The lunch lady cleared her throat. “Ahem, your receipt.” She thrust the paper at my tray.
“Oh…thanks,” I said, still sort of dazed by the new guy’s manly good looks.
And even though I felt like a complete dork, I couldn’t stop staring at him. He seemed so familiar, like maybe I’d seen him in a J. Crew catalog or on a sports car commercial. Or maybe he’d been in a hot cocoa ad. I mean, he had this rugged, outdoorsy Nordic quality, like he belonged beside a Swedish milkmaid sipping Swiss Miss at the base of the Alps.
I claimed a seat next to Lucy, opposite Jessie and Nordic Boy. And I could tell right away by the giddy look on Jessie’s face that she’d fallen head over heels. She was probably already picking out china patterns and shopping for curtains in her mind. But honestly, I didn’t take her infatuation all that seriously, because it had a pretty slim chance of sticking if you asked me.
“So this is her,” Jessie gushed, as I took a sip of water. “My best friend, Flora.” Then she swooshed her hand around in front of Nordic Boy like she was showing off a fabulous prize on The Price is Right. “And this is Lars.”
I stifled a giggle. “Hi. Welcome to Punxsy,” I said. Then I shoved the Philly steak into my mouth, so I wouldn’t be forced to engage the English-impaired hottie in any useless chitchat.
“Hi,” Nordic Boy said. “Thanks. Is that what you call it here? Punxsy? I’ve been having quite a hard time with the pronunciation.”
Okay…so I was wrong. Mr. Hottie was not English-impaired after all. In fact, he’d pronounced pronunciation pretty perfectly, although he had a sexy foreign accent I didn’t recognize. And who could blame him for butchering Punxsutawney anyway? I mean, most people outside of Pennsylvania have probably never even heard of it—except for once a year on Groundhog Day. Maybe they’ve heard of it then.
“Yeah, it’s easier than saying Punxsutawney,” I said. “I guess we’re kind of lazy. Hey, where are you from anyway? You speak really good English.”
“Iceland. Reykjavik,” Nordic Boy informed me.
“That’s the capital, you know,” Jessie chirped. “Reykjavik. It’s the capital of Iceland. Lars has been telling me all about it.”
I hate to say it, but it was probably a good thing Jessie was editorializing Nordic Boy’s comments, because I, for one, knew absolutely nothing about Iceland and even less about its capital, Nordic Boy’s hometown. So if Jessie kept explaining things as we went along, there was a tiny chance I’d end up looking a little less like a fool.
“How do you like it here—compared to Iceland, I mean?” I asked Nordic Boy between bites.
“Quite good so far,” he said. “My host family has been very welcoming. And the weather is just intoxicating.”
Jessie nodded eagerly, like she’d been intoxicated by something too.
“What’s the weather like in Iceland?” I decided to ask, picturing massive blocks of, well, ice.
“We have a very moderate climate,” Lars explained. “Never too hot or too cold. But what most people are curious about are our light patterns. We have polar days in the summer, when we get twenty-four hours of sun, and polar nights in the winter, when we get twenty-four hours of darkness.”
“The sun sounds nice,” I said.
“Oh, it is,” Jessie agreed, like she knew.
I guess the conversation wasn’t to the lovebirds’ liking, because without saying a word, Lucy and Jimmy stood up and abandoned us. Rude bastards.
“We’ve gotta get something to eat before the lunch line shuts down,” Jessie suddenly blurted. “C’mon, Lars.”
Maybe it was just my imagination running wild, but I could’ve sworn Nordic Boy shot me a desperate, save-me-from-this-nutcase look as Jessie practically dragged him along behind her. I hated to break it to the boy, but he’d stumbled into the eye of a storm. Once Jessie Haskell set her sights on something…well, there really was no stopping her.
Three
THE next stop on the Torture Flora Express was Honors English. I slunk into the back row and took a seat beside Sean Peterson, then, to keep from falling asleep, I tugged a spiral notebook from my backpack and started copying down all the gibberish our English teacher, Mr. Earley, had scrawled across the board.
