Chapter One: AP Lit and the New Kid

"Did you see him?"

Navigating the hallways of Rose Pointe Academy was never exactly what one would imagine to be excruciatingly difficult. Looking in from the outside, it appeared to be the paramour of reality in the high school setting: students crowding about, chatting both pleasantly and angrily about a myriad of different problems, while clutching backpack straps and trying to look overly casual. From the inside, it was an utter jungle of human limbs with the chatter of conversation providing a harsh background. If I ever make it to the Amazon, I doubt I will have a problem with the tall grass and other dangers, given my bona fide training received in the seemingly harmless corridors of Rose Pointe Academy.

"See whom?" I made the mistake of turning to look at my friend Tara. A sophomore took advantage of that and barreled through the grip Tara had on my backpack. Immediately, the rush forced us to opposite sides of the hallway. I think that I heard the impact of Tara’s skull against a locker, but it was probably just my overactive imagine piping in. Still, Tara, at a whopping five feet tall, has never really managed to learn to fight the crowd. Everyday we compare bruises in the twenty-minute downtime between lunch and art, and she always wins.

"There’s a new student at Rose Pointe!" Tara jumped so that she could see me over the heads of the other students. Given her height, or lack of it, this was pretty futile.

I shouldered through an overly amorous couple, ignoring the combined shriek/yell of indignation that followed me. "There’s always a new student here," I called back, grunting as a football player did a very convincing imitation of a head-on tackle—on me. He didn’t even notice; he just laughed at a joke his friend told and continued on down the hall, like my 5’7" frame didn’t even matter. "We are the closest private school to the Air Force Base."

Although I couldn’t see Tara through the crowd, past experience told me that she was rolling her eyes at me.

Indeed, she still looked annoyed when she managed to find an open space in the crowd and latched herself back onto my backpack. "A new senior, Kat. A new senior." Now I could see why she was so intrigued. Being a private school with very high tuition, it was very odd for a senior to start at Rose Pointe at the beginning of the year, much less two months later.

We were reaching the end of the freshman hallway, known as the B1 Hallway to any non-student at Rose Pointe, so the wild mass of arms and legs and backpacks was thinning. Still, Tara did not relinquish her death grip on my No Boundaries backpack (thirteen bucks at the local Wal-Mart, score one for Kat Greeley), and I did not turn to look at her. Past folly had taught us not to look or let go until we were in the clear. "You’re kidding," I said to the air in front of me as we wove through a pack of giggling girls that smelled overly of Bath and Body Works.

Three fingers waved at me from Tara’s right hand. Actually, they waved at my ear, the only place Tara could reach without standing on her toes or letting go of my bag. "Scout’s honor, I swear," she said solemnly. "He’s in my homeroom. Amber isn’t here today, so I talked to him instead. It’s his first day."

We reached the set of metal doors separating the freshman hallway from "the Point," the area where the entire school intersected to split off into several corridors. The English rooms, where we were headed, were to the right, in the C1 Hallway. After that, I would have to head upstairs to C2, and Tara would make a sprint to A2. We made it across the Point rather easily, even with the crush of bodies from the main staircase that led to A2, B2, and C2. Although it was nowhere near as crowded as the freshman hallway, the Point was the loudest place in the school. Conversation was impossible, although students still tried.

"And you didn’t even offer to guide him through the jungles—I mean hallways?" I asked as soon as I knew Tara could hear me. We had passed through the blue doors separating the Point from C1. "That was pretty ungracious of you."

Tara rolled her eyes again. "I did offer," she insisted, throwing the mane of blonde curls that made her stand out behind one shoulder. Although it was eight o’clock in the morning, and Tara had just fought a battle against the freshmen and jocks, she looked as though she had just stepped out of a magazine. Not a blonde, curled hair was astray. "He said that he could take them. Naturally, I laughed, but he insisted that he’s fought in wars scarier than the hallways at Rose Pointe."

We both laughed. How misguided of him.

"Enough about that. Just wanted to fill you in on the local excitement of Rose Pointe." Tara shook her head again, dislodging the blonde curls from her shoulder. "My mom got me a new exercise tape on the way home from work last night. This one’s all about abs—wanna come over tonight and work out with me? Just for a couple of hours? We can hang out." She tried to look pouty, but failed incredibly. One thing Tara does not have going for her are the puppy dog eyes and pouty lips. She doesn’t use them on anybody but me, anyway. Tara has to be the most hardheaded person I know. Bribing people and begging just do not appeal to her at all.

