Zyla & Kai

She d completely embarrassed herself, blabbering on about how Aunt Ida paid for her to go to St. Catherine s. She didn t want Kai thinking she was a spoiled and rich private-­school girl like so many of her classmates. She d felt a buzz in her gut when he d looked at her so closely and asked for her last name. There d been some kind of gravitational pull that had made her move closer to him, but thankfully Jamal had appeared and broken the spell. Zyla meant what she said. Nothing was going to happen between her and Kai. It wasn t because he d recently been dumped by Camille Vaughn ­the most popular, most beautiful, and meanest girl at Sailor Joe s ­and it was kind of sketchy that he was moving on so quickly. It wasn t that he and Camille had a big blow-­up scene that eventually landed him in Games (yeah, she d heard about that incident even though she d pretended other­wise). And it wasn t that Kai had dated way too many of her mutuals or was a known player. Zyla just didn t date, period.

Now she and Kai would be working together, and they d agreed to be friends. Go figure. At least it would make the rest of her summer more interesting. She couldn t wait to call her best friend, Beatrice, and tell her about this later. She would have preferred to tell her in person, but Beatrice was spending the summer in Paris with her dad.

The whole Kai Johnson thing had Zyla in a daze for a good fifteen minutes before a school bus pulled up directly in front of her and she was almost trampled by a summer camp stampede. She darted aside, almost tripping over a kid in the process, and pulled out her phone. No response from her mom, who should have been here to pick her up by now. Typical.

Antonio wasn t surprised to see Zyla when she walked into his office unannounced. He was sitting at his desk, working on a Sudoku puzzle, an unlit cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth. He glanced up at Zyla and raised an eyebrow.

She s late, Zyla explained, pulling