And slowly but surely, the rest of the victims trickled in: Andrew Fox, Brittany Gallagher, Dave Michaels, Lucy Tate (without stupid, lame Jimmy Bickford, thank God), a bunch of super-brains I usually don’t have classes with and, just under the wire, the visibly pregnant Carla Pearson and Jessie’s new toy, Nordic Boy.
“Seats everyone!” Mr. Earley barked. “Seats, seats, seats! Any one is as good as another. No need to be finicky. The seating chart will rule the day eventually, so don’t over-think your move.”
The class rumbled out a string of involuntary groans. Assigned seating sucked. It was a rule. And teachers who used such sick methods to torment their students were just plain sadistic.
Without pause, Mr. Earley (who reminded me of an elf who’d eaten one too many Christmas cookies) started chugging through the attendance roll. And don’t ask me how this happened, because I had been paying attention, but…
“Flora Fontain…?”
I didn’t so much as twitch a muscle.
“Fontain, Flora…?”
Nothing.
Andrew Fox leaned over toward my desk. “Raise your hand,” he urged, not quite loud enough for anyone but us to hear.
It finally dawned on me that my name was echoing through the room. “Here,” I choked out.
Mr. Earley plowed full speed ahead. “Andrew Fox.”
My attendance buddy gave the English Elf an energetic wave, then five or six names of people who were academically out of my league drifted by.
“Lars Johannsson,” Mr. Earley called, pausing to search the crowd for the new talent.
Nordic Boy nodded and raised his hand.
“Wonderful to have you. A true honor,” the English Elf said, beaming. It was kind of a weird, suck-upish thing for a teacher to say to a student, really, which made me wonder if Nordic Boy might actually be the Prince of Iceland—if there even is such a thing.
When the reading of the names concluded, Mr. Earley unveiled the dreaded seating chart. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. He’d segregated us by sex in alternating rows: girl, boy…girl, boy. And after lots of shuffling around and bumping into each other, we all finally managed to end up in the right spots. How special.
“Very good, everyone. Very good,” Mr. Earley praised. “Now brace yourselves, because here’s where the real fun begins.”
Shit. This sounded bad. Very bad.
“I’m going to have everyone pair up with a partner of the opposite sex. This row,” he said, pointing at the first row of girls, “please turn your desks to face the row to your left. And this row,” he said, pointing at the first row of boys, “please turn your desks to face the row to your right.”
For a few more minutes, the classroom took on the sound of a major construction zone while everyone dragged their desks into position.
“Perfect! Wonderful! Now we still need this row to turn to the left and this row to turn to the right,” he said, pointing at those of us who’d escaped the first round of musical desks.
Again, the room boomed, scraped and, finally, went quiet. Too quiet. I guess a sure way to shut up a bunch of teenagers is to randomly assign them to a member of the opposite sex for a mysterious and potentially embarrassing task. You probably couldn’t have gotten us to make a peep if you’d threatened to stab us.
Now I hesitate to mention this, since it triggered everything that happened afterward, but here it is: Lars Johannsson, a.k.a. Nordic Boy, was the boy to my left. The evil English Elf had matched me with my best friend’s hot new love-crush, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
“Circulate these, please, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Earley said, dropping a handful of papers on the first desk of each row. When the stack got to me, I realized I’d wasted my tim
e scribbling down all the gibberish from the board, since there it was again in black and white. It figured.
So after an exceedingly brief and utterly unclear lecture on the ins and outs of English poetry, the English Elf broke with the worst news yet: He’d put us in creative pairs to spark our amorous inclinations. Translation: He wanted us to write mushy, romantic poetry about our partners.
Suddenly I missed Mick. I missed him desperately. Mickey Reed Donovan was the only man on earth I wanted to have amorous inclinations toward, no matter what the English Elf had to say about it.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen. Clear your minds. Take a deep breath and relax,” Mr. Earley instructed. He slipped over to the side of the room and switched off the lights. “Now please don’t be alarmed, but I’m going to ask you to do something a bit unorthodox here. And as much as you may object to my request, as much as it may make you uncomfortable, I implore you to at least give it a try. For this exercise, I will need you to gaze intently at your creative partner in silence for five minutes. During this observation period, you should be identifying and taking notes on your partner’s positive qualities. When the observation period ends, you will have fifteen minutes to compose an original poem in your partner’s honor. Any questions?”
