Nightstruck by Jenna Black

the kettle black.
    In the end, I swallowed all the inadequate words I came up with. I believe that words have power—as I’d proven the night before, when I’d wounded him with them—but sometimes they just aren’t enough.
    â€œDo you want me to put on some toast?” I asked instead, vowing that when breakfast was over I would go into my solitary confinement with no complaints or delays.
    *   *   *
    Piper was waiting for me by my locker first thing Monday morning. It was a rare show of punctuality from her, but I was still too pissed off about our crappy excuse for a girls’ night out to be very impressed.
    It wasn’t really Piper’s fault that our Saturday had been so miserable. Since she had no idea how I felt about Luke, she couldn’t have realized how unappealing being a third wheel on her date would be to me, and she really had gone out of her way to make sure I was included. She danced with me, and she made sure Luke danced with me, and I could hardly blame her for the fact that I’d hated the nightclub. How could she know I hated loud, overheated, overcrowded nightclubs when I hadn’t even known that myself? I should just chalk it all up to a learning experience and get over it.
    Sometimes, Piper comes off as being totally oblivious to other people, but she was still capable of surprising me. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of hiding my feelings on Saturday night, but the first words out of her mouth when she saw me were, “I’m so sorry about how I acted at the club.”
    I wanted to laugh it off, maybe pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about. In some ways, it felt almost ungrateful to complain. But after having spent all of Sunday shut up in my room with nothing to do but work on college applications—my dad hadn’t even let me out to do chores or walk Bob or anything—I was in too brittle a mood to manage it.
    â€œLet’s just forget about it, okay?” I said, staring at the buttons on my coat as if I needed absolute concentration to get them open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Piper lean against the bank of lockers, letting me know she planned on hanging around.
    â€œI promised myself I’d stop at two beers,” she said. “I should have remembered that once I get a couple of beers into me, I forget all about promises like that. It was selfish and stupid and words can’t describe how sorry I am.”
    There was an unfamiliar hitch in her voice that made me look up and meet her eyes. She wasn’t crying, but the remorse on her face was so genuine I couldn’t help but believe it.
    I won’t say the anger went away, but its intensity lessened. There were so many other things I had hated about Saturday night, but at least Piper was apologizing for the one thing I could blame her for in good conscience. It was more than I’d expected to get from her.
    â€œI’d suggest you try apologizing to my dad,” I said, “only I’m not sure getting within a mile of him would be a good survival strategy.”
    She smiled tentatively. “Are you suggesting your dad doesn’t like me?”
    â€œShocking, I know.”
    I took my coat off and shoved it in my locker. Piper frowned at me.
    â€œYou’re out of uniform,” she commented.
    I groaned. Shit! “I was hoping no one would notice.”
    Thanks to my stint in solitary confinement yesterday, I’d completely forgotten the one Sunday chore that absolutely had to be done: laundry. I hadn’t remembered until this morning, when I’d had to dig through my hamper in search of a uniform. I found a tunic that probably wouldn’t wrinkle if an elephant slept on it all night, but all of my button-down white shirts were a mess. I’d had to settle for a long sleeve white polo, hoping the tunic over the top would disguise its nonregulation placket.
    â€œMaybe no one else will,”