Free Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) by Victoria Thorne

turned
and swatted his unruly hair.
    “Miss Tesse, do we have a problem?”
Mrs. Rosa paused the slideshow presentation and put her hands on her hips.
    “Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” Dylan
whispered from behind my back.
    I sucked in a deep breath.   “Yeah, the new kid’s disturbing me.   I don’t think he’s familiar with class policy
yet.   I’m sure he would appreciate it if
you could go over that with him as well after class.”
    That shut Dylan up for the rest of
the hour.   I tried to take notes, but at
the end of class, I looked down at my notebook to find an illegible jumble of
scribbles.   I couldn’t remember a single
word Mrs. Rosa had said.   Instead of
concentrating on the lesson, I had been hyperactively aware of the kid behind
me, sitting in a seat he didn’t belong in.
    “You sly little traitor!” Dylan
accused as soon as class ended.
    “Why are you here?” I asked,
ignoring the insult.
    “I have to talk to the teacher,
remember?   We’ll discuss this over
lunch.”
    I stared at him, openmouthed.   “Fine.”
    I found Spencer and Alexis waiting
for me in the hallway.
    “How’d you make friends with the
attractive new kid so quickly?” Alexis raised one eyebrow and gave me a thumbs
up.
    “I think he’s strange.   Do you know who he is?” Spencer demanded in a
manner that made me cringe.
    “An old friend,” I said.   “We were neighbors.”
    Spencer snuck a quick look at Dylan
through the classroom window.   “What’s he
doing here?”
    “Why don’t you ask him?” I threw my
hands up into the air in exasperation.   “Can we go to the cafeteria now?”
    When Dylan finished his
conference-thing, I opted to sit with him at a separate table so that we could
catch up.   Spencer looked overly
disappointed, but I was too high-strung to feel guilty anymore.
    I tried my best to look pissed at
Dylan while he crossed the cafeteria, but it was really hard to stay angry with
him, especially when he looked so ridiculously happy just to see me.   My expression faltered and melted into a
smile, which Dylan saw as a green light to envelope me in a bone-crushing hug
once I was an arm length away.
    “Please stop,” I urged.   “We’re not five anymore.   People are going to get the wrong idea.”
    Alexis waved at me excitedly while
Spencer coughed on his sandwich.
    “Since when did you care what
people thought?”   Dylan released me and
dug his fingers into my hair to mess it up.   “Consider that payback.”
    “How did you get here?” I
persisted, taking a bite of the macaroni I had bought.   I tossed Dylan a salad I had ordered him from
the lunch line.
    “Thanks.   On a plane, of course.”   I narrowed my eyes at him.   “Gosh, okay.   Remember how you came here about half a month ago?   Well, you abandoned the kid you grew up with,
and he didn’t like that very much.”
    “And your parents were okay with
you abandoning them?”   My voice was
colored with disbelief.
    “Of course they weren’t at
first.   They were pretty upset.   But I can be a very persuasive kid.” Dylan
paused to steal some macaroni from me.   “They saw I wasn’t happy, and my grades were slipping.   Eventually they ran the idea by Matt, and he
offered to let me stay with you.   He
actually insisted.   I told my parents it
would be like a trial of college life, living away from home for a while.”
    I snorted.   “Minus the college.”
    “Anyway,” Dylan continued.   “They agreed.   Nathan threw a fit until he realized he would get my room.”
    “And you’re going to live with us ?”
    “Yeah, but I’m still paying rent,
so don’t look at me like I’m a freeloader.   Oh, and we have the same schedule too.   Matt told the counselor you would help me catch up in all my courses.   The school was quite accommodating.”
    “Matt never told me anything!”
    “You know him.   He’s a writer.   He was probably trying to make our grand
reunion more dramatic.”