by Cassie Mae
“Um, yeah,” I say as I slide into the first empty seat against the wall. “Sorry I’m late.”
But to my surprise, Mr. Holbrook doesn’t seem fazed by my late arrival. Nor am I getting the usual collegiate-judgment stare from my classmates.
Instead, they’re all staring at the toothpaste commercial standing in the doorway.
Oh, good God. I think for sure we’re dealing with a wrong-room scenario.
“Ethan, it’s good to see you again,” Martin Holbrook is saying.
Wait. What? What does Holbrook mean, again?
Instead of skulking along the wall like I did, Ethan ambles easily toward the empty row of desks where I’m sitting, looking completely unperturbed by the fact that everyone is staring at him.
I glare at him in a way that I hope coaxes him to put a couple of desks between us. Instead, he lets his hip brush against the edge of my desk, tossing my smashed granola bar on my lap as he passes.
“You dropped this,” he says with a wink.
Everyone is staring at us in confusion, and I don’t blame them. I look like the troubled girl parents warn their kids away from, and Ethan looks like the homecoming king. In no ecosystem should we even be acknowledging each other’s existence.
And yet we both came in late, practically together, and now he’s being all winky and you-dropped-this, making it seem like we actually know each other.
Horror.
I catch the eye of Carrie Sinders, one of my closest friends at school, and she widens her eyes dramatically, as if to ask, What’s going on?
Good question, Carrie. Good freaking question.
The only good thing about the whole situation is that Martin Holbrook isn’t the prima donna I was fearing and doesn’t seem at all annoyed by the interruption. Probably because he played lacrosse with Pretty Boy Prada’s dad or something.
I pull out my notebook and a pen and try to focus on what Holbrook is saying when I feel a poke between my shoulder blades.
“Hey, Morticia, can I borrow a pen?”
I start to tell Ethan that I don’t have one, but of course he knows firsthand that I have about ten in my bag. I dig out a blue ballpoint and drop it onto his desk without looking at him. I don’t like people I can’t figure out, and his very presence in a place where he doesn’t seem to belong is unsettling.
That, and he smells good. Really good. Normally I hate dudes with cologne. But this is clean and sexy and smells kind of like summer in the Hamptons, and it’s more than a little distracting.
I shake it off and remind myself that I’m avoiding the male population in general since David. David, whose idea of cologne is deodorant.
“So everyone’s good?” Holbrook says. I panic a little because I haven’t been paying attention at all, and instead of there being notes to copy down, Holbrook has just written on the board a link to a website. I hurriedly scribble it in my notebook.
Luckily, there’s a total stoner in the back row who’s apparently as clueless as me, because he raises his hand in confusion. “Wait, so like … we just go online, pick out one of these common film narratives, and then write a screenplay based on it?”
Holbrook nods. “Pretty much. I’ll be here Tuesdays and Thursdays during the scheduled course time if you have questions or want to run something by me.”
I frown. Wait—we don’t actually have to come to class?
Normally this kind of freedom would be right up my alley, but I’ve kind of been counting on this course to keep me busy this summer. In previous summers I was able to stay on campus as long as I took a certain number of credits, but this year they’re repainting all the dorms, so on-campus housing isn’t available. Instead I’ll be subletting my cousin’s shoe-box-sized apartment in Queens, and I’m not sure she has Internet, much less air-conditioning. What am I going to do all summer?
Still … anything beats going home.
“Okay, unless there are more questions, I’ll connect you guys with your partners and you can be on your way.”
It takes my brain a second to absorb that.
Partners?
I am not a group project kind of girl.
“I had my four-year-old daughter draw names out of a cereal bowl last night, so this is as random as it gets,” Martin was saying, pulling a small notebook out of his bag. “Aaron Billings? You’re with Kaitlin Shirr. Michael Pelinski, you’re with Taylor McCaid …”
The list goes on, and Carrie looks at me, holding up crossed fingers.
Oh, please, God, let me be with Carrie. I can tolerate that. Mostly.
“Stephanie Kendrick …”
Oh please, oh please …
“… you’re with Ethan Price.”
My mind goes temporarily blank. Film students are a pretty tight-knit group, and I thought I knew everyone in the class.
Everyone except …
Oh God.
Pretty Boy must have put the pieces together too, because I feel another sharp poke between my shoulder blades.
“You hear that, Goth? Partners!”
I close my eyes. This can’t be happening.
Instead of the carefree, find-myself summer I envisioned, I’ll be spending the next three months with my own life-sized Ken doll.
And that isn’t even the worst of it.