely at the teacher. “Well, you know most things about me. I love writing and reading and art and I help out at the community centre a lot and I’m in the church choir and, well, there’s not really much I can say.”

“Okay, Lana. But that’s all very vague. I’m sure you can tell Carlos some more important things about yourself. What about your friends? You two get to know each other a bit,” Mrs Carlson suggested, and she turned the radio on. Lana groaned and turned her head towards him, and he smirked back at her.

“Okay, what do you wanna know?” she asked him, playing Mrs Carlson’s stupid game.

“Everything,” he teased.

“Okay so I’m sixteen and I have an older sister called Tansy but she’s married now and has a baby and I have loads of friends but only a few really good ones that are worth keeping and I wasinarelationshipfortwoyearsbutwesplitupafewmonthsago,” Lana told him, gasping for air once she’d finished.

“Woah, slow down, oveja. Take a breath. Don’t kill yourself on my count, Miss Alana Richards,” Carlos smirked.

“It’s Lana,” she snapped, then coolly added “And I wouldn’t waste my time.”

“Woo, get a hold of little miss snappy. Calm down a bit, ovejita.”

“Shut up,” Lana murmured under her breath.

“What was that?” Carlos asked her, cupping his hand to his ear.

“Nothing.”

“’K” he replied, and the pair went back to sitting in silence, Carlos sitting there grinning and thinking about the big house party in a couple of days, and Lana doing her best to seem nonchalant.

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Lana was about ready to scream. She was in a new country where she didn’t know anyone or anything, and an idiotic boy had first barged into her then called her an idiot and then called her a sheep. It wasn’t exactly what she expected as her welcome to Spain.