Infinite (Strange and Beautiful, Book 1) by Brittney Musick Page B

left the classroom, I saw Mrs. Willis trying to pry the tests out
of a couple people’s hands. It was mostly the brownnosers and goodie two shoes
that had their hearts set on making into it colleges like Harvard, Yale, or
MIT. I hadn’t even thought about college yet. That seemed too far off to bother
worrying now.
    Tegan
and I went to our lockers. Then we headed for the cafeteria, and I couldn’t
help but talk about the book. I had this horrible tendency to start jabbering
about the book I was currently reading, and I’d completely forget about
spoilers. Tegan hated it when I started talking about something she hadn’t read
yet and ruined the surprise for her. Luckily, she’d read the Harry Potter books; not nearly as many times as I had, but she still knew what I was on
about.
    “I
can’t believe the movie for Order of the Phoenix won’t be out until next
July,” I whined. “I’m so anxious to see how they pull it all together.”
    “I
wonder how much they’ll end up leaving out of it,” Tegan replied thoughtfully.
“I hated how much they cut out of Goblet of Fire .”
    “Me
too,” I agreed. “But I guess I understand why they had to. It would have been
so long otherwise. Not that I would have had a problem with that.”
    “Of
course you wouldn’t,” Tegan laughed. “You wouldn’t care if it was a twenty hour
movie as long as there were bathroom breaks.”
    “Oh,
and you’d have a problem with it?” I countered. “I see the way you drool over
Rupert Grint.”
    “I
prefer to call him Ron,” Tegan said with a laugh. “I just don’t feel right
calling him Rupert. That reminds me of an old man.”
    I
laughed and shook my head. “Anyway, what I’m really anxious to see is the movie
for Half-Blood Prince ,” I commented. “They just can’t cut out the
Ron and Lavender scenes. Especially the Won-Won part,” I grinned. I looked at
Tegan, and she laughed and started to reply, but she was quickly cut off when
we heard a voice behind us.
    “Won-Won,
huh?”
    Tegan
and I both turned together. I didn’t recognize the guy, and he was the sort a
person would remember if they’d seen him before. He was big and tall. Of
course, most people seemed tall compared to me, but this guy looked taller than
normal. Even though I usually wasn’t good at guessing these things, I was sure
he was well over six foot tall. Aside from height, though, he was also rotund.
I knew he wasn’t old enough to drink—he was in high school, after all—but the
plumpness of his midsection looked like a beer belly to me. But he wasn’t just
fat either. His arms were large, muscular and heavily tattooed. His body seemed
so at odds that it took me a minute to finally look at his face.
    It
was then, when I looked up and saw the dark, greasy unkempt hair and the
multiple piercings in his ears and face, that I realized who had spoken. I’d
never actually seen Mark Moses up close before. A few times I’d heard people
murmur his name as he walked down the hall, but it was always from a distance,
which managed to make him look slighter.
    Up
close, not only was he huge, it was easier to see why people found him so
menacing. Aside from the metal in his ears and lip, tattoos peaked out from
under his dark, worn clothes, and when he smiled—a smile that was anything but
friendly, his yellow teeth were somewhat jagged and yellow, making him look
more animal than boy.
    Dark
eyes glittered as he crossed his thick arms over his chest, above the roundness
of his midsection. “Talking about a little Harry Potter, are we, children?”
    I
glanced at Tegan, and she looked as confused as I felt. I wondered how long he
had been behind us before saying anything. He didn’t strike me as a Harry
Potter fan, so he must have been there for a while.
    “Hey,
I asked you a question,” Mark snapped, and I jumped and looked back at him. He
was staring at me, so I nodded dumbly.
    “Freshmen,”
he laughed coldly. “What’s your name,