I checked my watch. We still had three minutes until we had to separate to our English classes—Tara to the wonderful world of Mrs. Bowser’s Mythology and Literature and me to the dusty nap-time of Mr. Thomas’s Advanced Placement Literature. "Tara—it’s Tuesday. You know I can’t do anything on Tuesdays."

Tara tilted her head quizzically. "Is it Tuesday?" she asked rhetorically. "I thought it was Wednesday."

Tara really is smart, I promise. She is just stubborn and forgetful, which do not make for good traits when combined. It means that I hardly ever win any fights, due to technicalities. Even if I am right, I tend to lose to Tara’s willful personality.

"No, Tara," I told her in the same voice one uses for a three-year-old. I played with my backpack strap, not really looking at her. Eye-contact has never been my forte. "It’s Tuesday. Which means…well, you know."

"Yeah." Tara actually pulled a face, as though she had eaten something sour. Her pointed features then contorted into a scowl. I had been dreading that expression. Tara can scowl like my mother, which is certainly an impressive feat. Over the years of dealing with me and my different "experiments," my mother has developed a very good scowl. It took Tara less than a month to come up with the very same one. "Yeah, I understand. It’s all right."

I tried to smile apologetically. "Thanks."

Tara perked up quite suddenly, as though somebody had hit a light switch inside her. "But you’ll come over tomorrow, right? When it really is Wednesday?"

I had a paper due on Friday, but I had plans to finish it that night, instead of procrastinating. I happen to be in the small population that only procrastinates when a reminder of adolescence is absolutely necessary. "Yeah. I’ll come over when it really is Wednesday. But another Buns of Steel exercise video—or even a glimpse of Richard Simmons—and I swear I will chuck your entire TV out the window."

This deleted the lingering remnants of the scowl. "Great!" Tara said enthusiastically. "Bonnie and I will come get you at six, all right? You don’t have to eat dinner with your uncle or anything, do you?"

"Only on Tuesdays," I promised, gripping my backpack strap with both hands. The weight of my AP Lit book, which is over two thousand pages, was starting to drag me backwards.

"Great! Time for English! See you at lunch!" With that, Tara was off like a shot, and I realized that we were standing in front of Mr. Thomas’s classroom. I shook my head. Tara is the only person with the ability to make me forget where I am.

I chewed on the corner of my lip as I entered the dimmed room. Two cream-colored walls and a wall that was half-covered by three shuttered windows looked back at me fixedly. Mr. Thomas has never been a fan of interior decorating, so the walls remind me of milk. That, combined with a monotone voice to rival Ben Stein’s, and the contents of the actual class syllabus, was the perfect entombment for a nap.

Although AP Lit was a senior class, my grades had rocketed me straight past the freshman English course and into the Mrs. Bowser’s junior English. That had meant that I had spent my sophomore year with no English class, much to the envy of Tara Staples. They were only letting me take a senior English class in my junior year because my uncle had threatened to withdraw his donation—and me—from the school if they chose otherwise.

As my uncle is a very big business owner in the area and his donation is always rather generous, they hastily put me into the class.

I sat down in my normal seat, in the second seat of the row nearest the windows. It was as inconspicuous as possible. Plus, there was the ever-present hope that Mr. Thomas would one day crack the shutters open the slightest inch and let me in on a view of freedom. Unfortunately, I was still holding out on that one, and the wellspring of hope was starting to run dry. Mr. Thomas was either a vampire, or he just had a thing for being blue-blooded.

Mr. Thomas did not look up from the manual he was reading as I walked past his desk. But then, I hadn’t expected him to.

Another person, however, did. "Kat!" Mary-Anne Greeley cried, seeing me. She had been perched over some book or another, but her sixth sense had informed her of my presence. "There you are. You’re later than usual this morning."

My backpack clunked rather ominously as I released it from my shoulder. "Tara and I were discussing evening plans for tomorrow. You know how that gets." Mary-Anne just shook her head, smiling.

There is not a person that knows me better than Mary-Anne Greeley. As a matter of fact, we grew up together. We even celebrate our birthdays together; we were born four days apart. Although our names suggest that we are sisters, we are actually cousins, related through our fathers. Mary-Anne’s father is the only reason I am able to attend Rose Pointe Academy; without him, I would be at the local high school, Modern High School. MHS is not really known for the standard of the its average class, and I was already bored at Rose Pointe, so I am grateful to my Uncle Matthew for that opportunity. Even though my father abandoned my family on my third birthday, his brother still looks out for my mother and I. That means Tuesday night dinners at the other Greeley household.

"Another exercise video?" Mary-Anne asked sympathetically now, shutting her book so that I could see the title. As I had suspected, it was a book of poetry that Mary-Anne had probably found somewhere within the confines of the library’s oldest room. "Isn’t she giving up on that yet? She’s twenty pounds underweight already. I swear, that girl’s anorexic or something."

