Bad Things

1. Unprotected

Soft lips are open

Them knuckles are pale

Feels like you're dying

You're dying.

- Kings of Leon.

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Camila's cheek pressed hard against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl. Her stomach roiled and flipped, a raging torrent of acid and whatever traces of last night's boozefest remained after heaving at least twenty times. Never, in all the times she'd partied, had she ever felt this horrible. How the hell much did she drink?

Her arms fell from the sides of the toilet and hit the tile below. She had no energy left. Not even to hold herself upright to puke. As she started to slip, Camila felt hands grab her and hoist her up against the wall, her mouth still aimed at the bowl. She groaned as another wave of nausea bowled over her.

"Never again," she croaked, swallowing against the urge to vomit once more. "Do you hear me, Haiz? Never. Again."

"Yeah, yeah," Hailee Steinfeld, her best friend, said as she gathered Camila's long, dark brown hair and clipped it to the back of her head. "That's what you say every time." She reached down and started tugging the calf-high spiked-heel boots from Camila's legs. "At least you looked damn hot. I knew these boots were a good idea." Hailee grinned and started to pet them like they were alive and had feelings.

Camila glared at the boots from the corner of her eye. She remembered the look on her dad's face when she'd come out of her room with them on after changing from her cheerleading outfit. He'd been sitting at the table, going over his coaching notes after the game. The game they lost to Ashford Institute, their rival school and the team of her dad's nemesis in business and in life.

He'd prepared his team all season for the match against Ashford Jaguars. He was determined to win. To rub a victory into the face of Ashford's head coach, Roy Mendes. But, like always, when they didn't win, it was everyone else's fault. The offense couldn't open the line. The defense couldn't hold it. The quarterback needed to stop acting like a pansy girl and throw the ball into someone's hands or sacrifice himself trying. But most of all, the blame fell to Roy Mendes.

"That damned Mendes," he grumbled into his papers. "Never plays fair. Always throwing in dirty plays. Pays off the refs. Got that kid of his on steroids or something too."

He didn't know Camila was in the hall, and she didn't want him to. The last thing she needed was to listen to him go on and on and on about how Roy Mendes was the bane of his existence. Not tonight. It was an ongoing thing—since he and Roy faced off against each other as junior high quarterbacks. From what Camila had heard from her mother, Roy Mendes had been a gifted athlete all throughout high school, always besting her father, Alejandro, no matter how much he practiced. It drove him absolutely insane with jealousy. So much so that when he found out Roy would be the new head coach of the Ashford Jaguars, well, he just had to find a way to snag the job as Whitecastle Knights's head coach. And snag it he did. But it consumed him. Changed him. Made him into a man none of them, her mother and brother included, recognized anymore.