“Oh just sit down already,” Tailor groaned. “I don’t have time for this.”
Mac slid meekly into a desk near the front, next to a tall boy with dark hair that covered his eyes, who slipped him a piece of paper when Tailor turned to Camille.
She was still standing just inside the door, shoulderbag slung across her back, hands stuffed into the front pocket of her hoodie. She met his scrutiny with a bland expression and his eyes narrowed.
“That makes you Teague,” he said with distaste.
She shrugged.
“Do you speak?” Tailor asked.
“Sometimes.”
“What sort of accent is that?”
“Mine.”
Someone in the room snickered, but a quick glare from Tailor silenced the room. “I love clever students,” he said dryly. “They get to sit up front where I can keep a nice, close eye on them.” He pointed to an empty desk.
That was the first hint of discomfort I saw from her, as she slid into the desk, metal bracer clinking against the plastic. Did she not like being up front?
“Alright, unless any more mid-semester students are joining our class today – ” Mr. Tailor picked up his thick, heavily sticky-noted notebook, glanced at it, and dropped back onto his wood desk with a resounding plop – “no, those were the only ones, so now we can actually get something done.”
Mid-semester or not, that was unfair. It wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose. But my cheeks still flushed. I couldn’t see Camille’s face up at the front of the room, but I learned she was left-handed by the way she somewhat awkwardly situated herself to take notes in a right-handed desk. I bent to retrieve my notebook and pencil from my bag, and tried to use the opportunity to sneak a glance at some of my other classmates. Though only a cursory look, it was clear that the beautiful people lived in the back left corner, furthest from the door. There was a blonde girl who had the looks and posture of a model, another girl who was a brunette but otherwise matched her, and two guys sitting against the back wall. One had tousled brown hair that made him look like he’d just woken up, so therefore had probably been styled within an inch of its life; he was staring out the window with his chin in his hand, looking bored to tears. The fourth was him. The guy from the atrium was twirling his pencil in his fingers, apparently paying far more attention than the other three combined as Mr. Tailor talked about the social norms of Elizabethan England that informed the opening act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I continued to rummage in my bag as a pretense to keep staring surreptitiously. Maybe my initial impression had been wrong. He was actually far plainer than the other three. When I considered him separately, nothing about him actually stood out, despite the fact that he was Asian.
His eyes flicked to mine, and he winked.
I straightened up in a flash. My hands were uncommonly steady as I opened my notebook and found a clean page to take notes, but my brain was endlessly repeating what was that? What was that? What was that?
Plain? No. No, certainly not. I couldn’t believe that had even crossed my mind. I kept flashing back to his almond-shaped eyes as they locked onto mine for that brief instant, and my heart constricted.
Oh crap.
I didn’t think I heard any of the rest of the lecture, but apparently my right hand could take notes separately from my brain, because when the bell rang I had a full three pages of scribbling about Demetrius and Hermia’s parallels to – I balked at my own handwriting – Romeo and Juliet? How had I missed the mention of my namesake? I sighed and hoisted my bag over my shoulder.
Mac approached with his tall friend behind him. He had the grace to look sheepish this time. “Sorry, that probably wasn’t the best intro ever.”
“Well,” I said, “I survived, I guess.” Boy, did I sound positive. I glanced fearfully at Mr. Tailor, but he was focused on Camille collecting her belongings, like she would steal something if he looked away. Teachers around here seemed to really not like her...
“We have chemistry with Ms. Miller next,” Mac explained, bringing my attention back to him. “She’s way nicer,” he said in an undertone. “The labs are down in the basement, did you want us to show you where? Oh, this is Destin,” he introduced his friend, the tall, lanky boy with dusky cinnamon-colored skin and overlong bangs. He gave an awkward wave.
A slender arm looped through mine. I looked in shock at the girl who’d moved up next to me; it was the blonde Model, with her matching friend in tow. “Let me save you the embarrassment,” she told me condescendingly, drawing a circle in the air around Mac and Destin with her finger. “This is a girl-free zone. Come on, we’ll show you where chemistry is.” She pulled me away before I could say another word. We passed Camille on the way out of the room and her brow creased slightly, noting my unexpected change in escort.
The Model weaved us expertly through the crowd of students changing classes. Some people even seemed to get out of the way for her. “Sorry about my little brother,” she said, in a melodious voice.
Her friend, on my other side, added, “He’s like a puppy that just won’t grow out of being a puppy.” She had an accent I couldn’t quite place - French, maybe?
“He sees new people and he just has to latch onto them,” said the Model.
Aren’t you the one latched onto my arm? I thought, but I’d never say that. Beautiful people never talked to me. They certainly never fought for my attention. This was arguably the most bizarre day of my life.
“Mac is your brother?” I asked. I suppose I could see the resemblance. The wavy blonde hair. Something about the nose.
“Too late to deny it,” she sighed dramatically. “I’m Hayley, by the way. Hayley Dupree. This is Amity Clairmont,” she introduced her friend on my other side. “You certainly made an impression on Tailor. Are you acquainted?”
I was having trouble paying attention simultaneously to the conversation and the stairs we were descending. Tripping would be very bad. “Um, no, I’ve never seen him before.”
“That’s interesting,” she said. “I missed your name when you came in. Julia, was it?”
“Jul,” I said. “Graham.”
“Graham,” she lit on the name, like she’d been waiting for me to say it. “You aren’t related to Bea Graham, are you?”
I couldn’t shake the feeling this exchange had been rehearsed. “Um, yes. She’s my grandmother.”
“That’s right, I think I heard you might be moving down here,” she said. “Is it true your father was kidnapped? That’s so horrible, it doesn’t seem like something that would happen in real life.”
The air around us had gotten cooler as we exited the stairwell. This had to be the basement level. Though the hall was just as long as it was upstairs, there were only a handful of doors. The classrooms here had to be quite large. Hayley and Amity led me down the hall. A couple of other students trickled in behind us.
“It’s um...I don’t...the police are still investigating, and...”
“Hmm,” she said, in disappointment. “There’s been so much gossip flying around and I wanted to know the real story. I’ve known old Ms. Graham my whole life, but she’s a pretty private lady, you know. I mean she lives just down the road, but the only person she’ll talk to is Mac when he cuts her grass, or if you go to the library. And honestly, who uses libraries anymore?”
I went to the library constantly. Most days it felt like the only place that was real.
“Well, here it is,” she said, finally releasing my arm and opening a door labeled B-2.
Inside, a woman in a white lab coat with long, frizzy red hair tied back in a braid hunched over a table of experiment materials, carefully dosing them out. A cabinet of ingredients stood open at the back of the room. She looked up at our arrival, and nearly dropped the beaker she was holding.