I didn't want to know. Whatever his motives for coming back, I didn't want to know. I just wanted to get away from him, get to class, anywhere, anywhere at all ...... so long as it was away from him.
"Well," I said, slamming my locker door closed. I hardly knew what I was doing. I had reached in and blindly grabbed the first books my fingers touched. "Gotta go. Homeroom calls."
He looked down at the books in my arms, the ones I was holding almost as a shield, as if they would protect me from whatever it was - and I was sure there was something - he had in store for me. For us.
"You won't find them in there," Paul said with a cryptic nod at the textbooks bulging from my arms.
I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't want to know. All I knew was that I wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there fast. CeeCee still stood beside me, looking bewilderedly from my face to Paul's. Any second, I knew, she was going to begin to ask questions, questions I didn't dare answer . . . because she wouldn't believe me if I tried.
Still, even though I didn't want to, I heard myself asking, as if the words were being torn involuntarily from my lips, "I won't find what in here?"
"The answers you're looking for." Paul's blue-eyed gaze was intense. "Why you, of all people, were chosen. And what, exactly, you are."
This time, I didn't have to ask what he meant. I knew. I knew as surely as if he'd said the words out loud. He was talking about the gift we shared, he and I, the one over which he seemed to have so much better control - and of which he seemed to have such superior knowledge - than I did.
While CeeCee stood there, staring at the two of us as if we were speaking a foreign language, Paul went on smoothly, "When you're ready to hear the truth about what you are, you'll know where to find me. Because I'll be right here."
And then he walked away, seemingly unaware of all the feminine sighs he drew from my classmates as he moved with pantherlike grace down the breezeway.
Her violet eyes still wide behind her glasses, CeeCee looked up at me wonderingly.
"What," she wanted to know, "was that guy talking about? And who on earth is Jesse?"
2
I couldn't tell her, of course. I couldn't tell anyone about Jesse, because, frankly, who'd have believed it? I knew only one person - one living person, anyway - who knew the whole truth about people like Paul and me, and that was only because he was one of us. As I sat in front of his mahogany desk a little while later, I couldn't help letting out a groan.
"How could this have happened?" I asked.
Father Dominic, principal of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy, sat behind his enormous desk, looking patient. It was an expression that became the good father, who, rumor had it, grew better looking with every passing year. At nearly sixty-five, he was a white-haired, spectacled Adonis.
He was also very contrite.
"Susannah, I'm sorry. I've been so busy with preparations for the new school year - not to mention the Father Serra festival this coming weekend - I never glanced at the admission rosters." He shook his neatly trimmed white head. "I am so, so sorry."
I grimaced. He was sorry. He was sorry? What about me? He wasn't the one who had to be in the same classes with Paul Slater. Two classes, as a matter of fact: homeroom and U.S. history. Two whole hours a day I was going to have to sit there and look at the guy who'd tried to off my boyfriend and leave me for dead. And that wasn't even counting morning assembly and lunch. That was another hour, right there!
"Although I don't honestly know what I could have done," Father Dom said, rifling through Paul's file, "to prevent his being admitted. His test scores, grades, teacher evaluations . . . everything is exemplary. I am sorry to say that on paper, Paul Slater comes off as a far better student than you did when you first applied to this school."
"You can't tell anything," I pointed out, "about a person's moral fiber from a bunch of test scores." I am a little defensive about this topic, on account of my own test scores having been mediocre enough to have caused the Mission Academy to balk at accepting my application eight months ago when my mother announced we were moving to California so that she could marry Andy Ackerman, the man of her dreams, and now my stepfather.
"No," Father Dominic said, tiredly removing his glasses and cleaning them on the hem of his long black robe. There were, I noticed, purple shadows beneath his eyes. "No, you cannot," he agreed with a deep sigh, placing his wire rims back over the bridge of his perfectly aquiline nose. "Susannah, are you really so certain this boy's motives are less than noble? Perhaps Paul is looking for guidance. It's possible, that with the right influence, he might be made to see the error of his ways. . . ."
"Yeah, Father Dom," I said sarcastically. "And maybe this year I'll get elected Homecoming Queen."
Father Dominic looked disapproving. Unlike me, Father Dominic tended always to think the best of people, at least until their subsequent behavior proved his assumption in their inherent goodness to be wrong. You would think that in the case of Paul Slater, he'd have already seen enough to form a solid basis for judgment on that guy's behalf, but apparently not.
"I am going to assume," Father D. said, "until we've seen something to prove otherwise, that Paul is here at the Mission Academy because he wants to learn. Not just the normal eleventh grade curriculum, either, Susannah, but what you and I might have to teach him as well. Let us hope that Paul regrets his past actions and truly wishes to make amends. I believe that Paul is here to make a fresh start rather like you did last year, if you'll recall. And it is our duty, as charitable human beings, to help him do just that. Until we learn otherwise, I believe we should give Paul the benefit of the doubt."
I thought this was the worst plan I had ever heard in my life. But the truth was, I didn't have any evidence that Paul was, in fact, here to cause trouble. Not yet, anyway.
"Now," Father D. said, closing Paul's file and leaning back in his chair, "I haven't seen you in a few weeks. How are you, Susannah? And how's Jesse?"
I felt my face heat up. Things were at a sorry pass when the mere mention of Jesse's name could cause me to blush, but there it was.
"Um," I said, hoping Father D. wouldn't notice my flaming cheeks. "Fine."
"Good," Father Dom said, pushing his glasses up on his nose and looking over at his bookshelf in a distracted manner. "There was a book he mentioned he wanted to borrow - Oh, yes, here it is." Father Dom placed a giant, leatherbound book - it had to have weighed ten pounds at least - in my arms. "Critical Theory Since Plato," he said with a smile. "Jesse ought to like that."
I didn't doubt it. Jesse liked some of the most boring books known to man. Possibly this was why he wasn't responding to me. I mean, not the way I wanted him to. Because I was not boring enough.
"Very good," Father D. said distractedly. You could tell he had a lot on his mind. Visits from the archbishop always threw him into a tizzy, and this one, for the feast of Father Serra, whom several organizations had been trying unsuccessfully to have made a saint, was going to be a particularly huge pain in the butt, from what I could see.
"Let's just keep an eye on our young friend Mr. Slater," Father Dom went on, "and see how things go. He might very well settle down, Susannah, in a structured environment like the one we offer here at the academy."
I sniffed. I couldn't help it. Father D. really had no idea what he was up against.
"And if he doesn't?" I asked.
"Well," Father Dominic said. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Now run along. You don't want to waste the whole of your lunch break in here with me."