I shrugged. I had heard all of the things people normally had to say about Tara before. "Confidence issues, and she’s not anorexic, trust me. Just small." I started to rummage through my backpack. "You’re giving me a ride after school, right?"

"As if I would forget." Mary-Anne grinned again, bringing on the full power of the "Greeley Grin." Both of us, as well as Mary-Anne’s older brother, had inherited that awe-inducing grin. We all had some familial resemblance, like the blue-green eyes we had inherited from our fathers. Other than that, though, it was very hard to tell that we were related. Mary-Anne is about four inches shorter than me, with light brown hair that’s down to her shoulders. She’s also almost on the painful side of being thin, like Tara. Unlike Tara, she has a very studious, serious look about her. Tara just manages to look like the average version of the everyday party girl. Mary-Anne lives up to her old-fashioned name.

My cousin is very pretty, if not a knockout. I’m not so bad myself. Granted, my hair is that awful shade between blonde and red and it’s always pulled away from my face (having it on the back of my neck irks me). Tara swears that I would look better with my hair down, but I think that I look fine with it in a ponytail. My features aren’t nearly so finely-boned as Tara’s or so elegant as Mary-Anne’s. In fact, I’m inclined to think that I look like the average seventeen-year-old, which is certainly not a problem. Standing out is not something I strive to do. Unfortunately, my contented harmony in not standing out does just the opposite: in a crowd, I will forever stand out like a sore thumb.

Well, it makes me easier to pick out of photographs, I guess.

"What’s on the menu tonight?" I asked as I flipped through Advanced Literature, Seventh Edition. The book was so large that I feared a phone call to Mastodon Press, the publishing company, might be in order to remind them that when they published a seventh edition of a book, putting the first six editions in the same book was just not wise.

"Chicken Parmesan. Uncle Ross and Aunt Lydia are coming, too. And they’re bringing Elliot and Joel." As if on cue, we both pulled a disgusted face. Elliot, our older cousin, was generally a nice guy, if a bit of an eccentric character. I get along with him all right, but he and Mary-Anne have been at each other’s throats for years. Joel is the cousin that we both avoid like the plague. Only a year younger than the both of us, he was a football player at Taylor Academy, a prep school about three hours north of Warrendale, the town we had all grown up in. He was a quarterback, and pretty good at his sport.

The only problem was that he knew it.

"Can’t I skip just this once?" I begged, trying not to groan. The clock had reached 7:59, which meant that English would start in one minute with Mr. Thomas clearing his throat. "Joel still has that gross Freudian thing going on for me." Before he had been accepted at Taylor, Joel had followed me around the hallways of Pointe Rose like some sickening little puppy dog.

"He does not," Mary-Anne insisted, now rolling her eyes at me. "He liked Tara, not you. And you know how the male population of Rose Pointe sees her. Besides, if you skip, who’s gonna be the liaison for your mother? She’s the one that has to spend all day with Aunt Lydia. You can’t leave her alone for dinner with the ice-queen."

Aunt Lydia had rightfully earned that name sometime when both Mary-Anne and I were in fifth grade, due to an incident with a toad, The Once and Future King, and Elliot’s toothbrush.

"Can I invite her, then?" I asked desperately, keeping one eye on the clock.

Mary-Anne looked confused. "Invite your mother? Kat, she comes every week—"

"No," I interrupted. "Can I invite Tara? She actually thought Joel was cute!" It was a bit of a stretch; Tara had definitely thought Joel as nothing but strange. But then, she thought my whole family was weird. Anybody who didn’t know Mary-Anne personally thought her to be some giant snob, but I knew that she was just more interested in books than in people. That wasn’t a bad thing. My Aunt Lorry is an ex-hippie who still likes to drag out incense from time to time. My Uncle Ross has a thing for dressing up the geese statuettes on his lawn. Everybody in Warrendale knew about my mother, so what use was it to hide that she was bipolar? The Greeleys of Warrendale would always be viewed as strange.

Before I got my answer from Mary-Anne, however, Mr. Thomas cleared his throat and my daily nap instinct kicked in. I ignored it. Although I could have passed Mary-Anne a note, she was always absorbed in whatever Mr. Thomas was talking about. It really was no wonder that they had moved her up a year ahead, instead of me. She was the ideal student: attentive, with a crisp punctuality in all things concerning classwork, and an inquisitive mind. I was the more laid-back of our duo. I usually spent the class hours doodling or daydreaming.

