richellemead-vampireacademy01-vampireacademy-110824015328-phpapp02

communicate with Lissa. Too tired to write to her now, I was about to turn everything off when
I noticed I already had a message. From Janine Hathaway. It was short:
I'm glad you're back. What you did was inexcusable.
"Love you too, Mom," I muttered, shutting it all down.
When I went to bed afterward, I passed out before even hitting the pillow, and just as Dimitri
had predicted, I felt ten times worse when I woke up the next morning. Lying there in bed, I
reconsidered the perks of running away. Then I remembered getting my ass kicked and figured
the only way to prevent that from happening again was to go endure some more of it this
morning.
My soreness made it all that much worse, but I survived the before-school practice with Dimitri
and my subsequent classes without passing out or fainting.
At lunch, I dragged Lissa away from Natalie's table early and gave her a Kirova-worthy lecture
about Christian—particularly chastising her for letting him know about our blood arrangement.
If that got out, it'd kill both of us socially and I didn't trust him not to tell.
Lissa had other concerns.
"You were in my head again?" she exclaimed. "For that long?”
"I didn't do it on purpose," I argued. "It just happened. And that's not the point. How long did
you hang out with him afterward?”
"Not that long. It was kind of…fun.”
"Well, you can't do it again. If people find out you're hanging out with him, they'll crucify you."
I eyed her warily. "You aren't, like, into him, are you?”
She scoffed. "No. Of course not.
"Good. Because if you're going to go after a guy, steal Aaron back." He was boring, yes, but
safe. Just like Natalie. How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the
definition of safe.