I’m sure there were a million questions, like: Are you for real? Did you eat a mad cow burger right before class? Is your medication a little off? But there must have been Super Glue in the Philly steaks, because everyone’s lips seemed to be stuck shut.
Mr. Earley craned his neck back and forth, searching for a response. It was our last chance to object, but unfortunately nobody grew a spine—including me—so who was I to complain?
“Okay, then…begin.”
If you’ve never tried such an asinine experiment, the weirdness of it is almost impossible to explain. And I was lucky. I was stuck in an awkward forced staring contest with a hot Icelandic prince. And even though I didn’t want to notice, there were lots of things about Lars Johannsson that could inspire a poem, like his creamy, angelic complexion, his soft golden locks, his deep chocolate eyes, his sultry, inviting lips, his rugged, masculine jaw—not to mention his rock-hard, chiseled bod. The real challenge was how Lars was going to write anything unbogus about my blotchy skin, crispy orange hair (peroxide fiasco, don’t ask) and boyish figure.
I must admit, at the beginning of the stare-fest I felt pretty creepy. I mean, let’s face it: I was basically molesting the boy with my eyes. And at first, I felt violated too. The whole thing was just so intense it made me nervous. Nervous and excited, if that makes any sense. Anyway, after a while the nerves wore off, and I just started feeling good. Warm and fuzzy and good. And unless I was hallucinating (which was a distinct possibility given so much concentrated staring) Lars was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy himself.
Now before anyone starts thinking I’m some hard-up tramp after my best friend’s new guy, let me assure you such an assumption would be totally off base. I’m a loyal woman in love with the man of my dreams, who just so happens to be like three thousand miles away. Could I help it if I had natural chemistry with a certain sexy Icelandic prince? I think not.
The overhead lights abruptly flickered on. “Time!” Mr. Earley shouted. “Observation has ended. Please begin composing in silence. You have fifteen minutes, ladies and gentlemen.”
I glanced down at my paper. Shit. Something had gone horribly wrong. I swear, I’d meant to note all of Nordic Boy’s attractive qualities. I really had. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t stared at him closely enough either. Believe me, if I described him to the police, he’d be in the slammer before you could blink. Unfortunately, though, what I’d actually chicken-scratched in my notebook was on a different subject altogether: Mick. Maybe my subconscious had substituted my sweet, sweet Mickey D for Jessie’s exotic new boy toy. Maybe what I’d thought were sparks between me and Lars were really memories of sparks between me and Mick. Maybe.
Out of nowhere, my brother’s voice popped into my head. Okay, Flora. Get it together, I heard him say. He’d been away at college for weeks now, but I still couldn’t get him out of my brain. Annoying.
I’m sure it was just my imagination, but the clock seemed to be ticking like a bomb. And everyone around me seemed to be writing away furiously. Could I really be the only half-baked moron to come out of the observation period empty-handed? I mean, someone must have been paired with a hideous freak who defied description. Oh yeah, I forgot: I was the hideous freak. Lars was the one starting with a handicap. Curiously, though, he wasn’t watching the minutes tick away like I was. No, he was writing.
I only had one option. With nine or ten minutes left to scribble down something resembling a poem, I was going to have to make it about Mick. Maybe if I made it just vague enough, nobody would notice the switcheroo.
But there were still two other problems: First, I suck at poetry. And second, my relationship with Mick was pretty much a tragedy at the moment, which for anyone with a literary bone in their body might inspire insightful verse. But me? Not so much. The more I concentrated on Mick, the more I just felt like bawling. I was down to about five minutes, when the seed of an idea finally started to sprout: Mick was precious and talented and sweet and beautiful. And such sparkling qualities were rare, fragile occurrences. Quickly, I jotted down the lines I’d crafted:
To shine so bright
You must be
Made of glass
The English Elf was going to have a field day with me. Three lines? Was that even considered a poem? I had no idea. But at least I’d written something. He’d have to give me credit for trying. Plus, what I’d come up with was vague enough that I could pass it off as Lars-inspired. All things considered, I was feeling pretty comfortable. Who knew, maybe I’d even mail the verse to Mick—if I could get his address, that was.
