The air conditioning was running full blast, a pathetic mechanical hum echoing through the halls. But the outdated system didn’t stand a chance against this heat wave. It was even hotter upstairs in the administration building than it was outside in the parking lot.
As we walked into English class, I stopped for a minute under the fluorescent light, the one that had burned out when Lena and I had collided on the way into this room the first day I saw her. I stared up at the cardboard squares in the ceiling.
You know, if you look really close, you can still see the burn mark around the new light.
How romantic. The scene of our first disaster. Lena followed my eyes up to the ceiling. I think I see it.
I let my eyes linger on the squares speckled with perforated dots. How many times had I sat in class staring up at those dots, trying to stay awake or counting them to pass time? Counting minutes left in a class period, periods left in the day—days into weeks, weeks into months, until I got out of Gatlin?
Lena walked by Mrs. English, who was buried in first day of school papers at her desk, and slid into her old seat on the infamous Good-Eye Side.
I started to follow her, but I sensed someone behind me. It was that feeling you get when you’re in line and the person after you is standing way too close. I turned around, but no one was there.
Lena was already writing in her notebook when I sat down at the desk next to hers. I wondered if she was writing one of her poems. I was about to sneak a look when I heard it. The voice was faint, and it wasn’t Lena’s. It was a low whisper, coming from over my shoulder.
I turned around. The seat behind me was empty.
Did you say something, L?
Lena looked up from the notebook, surprised.
What?
Were you Kelting? I thought I heard something.
She shook her head.
No. Are you okay?
I nodded, opening my binder. I heard the voice again. This time I recognized the words. The letters appeared on the page, in my handwriting.
I’M WAITING.
I slammed it shut, clenching my hands to stop them from shaking.
Lena looked up at me.
Are you sure you’re okay?
I’m fine.
I didn’t look up once for the rest of the period. I didn’t look up while I failed the quiz on The Crucible. Not when Lena participated, straight-faced, in a class discussion about the Salem witch trials. Or when Emily Asher made a less than clever comparison between dear, departed Macon Ravenwood and the possessed townsfolk in the play, and a ceiling tile suddenly came loose and smacked her on the head.
I didn’t look up again until the bell rang.
Mrs. English was staring at me, her expression so unnerving and blank that for a second I thought both her eyes could have been glass.
I tried to tell myself that it was the first day of school, which could make anyone crazy. That she’d probably just had a bad cup of coffee.
But this was Gatlin, so there was a pretty good chance I was wrong.
Once English was over, Lena and I didn’t have any other classes together until after lunch. I was in Trig and Lena was in Calculus. Link—and now Ridley—had been bumped down to Consumer Math, the class the teachers enrolled you in when they finally admitted you weren’t going to make it past Algebra II. Everyone called it Burger Math because all you learned was how to make change. Link’s whole schedule read like the teachers had decided he was going to be working at the BP station with Ed after graduation. His schedule was basically one big study hall. I had Bio; he had Rocks for Jocks. I had World History; he had CSS—Cultures of Southern States, or “Checking Out Savannah Snow,” as he called it. Compared to Link, I looked like a rocket scientist. He didn’t seem to care—or if he did, there were too many girls following him around for him to notice.
To be honest, it didn’t matter, because all I wanted to do was get lost in the familiar blur of the first day of school so I could forget about the crazy message in my binder.
I guess there’s nothing like a crappy summer filled with near-death experiences to make the first day of school seem great in comparison. Until I got to the cafeteria, where it was sloppy joe day. Of course it was. Nothing said first day of school like sloppy joes.
I found Lena and Ridley easily enough. They were sitting alone at one of the orange lunch tables, with a steady stream of guys circling like vultures. Everyone had heard about Ridley by now, and all the guys wanted to check her out.
“Where’s Link?”
Ridley tilted her head toward the back of the lunchroom, where Link was moving from table to table like he was the MVP at the state championship or something. I noticed her tray, full of chocolate pudding, red Jell-O cubes, and slices of dry-looking angel food cake. “Hungry, Rid?”
“What can I say, Boyfriend? Girl’s got a sweet tooth.” She picked up a bowl of pudding and dug in.