Claimed Read online

  Claimed

  M James

  Portia Moore

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Rain

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  11. Rain

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Rain Present Day

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Untitled

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Zach

  Authors Note

  Also by Portia Moore

  Chapter 1

  Rain

  13 years old

  Five years earlier

  We’ve had to move.

  I overheard my parents talking about it—we needed cheaper rent and that the schools where we’re moving are better—but I’m old enough to piece together the underlying reasons from the arguments I’ve heard. My mom is hoping that my dad might find a job somewhere else since he’s burned all his bridges back home. She thinks a move might even help him to stop drinking.

  I don’t.

  I’m not too young or idealistic to not know that that’s all a load of crap.

  This school isn’t better than my last, and everyone seems to be varying degrees of poor and lower middle class like my family is. The thing is the girls here aren’t dressed like me. Their jeans are more fitted, their tops colorful, and I’m immediately out of place in my too-big, old Vans that my mom found at a thrift store, my threadbare jeans, and my t-shirt with the logo of a band that’s not cool anymore. Back at my old school, most of us girls dressed similarly to the guys, but that was elementary. This is my first year of middle school, and I can see that there is a clear distinction. I can hear whispers and see the sneers in my direction.

  I quickly make my way through the line for lunch, head down, not looking at anyone. The hot lunch today is some kind of lasagna casserole that looks like vomit, a wilted green salad, and rolls. It doesn’t smell great either, but I put it on my tray and find a seat at one of the empty tables. I glance around the cafeteria and spot a table near the back with enough space for me to sit alone. I’ll be glad when enough time passes that I’m not the new kid anymore.

  Sitting alone at the table with my sad lunch, I lift my head towards the clock to see the time, and I see him. It’s obvious with one look that he’s like the rest of us—poor. Except he makes it look cool. The ripped jeans and beat-up sneakers and frayed denim jacket just makes him look like a badass, like he rides a motorcycle and smokes cigarettes and listens to rock bands no one’s ever heard of. His hair is blond, just a tad darker than mine, and it’s messy but beautifully so. He’s not looking at me, but when he turns his head, I can see that he’s got bright blue eyes, and it goes through me like a shock.

  I’ve never liked a boy before. Even when all my friends had crushes last year in sixth grade, I thought they were crazy. Boys are gross. They pull your hair and make fun of your clothes, and they fart and spit and make disgusting jokes. And some of them stink.

  But this boy, whoever he is, isn’t like any boy I’ve ever seen. I catch myself almost wishing that he’d look over at my table, that he’d see past the ugly clothes and my mom cut hair and dollar store lip gloss.

  But no one who looks like him would ever talk to me. He’s older, I think, surrounded by a group of boys who are older than him, but he matches their height with a little less facial hair.

  I eat the rest of my lunch in dejected silence, tearing my eyes away from the boy across the cafeteria to read my book and try to forget about how much this sucks. I might not have had many friends at my old school, but at least I had some. Here I have no one. I might as well be invisible.

  The bell rings, and the clattering sound of hundreds of students getting up and gathering their things fills the room. I stand up to put away my tray—and that’s when it happens.

  I feel something wet, warm, and unpleasant. A wave of nausea passes over me, followed by a sickening cramp in my stomach.

  Hesitantly, hoping no one sees, I touch the inner thigh of my jeans. Please don’t be what I think it is, please, please, please…but when I pull my fingers away, my worst fear is confirmed—they’re sticky and red.

  I’ve started my period.

  Out of nowhere. In the middle of a cafeteria at a school where I don’t know anybody.

  I’m frozen, staring at my bloody fingers in horror, when I feel someone at my side, touching my shoulder gently. I turn and hope it’s a teacher, someone who will take sympathy, but it’s not. It’s the boy—the one I was staring at with the thick blond hair and bright blue eyes. He shrugs off his jacket quickly and ties it around my waist. “Come on,” he says urgently. “I’ll take you to the nurse. Before anyone sees.” He says it so quietly, he’s practically near my face so that only I can hear him. I nod and ignore the goosebumps climbing up my body and the tingling I feel everywhere, and I fight to breathe, wondering why he’s even here, why he’s talking to me, why he cares.

  Without another word, he takes my wrist and leads me towards the door. I stumble after him, following him numbly. I’m normally quiet around boys, but this is different. I’m speechless and—not to mention—embarrassed. I can’t wrap my head around him coming to my rescue—mine. For one thing, I’m nobody. He doesn’t even know me. And for another—guys are grossed out by periods. All of them, from the ones who barely know what they are all the way up to the old ones like my dad, who won’t even buy my mom’s tampons when she puts them on the list.

  But this particular boy doesn’t seem to care that the blood on my jeans might get on his jacket. He just ushers me out of the cafeteria and down the hall, guiding me to safety.

