I was late for lunch. I walked in, expecting to greet the room of rowdy, smelly, annoying teenagers with a flirtatious smile and a wink, but the room was unnaturally quiet. The only sound was the nervous ruffling of wings.

I followed eyes to the apparent center of attention; Gracie? She was standing with her back to me, but, from the angle at which she stood, I could see where her attention was.

As I moved closer, I recognized the strange haircut of the girl without wings. She was coughing violently, growling out words I couldn't quite hear.

I reached Gracie, and the girl sent daggers up at me. Feathers laid at her feet. Her eyes were wide, but sunken in and held under dark bags of purple and blue.

"This your bodyguard?" She snapped, her glade intensifying. She made a face, and spat on Gracie's shoes.

"What was that for?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows debate whether to go up in surprise or down in anger.

"Oh," she laughed bitterly. "You missed it, huh?"

Gracie sniffled and turned to me, her blue eyes watering. There was blood trickling down her chin, which I gently wiped away. "Alex," she moaned. "I was just asking to sit with her and she was mean."

"What the hell?!" The girl cried, standing. She reached hardly even my collar bone. "You bitch!" She took a menacing step forward. "You lying bitch!"

I held a hand out to prevent the girl from getting closer. "No need to get angry," I said calmly.

Her face turned to me, and I counted the piercings I could see. Two on her cheeks, two on the right side of her lower lip, two on the left side of her upper lip, one stud in the middle of her top lip. A ring hung from her septum. A bar in her right eyebrow. Nine piercings.

Her eyes were the color of wet sand, flecked with golden stars and blue oceans and green expanses of summer trees. I could tell she wore no makeup, but she wasn't unattractive. Quite the opposite, actually.

"Get out of my way, you pissass," she snapped.

I raised my eyebrows and stepped aside, watching her saunter away, pulling feathers from her hair.