I'll Protect You (Re-Edit #2, 2016)

Leadership skills? Please, I'm a princess--I've got plenty

dedicated to Cherry_Cola_x for the amazing trailer she made!

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If someone had told me a few weeks back that I'd be at Cross Academy during the hour of dawn (I'm only joking, it's just six-thirty in the bloody morning), watching our leadership team work out an assembly practice, I would've slapped them upside the head with my mythology book and told them to stop doing drugs. 

And yet, here I was. 

The entire team was screaming at each other about something, and I couldn't be bothered enough to decipher their incoherent demands. I sat there, too tired to take out my headphones from my bag, so I watched while mindlessly drinking Logan's black coffee (there had been no time to add the usual amount of sugar). 

Some of you might be wondering, "What was Alex Finch--" a.k.a. the almighty Park Sparrow-- "doing at the academy so early?"

Well, my friends, it began with Logan Cross getting on his knees in my room and begging me to come to leadership with him. 

Naturally, due to my heart of gold, I didn't accept. 

However, because of a few incidents (which involved outside voices and a very angry bisexual), my cousin had thrown us out of the house for waking him up in the middle of his 'beauty sleep.' It left me no choice but to let Logan drag me onto a bus. 

In the midst of all the chaos, I had managed to steal something from Elijah without him knowing. I felt the note grow heavy in the pocket of my dark red academy cardigan from the mere thought of its existence, and I shut my eyes. 

Don't think about it, I thought with a twist of pain in my chest. Not now. Not in front of all these people. 

Luckily for me, a distraction itself presented in the form of Kendra Portley and Nikki Chen. Both unpleasant and quite annoying, but a distraction nonetheless. 

"Can I help you?" I asked, raising a brow as I eyed the two girls with suspicion. 

"Morning, Alex!" they greeted simultaneously, shooting me identical grins of cheeriness that did nothing to soothe the wariness I harbored.

  "How are you?" Kendra asked, seating herself beside me. 

"Just peachy," I replied, surreptitiously inching away. Kendra and I had a bad history--a history that involved the misuse of staples and glue. "Did I do something wrong again?"

"What are you talking about?" Kendra frowned and pushed back a glossy strand of black hair behind her ear. "We just wanted to talk!

"Don't you have a meeting to attend to?" I asked, gesturing towards the still arguing crowd in the center of the gym. The two girls just giggled and rolled their eyes as though my suggestion was being silly. 

"Oh, they'll figure things out on their own," Nikki smiled. "Anyway, someone told me they saw you and Logan kissing the other day!"

Kendra and Nikki began to fan themselves with their hands as Kendra added, "You're so lucky to be dating Logan. He seems like such a dream boyfriend."

I should've known. An ever deeper frown etched itself onto my lips as I gawked at the two. "We're not dat--" I began when Logan, out of nowhere, stopped in front of us. He was looking at the girls with that killer smile, causing them to blush and hide their faces. 

"There's about to be a fight between Pepper and Raj," he told them. Instantly, excitement lit up their faces as they got to their feet, all thoughts of Logan and mine's supposed kiss gone before they hurried away to the circle that was being formed, where people began chanting, "Fight! Fight!"