“Pencils down, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Earley barked. As far as I could tell, Lars and I were both done. But when the hammer came down, a bunch of other people sighed and whined. “I hope you all enjoyed that little exercise,” Mr. Earley said. “Got the creative juices flowing, didn’t it?”
A few suck-ups sycophantically agreed. Then the English Elf opened his mouth to start another sentence, but Carla Pearson interrupted him. “Excuse me, can I go to the bathroom?” she asked, sort of panicky.
Maybe the baby was doing jumping jacks on her bladder. Pregnancy was hell, I could only assume.
“Okay, Miss…?” the English Elf said, scanning the seating chart for Carla’s name.
“Pearson. It’s Carla Pearson. Can I go?” she spat.
“Certainly. Just come up front for the pass,” Mr. Earley said. He dug an oversized plastic key out of his junk drawer and handed it off to Carla, who immediately bolted out the door. “Now where were we…? Oh, yes. Time to read the poems aloud. Who would like to go first? Any volunteers?” he asked, shooting us an eager Indian-corn smile.
To my amazement, about half the class raised their hands at once, including Nordic Boy but not including me. Had I missed a memo or something? Since when were we jumping at the chance to be tortured?
“Yes, Mr. Fox. Please come to the front.”
Andrew Fox? It figured. He was always bending over backward trying to impress people with his Romeo-meets-James Bond act. Personally, I’d rather he just cut the bullshit and embrace his inner nerd.
So I was busy trying to figure out which girl Andrew Fox had been paired with when he started reading his poem aloud. It was a limerick. I could have kicked myself for not thinking of the idea.
Andrew took an exaggerated bow to a chorus of hoots and hollers, then Mr. Earley went back on the hunt for fresh blood. And just like before, there was no shortage of willing victims.
Next, Brittany Gallagher floated to the front of the class, where she turned a classic verse into a Mad Lib by substituting a few different phrases here and there. Of course, the English Elf loved it.
Then four or five more people paraded up front and recited t
heir little creative gems with varying degrees of success. And I couldn’t help noticing that most of the poems were a lot longer than mine, which made me kind of nervous.
As Sean Peterson sauntered back to his seat, Mr. Earley asked, “Who’s next?”
The pool of volunteers was shrinking. Only Dave Michaels, Carla Pearson (who must have slipped back into the room when I wasn’t looking) and, of course, Nordic Boy were up for the challenge.
“Your turn, Mr. Johannsson,” Mr. Earley announced, clearly tickled.
Nordic Boy looked giddy, which suddenly made me want to disappear. I mean, I’d been so concerned with my own sub-par work that I’d forgotten to worry about what Lars might have written about me. What if it was really insulting—in a poetic way, of course? Or what if it was ridiculously embarrassing? Or what if he’d tried too hard and made us both look like idiots? The cringe-worthy possibilities were endless.
And apparently I wasn’t the only one on the edge of my seat either, because as Lars strolled up to the front of the class, a rumble of hushed whispers rolled through the room.
Without explanation, the Icelandic prince dragged Mr. Earley’s chair from his desk and positioned it to face me. Then he climbed up on the damn thing and stood there staring at me like I was a delicious ice cream sundae. I swear to God, I could feel people around me going into shock, like they were witnessing a natural disaster or a tragic car accident (or just the juiciest new piece of gossip they could spread like wildfire).
With his eyes locked on mine and his hands clasped over his heart, Lars Johannsson spilled the following words in slow motion:
In thine eyes swim
Fire and desire
Which mere mortal men
Resist not
For the burn and the yearn
Transform worlds
In thine eyes
Film at Eleven Page 2