I turned slowly in my seat. The knot of anxiety in my stomach was twisting and turning. I suddenly knew what… who… I was going to see sitting near me. The hair of the convertible driver matched. It had to be.
And it was.
The boy with ice blue eyes. The boy with that single, thick golden curl.
The jerk who’d nearly knocked me down outside.
“You?” I stuttered out. “No way.”
“Drake Castleton,” he leaned forward and offered his hand. “So nice to meet you, Tarryn Norma-Jeane Monroe.” And he winked.
He winked at me.
“What… why are you here?” I stood up swiftly, knocking my backpack to the ground and the paperback I’d stuffed into the side mesh pocket flew out from its cage and slid across the floor to land, of course, at Drake Castleton’s stupid feet. He looked down, smiled strangely, and picked it up before standing.
“I’d never have pegged you for an Abbott fan.” He thumbed through the well-loved copy of Flatland. “Windows, there are none in our houses: for the light comes to us alike in our homes and out of them,” he quoted.
“There’s absolutely no way you’ve read this,” I leaned forward and took the book from him roughly. “There’s no way that someone like you has read something like this.” I wouldn’t even consider the possibility that a jerk like Castleton could have read and liked something as profound and… strangely moving as Flatland.
“And it’s entirely possible that you’ve read it too many times.” He pushed his hands into his pockets; the motion was fluid as water. He moved like he was in too much control of his body, like every gesture was the product of pointed, guarded thought. “A person could forget what life is like in a three-dimensional world if they fill themselves up with that nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense.” I said quickly, then clapped my mouth shut as the first bell rang shrilly. When it fell silent again, I opened my mouth for further retort. “You don’t—”
“Ah,” Drake zipped his fingers across his mouth, “squares can’t talk.”
“That’s enough, you two. Get to class. Mr. Castleton, keep her in check and make sure she’s on time. You’re in all the same classes, so it shouldn’t be too hard.” The severe-faced secretary shooed us out of the office as her phone rang.
As soon as we were out in the hallway, Drake took me by the elbow and steered me to the left and down the path that was beginning to suffocate with students racing to lockers and classrooms. With Drake Castleton’s hand on my elbow, we started to attract attention.
Who the hell is she?
Why is Drake touching her?
He screwed me, never called, and now he’s with that bimbo.
Girl, me too. I hate him. But I hate her more.
Looks like Drake’s got his eye on another one. It was the first boy voice to break through the deluge of awful girl-attitude. None of us even stand a chance when there’s fresh meat. He gets them first; we get sloppy damn seconds.
“Could you not.” I yanked my elbow away. “I’m perfectly capable of following you without being literally handheld.”
“I was holding your elbow,” he quipped back with a smile.
“How about you don’t hold any of me,” I snarled.
“I give you two months. You’ll be begging for me to hold all of you.” He reached out to touch me again and I jerked away.
“As freaking if,” I mumbled at his back as he walked through a doorway into a classroom. The man at the front was Einstein-frazzled with a shock of white hair and a face like one of those really wrinkly dogs that need surgery to keep their eyes from being completely obscured by furry skin folds. He was talking to himself as he wrote on a table tablet that transferred to a huge white board at the front of the class. Fancy school. Fancy technology. Old-as-sin teacher. That was an… interesting combo.
“Take a seat, Square,” Drake pointed at a seat at the front. “You seem like a ‘front row, takes a zillion notes’ type.”
“And you seem like a back-row waste of space, Castleton.”
“Pretty words from a pretty mouth,” he leaned down and thrummed his fingers on the desk he wanted me to take. “Enjoy class.” And then he sauntered away.
I turned from that stupid desk, and took the one next to it as if it was some grand rebellion against the jerk of a guy with his jerk hair and jerk smile. I sat two feet away from where he’d wanted, and I felt like Joan of Freaking Arc.
When Mr. Paulson started teaching, I realized, as if I hadn’t already, that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Paulson was a retired chemist who’d done work at NIH, the National Institute of Health. Though he had the personality of a turtle with narcolepsy, I was excited to learn from him. I sat mesmerized for a short while, as Mr. Paulson swooped letters across his tablet, and then I got out one of my comp notebooks, four colored pens, and voraciously wrote down everything he said. It wasn’t lost on me that I was absolutely proving that I was a ‘front row, takes a zillion notes’ type. I was too fascinated to care though.
At the end of class, I was still consumed with writing a few end thoughts in my notebook. It was the best first class I’d ever had. I adored the syllabus he’d handed out and this wasn’t even an AP class. Everyone had nearly filed out of the room already—even Mr. Paulson carrying a periodic table coffee mug—when a shadow fell over my desk and stayed there. I looked up slowly, knowing who I’d find looming over me.
“See,” he tapped his forehead like he was feigning psychic abilities. “Front of the class, grade-A square.” He leaned down and touched my notebook, flipping back a page to see the quartet of colors swimming line-by-line in a coded chaos that only made sense to me. “It’s day one, Norma-Jeane. If you’re not careful, you’ll be the new Bethany of the school. And she doesn’t take kindly to Valedictorian wannabes.”
“Are you just going to give me shit all day?” I slammed my notebook closed, stuffed it into my backpack and stood up so quickly that my head swam. Despite best efforts, I swooned slightly and had to grab for the back of the chair to steady myself.
“Hey, are you okay?” Drake Castleton actually sounded concerned when he spoke, and both of his hands came up to hover at my sides like I might fall all the way.
“I’m fine,” I pushed past him, even as my vision blurred. I fought it back. I’d been here before; I knew how to control things when I got like this. I just needed sugar, and fast. I’d been so nervous this morning that I hadn’t been able to eat much. I made it almost to the door before I lost it. I could feel my legs give way and I was heading to the ground, when arms caught me and halted the fall. I titled my head back, steadying myself against the firm body behind me. It was Drake. I knew it was Drake, but I was in no condition to put up a protest.
“See, I told you you’d change your mind about me holding you.” His voice was strained, but also kind—like he was trying to make me feel better with humor.
“Shut up,” I mumbled, letting my backpack thud to the floor.
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Red Eye | Season 3 | Episode 2 Page 9