“Welcome to St. Bridget’s, Rose.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He pointed toward the row of windows. “The first seat in the last row over there is empty. It’s yours, unless you’re the type who always sits at the back of the room.”
Rose considered for a moment and realized she had no idea what “type” she was.
“The front’s fine,” she replied. “Thank you again.”
As she started toward the appointed seat, however, Mr. McIlveen stood up.
“Hang on, Rose,” he said, scanning the room. “Courtney, can you come up here a minute?”
A blond girl talking with some friends looked around in surprise, and Rose figured this was Courtney. She extricated herself from her friends with a whisper and started toward the front of the room. She was about Rose’s height, but thinner and with breasts large enough that Rose had to wonder about back pain.
“Yes, Mr. Mac?” Courtney chirped pleasantly.
“Courtney Sauer, meet Rose DuBois. She’s new, obviously,” Mr. McIlveen said. “You’re a student ambassador—”
“For incoming freshmen,” Courtney interrupted.
Mr. McIlveen stroked his mustache. “Yeah? I didn’t know the job was so strictly defined. In any case, you’re going to be Rose’s ambassador at St. B’s for the next week or so. Help her find her classes and not get lost on the way to the caf. Answer any questions she has. You know the drill.”
Courtney smiled. “Sure, Mr. Mac. Absolutely.” She held out her hand for Rose to shake. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Rose shook. “You, too. I think I met… I mean, is Mrs. Sauer in the office related to you?”
“My nana,” Courtney confirmed. “She’s a hoot, isn’t she?”
Rose forced herself to smile. “Definitely. A hoot.”
“As soon as the bell rings, I’ll help you find your first class,” Courtney said. “You’re gonna love it here.”
“That’s great. Thank you so much for your help.”
“My pleasure.”
•
In the corridor outside Mr. McIlveen’s room, with the bell still clanging, Courtney’s mask came off.
“Pull over a second,” the girl said, her sweet smile vanishing.
“Is something wrong?” Rose asked.
Two of Courtney’s friends from homeroom walked by smirking. One of them told her to have fun and Courtney rolled her eyes and gave the girl the finger, not bothering to glance around to see if any teachers might have seen her. She flipped her blond hair back and stepped in so close that Rose could smell coffee on her breath when she spoke.
“Listen, Rosie… it’s Rosie, right?”
“Rose.”
“Whatever. Don’t make this harder than it has to be and we’ll get along just fine. Maybe you’re cool; maybe you’re not. I’m not judging here. Nor do I actually care. What I do know is that I don’t feel like babysitting you. So I’ll be a good girl and play ambassador today so Mr. Mac doesn’t get pissed at me. What lunch period do you have?”
Rose stared at her, wide-eyed. “Second.”
“Fine. You’ll eat lunch at my table today so it looks good, but then you’re on your own, and if anyone asks, it was your choice. Say you wanted to spread your wings or some bullshit like that.”
Rose only stared at her.
“Are you brain dead?” Courtney said, narrowing her eyes.
Rose couldn’t help laughing. Brain dead. Coma. It seemed funny to her.
“No. I heard you.”
Courtney stared at her. “Yeah. I guess you’re as weird as I was expecting,” she said, turning on her heel and leading the way. “Come on, Coma Girl. You don’t want to be late for your first class.”
Coma Girl. The same thing Courtney’s grandmother had called her. Great, she thought. Just fantastic.
She set off after Courtney, weaving through the throng of students, more aware than ever of their appraising looks. If she could read their minds, she wondered how many of them would already be thinking, Hey, it’s Coma Girl.
Rose had the terrible feeling that there would be times at St. Bridget’s when she would wish she had never woken up.
Courtney dropped her off at each class and came to fetch her when they were over, smiling falsely and exuding a chill that went down to the bone. But Rose had already lost interest in the girl, much more concerned with the mechanics of being a student than in trying to understand why anyone would be as cold and rude as Courtney Sauer. She had other things to worry about.
