The Tiny Curse (Werewolf High Book 2) by Anita Oh Read Free Book Online

circle, pressing in toward me. There was no good way out of this. I could either make a break for it, possibly forcing a physical confrontation, or I could wait for whatever this was to begin. Neither option seemed appealing. I zipped my bag up and slung it onto my back so that it couldn’t fall into the clutches of the evil mob.
    The entire world seemed frozen, cold and inactive. I stared at everyone and they stared back at me, unmoving, as if waiting for a signal. I huffed. They were cutting into my lunch time and I wished they’d get on with it so I could go eat.
    Then, finally, somebody stepped forward. I’d expected it to be one of the T-son fan club or maybe Astor or one of the other polo guys, but it wasn’t. It was Fatima.
    Even though we hadn’t been on the best terms, I still felt it like a slap in the face. I could understand her standing up for Hannah or being jealous of my grades, but I’d thought underneath it all we were still more or less friends, that we were cut from the same cloth. But I was definitely not cut from backstabbing bully cloth.
    Hannah was nowhere to be seen, but Fatima glanced back at the others as she stepped forward, at Olivia and Charlotte and Stephanie Von Whatsit, and I got it. Well, I didn’t really get it, but I saw what she was doing. She’d mentioned to me once before that she wanted to move up to the Green House, that she wanted the power that came with status and connections. She obviously saw this as her way in. Basically, I’d thought she was Hermione but she was Wormtail. Man was I a sucker.
    When she looked at me, her eyes were cold, and I wondered how I’d ever counted her as a friend. There was no friendship in that look, no compassion. She’d be completely ruthless in dealing with me if it meant getting what she wanted.
    “You’ve gone too far,” she said, in a loud, clear voice that carried across the courtyard. “I was one thing when you were just annoying and making an idiot out of yourself, but you’ve really upset a lot of people. You don’t belong here. You bring down the entire tone of the school and you need to leave now.”
    A few people gave little cheers.  I could feel all of their eyes on me, piercing me like ice picks. Bunch of jerks. They didn’t even know me, they didn’t know a single thing about me, but they thought they could dismiss me and treat me however they liked just because I was poor, because I wasn’t one of them. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. But what could I do?  There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say that would change how any of them thought. I was completely helpless in this situation, I had no way of fighting back.
    It made me so mad that tears sprang to my eyes. I tried to blink them away in case anyone got the wrong idea and thought that I cared what they thought. I didn’t care one bit. I just hated the unfairness of it all. I tried to be a good person. I did my homework and tried to be nice to people, even when I thought they were jerks. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t deserve this.
    “You have to be kidding me. Are you actually crying right now?” Fatima rolled her eyes. “That’s not going to get you out of this.”
    Charlotte stepped up beside Fatima, shaking her head at me. “Girls like you are the worst. You don’t know your place.”
    The circle began to close in, and for the first time I really started to worry. Angry mobs were no joke when you were in the middle of one. They were going to lynch me for real and there was not one thing I could do about it. Man, what even was the point of having werewolf buddies if they never jumped in to rescue you at times like this. Sure, I’d been learning to fight but I was only one skinny girl. It would take a flame thrower to get these losers to back off.
    Although it was only lunchtime, the day was already growing dark. Ominous clouds gathered over our heads, blocking the sun and lending to the apocalyptic atmosphere I felt with