Premeditated Read Online Free PDF Page B

watching.”
    “That’s an awful lot of ink for nothing.”
    “It’s a high-rise,” Channing supplied. “Brooks designs buildings, but his plans are too complex for anyone to actually build.”
    “They won’t be someday.” Brooks slid his paper into his book. “You’re Diane, right?”
    “Dinah,” I corrected, mentally cheering that Mr. Perfect had screwed up.
    “Oh … sorry. I’m usually better with names.”
    “ ’Sokay. You’re only about the eighth person to say it wrong.
Today
.” I turned to the girl beside him. “You’re Channing, right?”
    “Chandi,” she corrected. “I’m changing it. Channing’s too long for a stage name. Plus, there’s a guy already using it and I don’t want to end up androgynous.”
    Oh. My. God
.
    I had found my mother’s real daughter.
    “You’re an actress?” I asked. I could chat the girlfriend up if it meant maybe getting information out of her later.
    “She thinks she is,” Dex said.
    Chandi straightened from where she’d been leaned against Brooks’ shoulder; her face hardened.
    “I’d tell you to bite me, but you’d only take it as encouragement.”
    “Not worth the risk,” Dex said. “I might catch something nasty.”
    If Brooks hadn’t caught her, Dex would have ended up with a perfectly sculpted french tip embedded in his eye socket.
    “They’re always like this,” Brooks said, still hanging on to Chandi. He tried to laugh but couldn’t quite cover the annoyed expression on his face. Personally, I didn’t find anything funny in the way his hands were dug into her skin deep enough to turn it white. “But they hardly ever draw blood. I think they’re showing off for company.”
    I was more interested in what Brooks was showing off. We’d been so far apart in not-trig that I hadn’t gotten a decent look at anything other than the side of his face nearest my seat. But when he made the grab for his girlfriend, he exposed the other half—along with the nearly healed gouges below his jaw and down his neck. Someone with long nails had taken a swipe at him and left their mark.
    Too bad I knew it wasn’t Claire. She hadn’t fought back, because she hadn’t known he was the enemy.
    The warning bell rang, splitting our conversation. Chandi followed me into one room while Brooks and Dex went into the other. She snapped her teeth together as she and Dex crossed paths, and I wasn’t quite sure whether it was a joke, a threat, or a near miss on an actual attempt to bite him.
    History was an experience best forgotten as soon as it was over. You don’t need the details other than to know I achieved a state of semiconscious lucid dreaming that should only be possible when illegal drugs are involved. I was seriously considering turning our teacher in to the DEA for testing. The only problem was, the woman (who had one of those Jones/Smith/Davis names that a billion people have) was so nondescript I couldn’t even remember what she looked like when I left the room.
    I made the mistake of eye contact with Abigail-not-Abby, which she took as an invitation to replace Dex as my personal valet when we reached the door. Her hair had completely subdued the evil headband, drowning it somewhere inside her curls.
    “Ready for lunch?”
    Food was the last thing I wanted, but I was too fried from the history of hallucinogens to protest.
    The trip to the cafeteria was quick, filled with Abigail-not-Abby’s voice as she bounced from subject to subject, running down people and teachers and classes like she assumed I knew everyone involved. Names rattled off like roll call at camp, so fast I barely snagged five of them.
    “Which one’s the food line?” I asked. If I gave her something to think about, I was sure she’d stop talking long enough for me to catch up.
    “All of them,” she said.
    “Why are there four?”
    We only had two at my old school. One for the day’s official menu, and one for the people who would rather eat hamburgers.
    “We have