“Let’s not argue semantics –”

“Let’s.”

“No. Unlike you, I have a life to attend to. I can’t afford to waste my time arguing the fine points of what makes you an idiot.”

He tries to duck around me, but I block him with my body.

“You still haven’t apologized to Kayla.”

He scoffs. “This is far beyond just her, now. Stop using your protective instincts as an excuse to harass me. Do it normally, like all the other star struck girls in this school.”

“I’m surprised you manage to get your head off your pillow in the mornings with an ego like that. Not everything with a vagina likes you, dipshit.”

“Then why spread a rumor about how I kiss? Whether you acknowledge it or not, it’s a very specific rumor. You must’ve used it as cover at the party. Thought of it on the fly, right? It was the first thing that popped into your mind, right? There’s a very smart man named Freud I think you should read up on.”

“There’s this awesome sandwich you should try called my knuckles, but, whatddya know - you already did.”

“So that’s a no, then, to my request about not spreading anymore rumors?”

His eyes are deathly cold, but for some reason that only makes me smile brighter.

“Oh, I’m going to spread the rumor even more, now. Thanks for letting me know it was bugging you.”

I wink at him and walk off. He doesn’t show much emotion, but I caught the tiniest glimmer of annoyance flit across his face before I turned. I won this round. The bell to end lunch rings and people start streaming out of the cafeteria and I keep plotting. I’ll keep harassing him like this, until he apologizes to Kayla, at least. It’s really his fault. It’s only two words, and then I’d let him off the hook. But no – he has to be so stubborn, so conceited, so –

Someone grabs my wrist, hard. I whirl around to yell at them, or possibly fight them off, when a blur roughly pulls me in, hard hipbones pressing into my stomach and height dwarfing me in shadow. I barely register the flash of blue eyes before they tilt my face up and kiss me, a tongue tasting the corner of my mouth and a lip tracing the curve of my cupid’s bow. The kiss spreads buzzing heat from my tongue, to my throat, to my lungs, to my heart, all the way down to my stomach and even below that. Everything is on fire. I can’t breathe – the kiss has me frozen, locked in place, completely immobile. This is my first. This is my first kiss and I’m going weak in the knees, I’m making some kind of stupid little moan. How moronic am I for reacting in such a cliché way? How stupid am I for letting this person –

And it’s then I realize the blue eyes belong to Jack.

And it’s then I realize Jack Hunter stole my first kiss in front of the entire school. People are whistling, hooting. The smell of Jack’s cologne wafts up and the taste of his mouth is pepper and mint on my tongue as he leans in to whisper;

“If it’s a war you want, Isis Blake, it’s a war you’ll get.”

Forty entire seconds after Jack Hunter kisses me and walks off, I’m too stunned to move. Just like that. Just like that, my first kiss went to East Summit’s Icedouche Prince. Not to someone I really loved. Hell, not even to someone I liked. It was sacrificed helplessly, like a little ritual priestess on the altar of callous ass**lery.

And all of East Summit High saw. He couldn’t have picked a more perfect time for the entire lunch crowd to see, and like an idiot I stumbled into the perfect place – the only hall connecting the cafeteria to the main entrance. I set myself up, and he pounced on it like a jaguar.

As my shock wears off, two things hit me;

1. He’s good. Very, very good. Not at kissing. No – definitely not. I was just in shock, that’s all. That’s why I couldn’t breathe. No, what I meant is he’s good at the game. I started it at the party by initiating the rumor, but he just fired his first shot back, and it was a perfect ten. I couldn’t have done it better myself. I’m dealing with a mastermind. Possibly a criminal one. It depends on how many cups of baby’s blood he drinks a day.

2. He took my first kiss. Now that everyone’s seen me go weak in the knees from a kiss (weak knees run in my family, we all have to get canes, it’s nothing special) they’ll never believe the rumor that he kisses bad. That he kissed me bad. Now I’m a liar. He proved me a liar in front of everyone in ten seconds flat. My title’s expanded from New Girl to New Girl Who Lied And Said Jack Hunter Kisses Bad. He took my first kiss and ruined my reputation but most importantly he took my first kiss when I thought no one would ever take it. No one had up until now. I’d gone seventeen years without a guy once trying to kiss me. Ugly girls don’t get kissed – that’s a fact. Nameless never even tried to kiss me. I buried my hopes of ever getting kissed deep beneath the nine-billion-foot grave that contains my respect for men.

My feet start taking me to Mrs. Gregory’s class again. I hear my name on people’s lips, and I feel them staring. I need to be plotting my next move against Jack. I need to make him apologize to Kayla no matter what. I need to somehow turn this around and salvage my reputation. But all that just melds into a cacophony of faint buzzing in my head, with three huge words echoing over it.

I got kissed.

I got kissed.

I shake my head so violently to clear it one of my ladybug earrings nearly flies off. I cup the small creature and pet the enamel of it soothingly. Hush now, Mr. Ladybug. Don’t go anywhere. I still love you. You’re the only one for me. That kiss didn’t mean anything at all – it was just Jackoff’s way of making me look like a liar.

Once Mr. Ladybug is soothed and I’m in my seat comfortably zoning off while Mrs. Gregory yammers about matrix equation shit, I expertly piece together what just happened, edited to my taste, of course. I white out the entire kiss. That goes first – I don’t need to remember that ever again. Men are scum and Jack Hunter is the worst scum of all. If anyone asks, I lost my first kiss to Johnny Depp and/or Tom Hiddleston. Possibly at the same time. Note to self - verify that with your Realistic Likelihood Calculator™ before committing to it.

As for the other parts, I know I saw Mr. Evans and Jack talking. Apparently some stuck-up colleges want Jack to attend. Maybe he got good grades or something? I wouldn’t put it past him to be smart – I’d seen that much with the way he took advantage of the perfect timing in the hall. And he uses big weird words, so he’s probably a huge nerd. To be fair, I do too, but that’s because I’m fabulous. Jack has no such excuse. Evans and Jack also talked about a ‘she’, as in, ‘She’ll get better with or without you here’. Who’s ‘she’? And is she somehow holding Jack back from going off to college?

It’s a huge mystery I obviously don’t have time for. I ferret the information away in my brain in case I need some really heavy-duty ammunition against Jack in the days to come, but I leave it at that. I have to plot to take this guy down, not get all weirdly concerned over his future. Unless said future involves me strangling him. Then that’s fine and I should probably concern myself with that in order to make absolute sure it gets locked down on the permanent dimensional timeline.

And how the hell did he find out Nameless’ name, anyway? It’s not like I’m in the newspapers back in Florida – that’s really private, sensitive, and particular information. And if Jack somehow found out Nameless’ name, is he capable of finding out what happened between Nameless and I?