  “Y-You…go to the nurse a lot?” I ask, stuttering in my nervousness. What a stupid question. But he gives me an easy, cool smile. “I’ve had a few fights. I’m usually not the one who has to go to the nurse, though.” He winks at me, and my knees feel shivery. “Nurse Rogers patches everybody up.”

  The school clinic is air-conditioned, cool, and smells like a mixture of floor cleaner, hand sanitizer, and lavender potpourri. A bored-looking receptionist takes my name and glances at me, then at the boy. “What are you here for?” she asks.

  “My…my period,” I say quickly, quietly, and flushing red with embarrassment. “I just started.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Need some Midol?”

  “Um…I haven’t had it before, so I don’t know…”

  The receptionist eyes the boy next to me.

  “What are you doing here, Rostov?” she asks, her tone bored but a smile in her eyes. Rostov…I wonder if that’s German or Russian maybe?

  “She’s a friend,” he says easily.

  A friend. The words warm me all the way through. My first friend, here. It means something, and I look up at Rostov gratefully.

  “Have a seat over there, hun,” the receptionist says a tad warmer, clearly unaware of the rush of feelings going through me. I glance at Rostov.

  I wonder if he’ll leave, now that I’ve been safely delivered, but he just takes a seat next to me on one of the brightly colored plastic cha
irs. “So,” he says, looking at me with that same easy smile, “you’re Rain?”

  I nod, biting my lip, wondering at first how he knows my name. Is there a news bulletin about the new kids that start school? I know he isn’t in any of my classes; there’s no way I wouldn’t have noticed him. He gestures to my name on my notebook and I blush.

  “That’s me.”

  He holds out a hand. “I’m Zach,” he says, and I offer the hand that isn’t sticky and gross.

  “I thought your name was Rostov?” I ask, and he gives me a smile that almost makes all of this worth it.

  “The teachers here usually call me by my last name. My family has a little bit of a reputation,” he says with a half shrug and a lopsided grin. I arch a brow at him, and his smile grows bigger. “Almost most if it’s lies,” he promises me with an innocent smile and a nudge, and I laugh.

  “You have a lot of brothers?” I ask. He shakes his head.

  “No. A few cousins graduated before me, left a legacy on the Rostov name,” he says with an accent while saying his name, and it sounds beautiful.

  “I like Rostov. Is it German?” I ask awkwardly, tucking a loose piece of hair behind my ear.

  “More like Russian,” he says with an amused grin that makes me turn away from him. He’s even cuter up close.

  “Uhm, why? Why did you come help me? You don’t know me and…most boys are weirded out about…” I trail off, and he rolls his eyes.

  “My mom says it’s natural,” he tells me with a shrug and genuine smile that makes me turn red again. I wonder if he knows how cute he is.

  “Rain’s a cool name,” he says with an amused grin. I shrug, embarrassed. I used to get teased a lot for it when I was younger. No one has ever told me it was cool, especially anyone that looks like him.

  “My mom had me during this big storm. She almost didn’t make it to the hospital. So, she named me Rain,” I say. He nods, his smile growing.

  “I like that, sounds like a superhero or something.” He gives me a smile that’s so beautiful, I have to remind myself to breathe.

  The nurse comes out, and Zach stands up, dusting his hands off on his ratty jeans. “Come on, let’s get you taken care of,” the nurse says, seeming much nicer than the clerk who checked me in. I glance at Zach hesitantly and he gestures for me to go ahead. I’m almost sad knowing most likely when I return, he might be gone.

  Once I’m in with the nurse, there’s not much to it, really. She checks my temperature then hands me a pad and asks if I want to call my mom for a change of clothes, but my mom is working, and I know she’ll lose money if she has to take off work, so I tell her no. She asks if I’d like a pair of gym joggers to change into, but it’d be obvious why I have them on, and I tell her I’ll just keep my jeans on. She lets me go in the bathroom, where I scrub my jeans as quickly as I can, preferring wet to bloody. I tie Zach’s jacket around my waist again and re-emerge, gratefully taking the Midol the nurse offers. My stomach feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise.

  “You know how all this works, right?” the nurse asks. “Comes around the same time every month, all of that?”

  I nod, embarrassed all over again. “I’m not stupid,” I mutter. “It’s just the first time. I wasn’t ready.”

  The embarrassment persists when I walk out to the lobby and find Zach still there waiting. I wanted him to be here when I came out but it’s still slightly humiliating that our first encounter has revolved around my period. I know I’m red-faced, but he doesn’t say anything or make me feel bad. Instead, he motions for me to follow him. “Come on,” he says, “I’ll walk you home.”

  “But…class isn’t over…”

  “You really want to go back to class?”

  I shake my head.

  Of course, I don’t.

  Even if no one saw, I don’t want to sit through three more classes like this. “But you’ll miss class.”

  He snorts. “It’s fine. I don’t care. Where do you live?”