Throughout her morning classes, Rose felt oddly detached from the school experience. Some of the knowledge the teachers were attempting to download into their students’ brains was new and interesting to her, but much of it echoed around in the back of her mind. In geometry and in history, everything her teachers said seemed only to remind her of things she already knew, as if facts and formulae were in their own coma somewhere inside her and just needed to be woken up.
The odd feeling made her look constantly inward, trying to sort out what she did and didn’t know and to remember how exactly she knew it. Her memory seemed only just out of reach, tantalizing her with the possibility that at any moment some kind of wall might crumble and all that she had lost would flow back in. To her teachers and classmates, she realized that she must seem distant and cold, almost like some kind of sleepwalker. Rose felt lost and knew she would never make friends that way. The other students seemed more than content to let her be the weird girl, to give her surreptitious glances and whisper about her. She tried to smile and nod when anyone was nice to her but didn’t feel capable of doing much more than that.
Kylie O’Neill was undaunted.
Rose had been assigned seats in every one of her classes that morning and though most of the students seemed less hostile than Courtney, none of them made any real effort to welcome her. But fourth period was chemistry, and every student in the class had to have a lab partner for experiments and research projects. The teacher, Mrs. Polito, pointed out an empty seat at a lab table beside a petite girl with multicolored streaks in her dirty blond hair. Mrs. Polito had been acting as Kylie’s partner, since there were an odd number of students in the class and everyone else was paired up, but now that Rose had arrived, she seemed almost relieved to be able to make them partners.
“You two will get along famously, I’m sure,” Mrs. Polito said, in the manner of older people who sometimes made pronouncements without any interest in the reply they might receive.
Rose tried to smile, carrying her backpack over to the lab table, keenly aware of the other eyes in the room focusing on her, picking her apart with their wonderings. Kylie watched her come, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. The girl was pretty and petite, bent over on her stool in a way that was sure to lead to back trouble someday. Or maybe she already had a curved spine; maybe that was why she bent that way.
But, no. Kylie sat up straight the instant Rose slid onto the stool beside her.
“Hey. How’s your first day going?” Kylie asked, a little bit of crazy in her blue eyes.
This time it was no effort for Rose to smile. The girl was so open and friendly, so upbeat that kindness rolled off of her in waves.
“Not bad,” Rose said. “Thanks for asking.”
“Well, get ready for thrilling amounts of boredom,” Kylie whispered. “Mrs. Polito doesn’t think she’s done her job unless at least a quarter of the class falls asleep.”
“Great.”
“Ah, it’s not always that bad. Sometimes we cut up dead things.”
Rose widened her eyes.
Kylie smirked. “I’m kidding. That was in bio. I’m not expecting much of that in chem.”
“I hope not.”
“So, you’re from France, yeah? Like, Paris?”
“Far from Paris. A little village on the Riviera.”
“Oh my God. Why the hell did you come here?”
Rose stared at her. Could the girl possibly not already have heard the g
ossip, the nickname, the story of “Coma Girl”?
“Long story,” Rose replied at last.
Kylie held her gaze, suddenly full of sympathy. “You don’t want to talk about it, huh? That’s cool. Don’t we all have something we’d rather not talk about? Well, the interesting people do, I guess.”
Rose heard a muttering at the next table and glanced over to see two girls talking behind their hands and suspected they were talking about her and Kylie, but she didn’t care.
“I don’t mind telling you about it. Just… maybe after class,” Rose said, glancing around to indicate all of the people who could overhear them. “But, actually, I like what I’ve seen of Boston so far.”
“Where do you live?” Kylie asked, attentive, not making small talk but actually interested in the answer.
“With my aunts. We have an apartment on Acorn Street.”
Kylie shrugged. “Which is?”
“Beacon Hill.”
“Nice. I’m in the North End with my dad. My parents are divorced and my mother’s a bitch, so when he left, I went with him.”
