Sophie slapped my hand to make me stop fidgeting. Then she gasped, dug her fingers into my arms, and spun me around. A guy I’d never seen before closed the driver’s door of a black Mercedes coupe. He ran his left hand through his caramel-coloured hair as he turned to look at the school. Then he lifted the tan leather strap of his bag over his head, adjusted it across his chest, and glanced at all the students milling around on the grass and the front steps. “Holy shit. Who is that?” Sophie whispered.
I didn’t respond. I just watched him. He walked smoothly and confidently for a few steps, then looked down at the ground for a step—as if what he was doing was the last thing he wanted to be doing. His grey trousers, light blue-grey shirt, and expensive-looking black dress shoes were not the typical look for our high school. His skin was tanned like he’d just gotten back from the south of France or something, and his shiny silver watch must have cost a fortune. When he got close enough that I could tell he was over six-feet tall, and his eyes were the most intoxicating shade of blue, he smiled. It was a shy smile. His chin was down, but he glanced up briefly before flashing his insanely white and perfectly straight teeth at Sophie.
She and I both stared at him as he continued towards the front door of the school and disappeared inside. “He’s beautiful.” Sophie sighed.
“And he smiled at you,” I whispered, as I checked to see if Doug was listening. He wasn’t paying attention.
“He didn’t smile at me, you geek.” Sophie smacked my arm with the back of her hand. “He smiled at you.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Ya, he did. I’ll get the 411 on him for you.” She jiggled around excitedly.
“What? No. I don’t want you to do that.”
“Hi Derian,” a male voice interrupted us before I had a chance to axe her scheme.
I jumped a little because I hadn’t even noticed Steve Rawlings walk up. He was a friend who sat on student council with me the year before I left. He looked different. He’d grown about six inches and got his braces off. His hair was cut really short—probably because it was the first day of school. He was kind of a keener like that. He actually looked cute.
“Hi Steve.”
“Welcome back, Deri. Are you coming to peer mentoring?”
“Oh, I didn’t sign up to be a mentor.”
“I know, but I remembered you said you wanted to be a mentor in junior year. So, when I heard you were coming back, I signed you up. Hope that’s okay. Mr. Orton said he was going to send you an email. Sorry. He must have forgotten. I would have told you, but I don’t have your email or phone number. It’s cool if you have other things you need to do.”
“I did, I mean, I do want to be a mentor. Yeah, thanks.”
Sophie grabbed my elbow to hold me back. “She’ll be right with you,” she said to Steve, then whispered in my ear, “I’ll fill you in on the new guy by lunch.”
“What? No. Don’t embarrass me,” I hissed back.
She giggled in a maniacal way, held up two fingers in a peace sign, and moved to lean against Doug. Doug draped his arm over her shoulders and kissed her neck. There wasn’t any way to stop her once her mind was set on something, so I didn’t bother to protest more before I walked away.
“Do you want me to carry your bag?” Steve offered.
“Oh, it’s basically empty. But thanks for asking.”
He smiled in a nervous way that made me feel vicariously awkward.
It took a while, but I eventually came up with something to say to break the silence. “You grew a lot since I saw you last.”
His face winced slightly, maybe wishing I hadn’t reminded him he used to be smaller than me. “A bit.”
“And have you been working out or something?”
His cheeks definitely went red at that point, which wasn’t the effect I was going for. “I’ve been coaching tennis at the community centre.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you played.”
“I’ve been on the school tennis team since grade eight.” He looked a little hurt that I didn’t know.
“Right, I knew that,” I scrambled. Truthfully, football was the only sport I paid attention to since it was what Trevor had played in high school.
Steve chuckled, “I was on student council with you too. My name’s Steve. Do you at least remember that?”
I squished up my face and squinted exaggeratedly. “You look vaguely familiar,” I joked, and we walked into the students’ lounge, where the grade eights were all huddled around, chattering.
The chairs were set up in two rows facing each other. Our principal yelled for the mentors to sit along one side. Steve and I sat beside each other and talked as we waited for our buddies to be assigned. A tiny girl with strawberry curls sat down in the chair in front of Steve. She grinned shyly and her cheeks turned pink as if she thought Steve was one of the celebrities in Kailyn’s magazine.
“Hi. I’m Steve Rawlings.” He reached his arm out and shook her hand.
She scanned the room, as if she hoped her friends could see that she lucked out and got a hot guy as her mentor. My buddy was as small as the girl and even a little skinnier. He had dark hair and very pale skin. His eyes were hard to see because he wore wire-rimmed glasses, and he hadn’t looked up since he sat down.
“Hi. I’m Derian. What’s your name?”
He glanced up. His eyes were big and brown. He focused back down at his lap and said, with an adorable cartoon-pitched voice, “Nikolai.”
“Nice to meet you, Nikolai. Do you have any questions about high school so far?”
His head tilted up, but he didn’t speak.
“That’s what I’m here for. If you need anything at all, just ask me.”
He shook his head—not like he didn’t have any questions, more like he was too afraid to ask them.
“When I was in grade eight I wanted to know lots of things.” I pulled out the map from his student agenda and showed him where all the important things were. “This is where my locker is.” I marked it with a circle on the map. “If you need anything just come find me.”
He smiled a little and looked around nervously, as if he expected someone to spring on him or something. At that point, the principal shouted instructions again.
After we walked our buddies to their lockers and pointed them in the right direction for their first classes, I asked Steve, “Were we that cute in grade eight?”
“You were. I definitely wasn’t. What’s your first class?”
“Um,” I opened my binder and read my schedule. “English with Mrs. Tookey.”
“Kooky Tookey. Me too. May I have the honour of escorting you to class, Miss Lafleur?” He presented his arm so I could hook my arm around his elbow like a Jane Austen character.
“Certainly, my dear sir.”
We sat beside each other halfway down the aisle of desks in Mrs. Tookey’s classroom. She really was kooky. She breezed in with a trail of rainbow scarves twisting behind her. Her hair was clumped into long dirty-blonde dreads and tied into a ponytail with a red