Blue Fire

Chapter Thirteen - Env-Elope

SARA

The smell in here fucked with my head because it smelled like youth, sweat and desperation.

I was in the gym of the local high school and honestly, just walking into it was traumatic enough. Doing this test pushed it over the limit. All around me were other failures, about twenty of them, looking like toddlers next to me and my 'experience'. All of them where in their early twenties and I despised them from the minute I saw them.

A supervisor walked around the room as we all sat there and frantically tried to remember how calculus worked. The entire test took four hours and I felt myself sucking through most of that time. I had tried to study, I really and truly had. I'd sat for hours in the common room with my books and pulled my hair out as I memorized shit that I knew for a fact wouldn't be useful for me ever in life seeing as I was a grown-ass woman and I'd done fine without knowing all of it this far. Okay, so I was technically homeless and living as a stray cat with a bunch of bikers, but I mean I'd been on my way to some kind of stabile and functioning life before they took over my life.

When the buzzer at the front of the room rang, the supervisor yelled out for all of us to lay down our pens and I stared down at the ten questions I hadn't answered yet and felt my stomach dip. I had failed that test without doubt and that sucked.

I stood and followed a line of youngsters who handed in their tests and then streamed out of the school. Even walking into this building had almost given me hives. I'd fucking hated school so much back when I was supposed to be in one. I'd been trailer trash and a wild girl who was rumored to be loose since the beginning of my freshman year. I had no clique, I floated between several. The stoners to get high, the jocks to get laid, the bitches to get gossip and so on. I was the odd-man out. Always had been and always would be.

I walked out of the school and saw a sight that had me giddy. Green, Pile and Rilo stood by their bikes, cuts on and shades but all smiling at me. Well, Pile had lifted corner of his mouth only slightly, but to be fair, in Pile-speak that was practically grinning. I turned my steps towards them and saw some of the other dropouts eyeing them with trepidation. They were a bunch to see and probably be scared of seeing as Pile looked like the kind of man who could stop a tank with his finger and Rilo was hot on his heels in that department. Two big black men and one tall blond one, all with biker cuts on and that I-don't-give-a-fuck kind of swagger that I'd grown used to seeing every day. I could get why they stared, I really could, but to me these were my boys. My brothers.

I walked up to them and stopped close to Green who, in turn, pulled me closer. I grinned up at him, "All three of you didn't need to come watch me fail. Besides," I looked over my shoulder at three girls in their very early twenties who were staring openly at the crew before me. "You're scaring the other failures."

"How'd it go?"

I glanced at Rilo and he started chuckling. Then he walked up and clapped me on the shoulder and I glared at him. "Fuck you, there isn't anything funny about me being stupid."

"You ain't stupid," Pile weighed in and gave me his green-eyed glare. "You just don't have the brain for it."

"Oh and you do?" I huffed and pushed at Green to get him to let me go. He just looked down at me blankly considering I knew very well that he had the brain for it. His brain was oh so big and shiny and all masters-degreed. Fucker.

"Fine, you're all smarter than me, go you." I did a lame cheer with my arms that had Rilo and Green laughing and me scowling.

"Aw, but you're so much prettier than all of us, at least you have that," Green said and grinned enough to make me fight a smile. "You probably aced it, don't worry about it. And if you didn't we'll send Luke and Rilo to fuck up whoever scores it so they're forced to pass you."