“Wow,” Rose said, blinking at the girl’s bluntness. “I’m sorry.”
Kylie rolled her eyes. “I’m not.”
Then she grinned and Rose couldn’t help smiling back. A moment later, when the bell rang to signal the start of class, she realized she had made a friend.
The class managed to be almost as boring as Kylie had warned—they were studying the properties of metals and did an experiment involving corrosion and lengths of iron wire—but Rose never came close to falling asleep. The unsettling sense of already acquired knowledge being awakened within her continued to make her feel slightly disoriented, enough so that more than once during class Kylie asked if she was feeling all right. By the time the bell rang to signal the end of fourth period, Rose could not have been more grateful.
“Are you headed to lunch now?” Kylie asked as they slid off of their stools.
“Yeah,” Rose said, shouldering her backpack. “But my homeroom teacher assigned me a student ambassador to be my guide for the day, and I’m supposed to wait for her and have lunch with her.”
Kylie put on her backpack, hooking her thumbs under the straps. “Who’s your ambassador?”
“Courtney Sauer.”
“Lovely. I’m sure that’s a joy,” Kylie said.
Rose sighed. “Not exactly. But it’s just one day. I mean, it’s supposed to be longer, but neither of us wants that.”
“Maybe we can eat together tomorrow,” Kylie said. “It was great meeting you, though.”
“You, too.”
They walked out together, stopping in the corridor as the flow of people rushing to lockers swept by them. Several people said hello to Kylie, who gave little waves and made funny faces at them. She had such positive energy and charisma that although she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, everyone seemed to notice her. She really seemed to be having a good time, and Rose admired that, even envied it.
But then heads started turning away, looking elsewhere, and the energy in the corridor changed. The throng parted and Courtney Sauer approached them. Rose watched several guys checking her out, trying unsuccessfully to be cool about it. Courtney drew an entirely different kind of attention than Kylie did. Rose thought it seemed like hunger. To be with her. To be her. To understand how to become whatever she was, to have what she had.
“Hey,” Courtney said, ignoring everyone but Rose. “Come on. Lunch is this way.”
Rose glanced at Kylie. “I’ll see you later.”
“Absolutely,” Kylie said. Then she turned to Courtney, smile widening, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Hi, Courtney. Gosh, you’re looking blond today.”
Rose stifled a laugh as Kylie departed, vanishing in the flow of taller students. Courtney stared after her, upper lip drawn back almost in a sneer.
“How nice. You made a friend,” Courtney said. “Everyone should have one.”
Then she set off, as usual assuming Rose would keep up. They weaved through the corridor traffic, down the central staircase to the first floor, then cut across to the stairs at the west side of the building. As they walked, Rose realized that she could have found the cafeteria herself. The gym was on the east wing and the caf on the west. Simple enough.
Rose tagged along behind Courtney like some unwanted kid sister, but that was fine with her. She shared Courtney’s obvious desire not to acknowledge that they were together. As they moved through the throngs of students jammed in front of lockers or herding toward their next period classrooms, they joined a flow in the middle of the corridor who were all on their way to the cafeteria.
A left turn brought them into the west wing, through a pair of propped-open sets of double doors, and down half a dozen steps into the caf. At first Rose wondered if some of the kids who had first period lunch had not yet vacated their tables, but then she realized that those already seated had somehow managed to arrive early and had already gotten their lunch. Long tables that seated twenty-four each in attached chairs ran up the center of the huge room in two rows. On either side of those were large, round tables seating eight to ten students each. A quick glance confirmed Rose’s instant suspicion that the younger students were relegated to the long tables, the round and more exclusive ones having been claimed by juniors and seniors.
For the most part.
Apparently, Courtney and her clique warranted some kind of special dispensation, for she marched over to a round table on the left side of the caf and parked her backpack on one of the chairs. She grabbed a spare chair from a stack on the wall and set it into place beside her own without casting a glance at Rose.
