I took off before Kaylee could even finish her startled good-bye or Parker her second eye roll. And then I was outside. Alone. Away from the girls, from the fried food smells, from the strangers and plastic booths and everything that wasn’t Philly.
Away from any interruptions to the memories I continued to parade through my head.
“Have you seen him yet?” she hissed, craning her head to check out every corner of the room.
“Him who?”
When I performed my own room inspection, I didn’t see anyone—or anything—out of the ordinary. Same chalkboard spanning the opposite wall, same bulletin board full of colorful flyers advertising SWIM TEAM TRYOUTS! and FREE TUTORS! and YOUTH GROUP CAMPING TRIP TO AJ ACRES! Same twenty desks, lined up in four rows of five across the green industrial carpeting, the color supposedly picked in an administrative spurt of school spirit. Same group of students settling into those desks. Same ammonia-mixed-with-sweaty-feet smell.
Same sense of being stranded in a room filled with strangers. Kaylee assured me that Clearwater High was small compared to tons of schools, but since I’d been homeschooled back in Philly, the words did little to soothe me.
“No fair.” She sighed, letting her backpack slip from her fingers and smack the floor.
I ignored the typical Kaylee drama and pulled a pen from my backpack. “Who are you talking about?”
I heard rather than saw Kaylee stiffen. “Oh my god, Mila, look!” she said, knocking my arm as she whirled in her chair. The pen flew out of my hand . . . and headed straight for the instigator of the “oh my god, Mila, look” comment’s chest.
In a reflexive motion, my hand whipped out, snagging the pen-missile midair. Great save, until the hand connected to the gray shirt knocked into mine as it sought to do the same. The pen sprang loose and clattered to the floor.
Shaggy dark hair. Lean face. Faded blue eyes—the color of Kaylee’s favorite old jeans—that widened briefly. I had just enough time to register the images before the boy from Dairy Queen dropped into a crouch behind my chair.
He didn’t say anything as he extended the pen to me. Kaylee cleared her throat in a totally obvious um-hum, but I ignored her. I was too busy shaking my hair forward to hide what had to be a brilliant display of red spreading across my cheeks.
So I was correct—the Dairy Queen boy didn’t go to Annandale. And, in a spectacular display of idiocy equaled only by my booth dive yesterday, I’d just assaulted him with a writing utensil. Well played.
“Here you go,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice.
After accepting the pen and placing it on my desk, I turned around, an apology on my lips. It died as I watched his broad shoulders retreat. Smart choice. All the safer from the weird girl and her incredible flying Bic.
“Okay, now that’s a voice I could totally wake up to in the morning,” Kaylee whispered, staring unabashedly.
“Kaylee!” I said, half appalled, half amused. Even though I tried not to follow in her ogling footsteps, my peripheral vision had other ideas. I caught the slump of the boy’s six-foot frame into a chair on the far side of the room, the top of his head level with the bottom of a baby-blue BOOK FAIR! poster. Only fifteen feet of space to escape us, and he’d utilized every available inch.
Obviously my attempted stabbing hadn’t amused him.
From across the room, I noted how only four wavy strands of hair actually grazed the top of the olive buttondown that flapped loosely at his sides, jacket style. The same way I wore Dad’s flannel. Once again, his slim-fitting pants—black this time—hinted at skater rather than farmhand. Today’s black-and-yellow Vans—Kaylee would be in heaven—pretty much clinched the nonlocal look. Still, there were all types at our school, even in the middle of rural Minnesota, so he wasn’t completely out of place.
The bell rang to mark the beginning of the period, a prolonged, discordant groan inciting the usual snickers from students.
Mrs. Stegmeyer cleared her throat before slapping the attendance file onto her desk and resting her clasped, multi-ringed fingers on top of it. Four of her rings were the same as always, but I noticed she’d traded the thick silver one on her right index finger for three thin gold bands, stacked one on top of the other.
Once the chatter ceased, her syrupy voice filled the room, a thick drawl that suggested southern roots. “All right, y’all. Before we move on to roll call, we have a new student to introduce. Hunter, please stand and say a few words about yourself.”
Hunter scuffed his Vans against the floor. His hunched posture said giving an impromptu monologue was about the last thing he wanted to do. I could relate. I’d had to deliver my own less than a month ago in this very room. Back when everything had been too new and weird and overwhelming.
Come to think of it, things really hadn’t changed all that much.
Hunter swiped at a strand of hair that covered one of his eyes, the wavy fall of his bangs making him bear a passing resemblance to the neighbors’ dog, a shaggy briard that kept their horses company in the front yard.
I’d always thought the briard was cute, too.
He stuffed his hands into tight pockets and rose to his full height, his gaze skimming past everyone without really sticking. I flashed him a sympathetic smile as it slid over me.
“Yeah. Hey. I’m Hunter Lowe from San Diego,” he said.
After one more ineffectual swipe at the dark waves grazing his eyelashes, he slumped back into his chair.
“Is that all?” Even Mrs. Stegmeyer seemed surprised at the brevity of his speech.
He shrugged, a loose-limbed, eloquent gesture that almost made words unnecessary.
Kaylee leaned toward me. “It’s okay—no one expects him to be a genius when he looks like that,” she whispered.
I remembered back to my introduction—I hadn’t said much either. Was that the assumption then, too? That I was lacking in brain cells?
I could feel my smile wilt around the edges when I glanced back over at Hunter. Not that he could tell. He was staring out the window, a view with which I’d become intimately acquainted over the past month. I let my line of sight follow his, wondered if he was doing what I did. If he stared beyond the football field, beyond the slow country street behind it, and wished himself back into another place and time.
Every so often during homeroom, I’d sneak a peek at Hunter. And each time, his head was turned toward that window.
When the bell rang, Kaylee jumped out of her seat like the sound had triggered an electric shock. Her eyes were glued to the spot under the window.
“Mila, hurry!” she said, flapping her hands at me.
“What’s the emergency?” But I shouldered my backpack and stood anyway. She nabbed my arm and plowed us between the rows of desks, almost tripping over Mary Stanley’s purple peace sign backpack and taking out Brad Zanzibar as he stooped over to tie his shoe.
Her trajectory led us straight