  I give him my address hesitantly, part of me knowing it’s sort of stupid leaving school with a boy I just met even if he seems nice. He’s older and bigger and my parents would freak out, but my mom is at work and my dad is probably passed out, so they won’t know. “Okay,” I tell him with a shrug. We head down a hall of the school that no one is in and after making sure the coast is clear, we hastily make our exit. Zach breaks off into a slow run and I follow his lead until we’re a block away from the school. Then he stops.

  “You okay?” he asks, and I nod.

  “So, you’re new here?” he asks as we start down the sidewalk, the hot sun beating down on us.

  “Yeah.” I don’t look up at him, trudging along. “We just moved a couple weeks ago. Before the school year started. My mom is a teacher.”

  “At our school?” he asks through a laugh. I roll my eyes.

  “No, thank God. At the high school. Twelfth-grade English.”

  Zach glances down at me. “I like books. Well, the kind that gets turned into movies,” he says with a shy smile.

  I do look up at him then, surprised, and a smile starts to make its way across my face. “Me too,” I tell him quietly.

  “What kind of books do you like?” he asks.

  I shrug. “It’s hard to pick a favorite. I like fantasy. Something that takes me away to a different place.”

  “I like science-fiction. Robots and aliens and shit. Big surprise, right?”

  Now I do grin up at him.

  “Anything to get away from living in Shitville.” He lets out a half laugh and kicks a stray can.

  Up close, Zach’s even more handsome than he seemed in the cafeteria. His shaggy blond hair is cut in a way that always seems to fall over his face, and his blue eyes are even brighter outside. I feel warm and tingly all over, looking at him, but this time it has nothing to do with embarrassment. I just want to stare at him. But I tear my eyes away, not wanting to be a weirdo.

  I know what this is—I’ve got a crush. My first ever. But it’s not as if anything can come of it. For one thing, he’s older. I’m not sure how much, exactly, and I finally gather up the courage to ask.

  “Fifteen. I turn sixteen in two weeks,” he tells me, looking down at me curiously as I force the question out.

  “I had to do two grades over when my parents moved here from Russia.”

  My eyes go wide. Wow, that’s cool. Even though his name is Russian, I didn’t think he was really from there. He doesn’t have an accent at all, except when he said his last name.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I shrug. “You’re really tall,” I say, and he laughs.

  “What about you?”

  I want to lie. Oh, God, how badly I want to lie. He’s just going to think of me as a little sister, once I tell him. But I can’t start off our friendship with a lie. “Thirteen,” I say, looking away and blushing again.

  “Cool,” he says with a shrug like it doesn’t matter to him, which I guess it shouldn’t since I’m just a kid he’s walking home.

  Now we’re right in front of my house. My mom isn’t home yet, and my dad is most likely passed out drunk and dead to the world. Or, at the earliest opening bar in the area. I waffle between the obvious rudeness of telling Zach he can’t come in and the risk of what we might find inside.

  I look up at him, at this cute boy who seems like he wants to be my friend, and decide to roll the dice.

  “You can come in,” I say hesitantly, swinging open the screen door on the front of our house. “It’s hot out. You can have pop or something. We just have to be quiet if my dad’s home.”

  It’s hot inside, too. Our air-conditioner in the house we’re renting doesn’t work well, and the landlord hasn’t come out and looked at it in the two weeks we’ve been here. The fans are running, but they’re not doing much more than circulating the same hot air. Zach doesn’t complain though, just walks into the linoleum-tiled kitchen and sits at our old dining table with the vinyl tablecloth. “You do
n’t have to get me anything,” he says, but I’m already getting mismatched glasses out of the cupboards.

  We don’t have anything cold in the fridge except a pitcher of water, so I grab some Kool-Aid—the powdered kind in a packet—and mix it into the water, but it’s better than the off-brand soda we usually have.

  “Thanks,” Zach says as I hand him the glass. I can see him looking around, and I wonder with a racing heart what he thinks of all this. Does he want to leave? Will he be embarrassed to be my friend now? I notice things I never have before—the spots where the paint on the walls is peeling a little, the curled-up edges of the linoleum countertops, the puckered spots on the particle-board cupboard that the microwave is on. Other things too—the shabbiness of the valance above the kitchen sink, the way all of our dishes are mismatched. I flush red, and Zach notices it.

  “Hey,” he says, picking up on what’s bothering me immediately. “Your house looks like mine.” He lifts his glass, smiling at me. “This stuff is great.”

  I open my mouth to admit the worst part, the truth about my father, the thing we definitely don’t have in common, no matter how poor Zach is. But I don’t have to, because a second later he comes stumbling in, his eyes bleary.

  “Rain, where’s…where’s Erin?” he says, stumbling over his words a little. “And your mom? You’re not skipping school already, are you?”

  As if he should say anything if I was, I think angrily. My face flushes even hotter, and I shake my head rapidly. “No, I…I was sick. I came home early. Mom and Erin will be home soon.”