“What’s that about?” asked a pretty Latina girl.
Courtney nodded toward Rose. “I get to play ambassador to the new girl.”
Rose watched the reactions on the faces of Courtney’s friends. There were four of them already at the table—the others probably in line for lunch—and their expressions ranged from disdain to amusement. Before any of them could say anything, a dark-haired, broad-shouldered guy came over and set his tray down next to Courtney.
“Hey, babe,” he said, lightly touching her arm. He glanced at Rose out of the corner of his eye. “How’s your day?”
“Perfect,” Courtney said.
“She’s babysitting me,” Rose volunteered, then blinked in surprise that she had bothered to speak at all.
The guy nodded. “Excellent. Will there be spanking if you get out of line?”
Courtney scowled in disgust but Rose couldn’t help laughing.
“You’re a pig, Eric,” Courtney said.
Eric threw up his hands. “Guilty as charged,” he said, then slid into his chair and picked up the milk glass from his tray. Before he could take a drink, his gaze locked on Rose and brightened. “Wait a second.”
He cocked his head, studying her. “New student. You must be Coma Girl!”
They all stared at Rose with new interest and she felt something freeze inside of her. Bad enough they treated her like she was beneath them, but now she was worse than nothing; she was a curiosity. A freak.
“How does that work?” the Latina girl asked.
A tall, pale brunette leaned back in her chair, appraising her. “Simple enough. You go to sleep and wake up and your clothes are all out of style.”
They all laughed. Another girl, lightly freckled, practically leered at her. “So how’d you wake up, Sleeping Beauty? One of the doctors give you a kiss?”
Courtney smiled, obviously enjoying her discomfort.
“You can grill her all you want once I have my lunch,” Courtney said, then turned to Rose. “Come on. They don’t give us much time.”
The two girls got into the lunch line, surprising Rose. She had assumed that Courtney would have cut right in front. But then again, there were plenty of upperclassmen in line, and while Courtney obviously considered herself royalty where other sophomores were concerned, she must have some awarenes
s of the limits of her power in the high school pecking order.
After receiving a plate laden with some kind of pasta, cheese, and red sauce creation the lunch ladies had labeled manicotti, Rose got herself a glass of apple juice and a small salad and started following Courtney back toward their table. Still wearing her backpack, obviously a wanderer with no real place of her own in the school’s student hierarchy, she felt like a puppy dogging its master’s heels.
“Rose!”
Nearly tripping over a pair of crutches an older guy had put down beside his table, she stumbled a bit and almost spilled her juice. When she’d found her footing again, she glanced back and saw that it had been Kylie who called to her from the end of one of the long tables with attached seats. She gestured for Rose to join her, indicating an empty seat beside her. Rose hesitated, glancing at the table full of Courtney’s friends. Did having an ambassador assigned to her mean that she had to stick with that ambassador? Would her failure to do so be perceived as disobedience? She didn’t want to get into trouble on her first day—she owed Aunt Fay and Aunt Suzette more than that.
Kylie called to her again, beckoning with one hand, making a funny face to urge her on. Rose laughed softly and changed direction, glad now that she had not left her backpack at Courtney’s table.
She slid her tray next to Kylie’s and slipped off her backpack.
“Thanks for saving me from the torture of eating with those people,” she said.
Kylie smiled, popping a forkful of salad into her mouth and talking as she chewed. “Yeah, for a minute there I thought you were going to, like, totally ignore me. I was thinking they had taken over your mind or something.”
Rose plopped her backpack between seats and slid into the chair between Kylie and an orange-haired guy talking about football and the army like they were one and the same thing.
“No mind control,” Rose assured her. “It’s just that Mr. McIlveen paired us up and I don’t want him to be angry.”
Kylie had forked another bite of salad but now she used it to gesture toward Courtney’s table, making her point.
When Rose Wakes Page 6