There was no napping to be done when faced with the prospect of dealing with Elliot and Joel for an entire evening. What was Joel even doing down here from Taylor, anyway? It was the middle of October, a month that certainly didn’t leave room for school breaks. And it was the middle of football season, or at least the beginning. Joel really had no reason to leave Taylor at all, as far as I could see it. I frowned as I pulled out a fresh sheet of notebook paper and stared at the menacing sea of blue lines.

When no ideas for a story or poem hit me, I sighed and put my pencil to the paper. "Tara," I wrote in what Mary-Anne swears to be the most abominable handwriting she has ever seen, "I’m sitting in English, and as usual, I’m bored to tears. I think he’s talking about the paper that’s due on Friday, really, so I should probably be paying attention…" Here I trailed off to glance at Mr. Thomas, seeing if there was any credibility in my written word. Seeing that I was far from correct, I returned to the note. "Mary-Anne is, of course, paying heed to every word tumbling from that man’s lips. How ever does she do that? The man could be promising to buy us all tickets to the Vans Warped Tour next summer, and it would still be boring. Hasn’t he ever heard of inflection?"

I was about to launch into a description of the number of times I have heard Mr. Thomas’s voice use any expression (two and counting) when the door opened.

Now, in some classrooms, this might be commonplace. For Mr. Thomas’s class, this was not the case. The only thing that Mr. Thomas ever had a problem with was a student who was late for class. In fact, some students that ended up being late just decided to skip the class entirely just to avoid the acute embarrassment. So once the bell rang, that door never opened.

But in stepped a guy who looked a little older than me. As I am the only junior to ever make it into Mr. Thomas’s AP Lit class, it was pretty safe to believe that this guy was probably a senior. He looked pretty average on all terms, except that he had forgone the normal khaki pants/collared polo shirt combination that most of the male population at Rose Pointe Academy donned every morning. Instead, he wore a pair of dark grey trousers, the creases remarkably crisp, and a button-up long-sleeved black shirt. The first two buttons were undone, leaving the collar loose and exposing a white undershirt. In that expanse hung a silver cross. The most prominent feature about him besides his clothing was his nose, which kind of resembled a beak. His hair was a mixture between bronze and brown, and his eyes were dark brown. Although it was the middle of October, he was tanned, as well.

So maybe he wasn’t so average after all.

"Mr. Thomas?" he asked into the tense silence, swiveling to look at Mr. Thomas’s desk. He looked hesitantly at the schedule, and then back at the class. Half of the class was still dozing complacently, while the rest of us were staring at him in shocked silence. This obviously unnerved him, for he shifted his backpack strap. "Sorry—I’m Nathaniel Reiss. I’ve just transferred into Rose Pointe, and I’m afraid I got lost on the way to your class." He gave Mr. Thomas a cheeky grin, thoroughly unaware of his doom. Walking into Mr. Thomas’s class late, new student or not, bore certain repercussions.

Mr. Thomas opened his mouth, but the spurt of angry insults that I had anticipated did not come flying out. Instead, he grunted once. "Fine. Take a seat behind Miss Greeley over there, Mr. Reiss."

The portion of the class that was still awake looked between Mary-Anne and I, confused as to which Miss Greeley Mr. Thomas had been talking about. Unaware that he had been given two options of where to sit, Nathaniel Reiss took the seat behind Mary-Anne, so that he was sitting diagonally behind me. I exchanged amused glances with Mary-Anne and returned to my writing.

"There’s now a new student in the class. He’s probably the one you talked to in homeroom. He must be something special: Mr. Thomas didn’t snap, bark, or even growl at him for walking in late and disrupting the lesson. He’s surprisingly well-dressed for a Rose Pointe attendant. Most of the guys here wouldn’t know clothing that wasn’t in an ad somewhere as things to cover the body just as well. But then, why give the male congregation at Rose Pointe any credit for being intelligent? Mom always told me never to get my hopes up too high." I stopped before I could go on a rant about the male population of Rose Pointe, a rant that Tara can practically recite back to me from the sheer number of times she has heard it. "And Mr. Thomas is STILL going on about that essay that’s due Friday."

I paused in my sarcastic commentary and chanced a glance to see if Mary-Anne was still paying attention to Mr. Thomas’s lesson. It usually took her about twenty minutes to cave in and return to whatever poetry or obscure stories she had been reading through. Today, however, she was doing neither; instead of reading or paying attention, she was looking down at her hands, which were tapping her desk in another one of her rhythms. After a minute’s concentration, I recognized the Chopin piece she had been practicing for the family dinner that always came in November.

"Mary-Anne’s staring off into space, which is certainly odd. Something must have happened between her and Trent. I never knew exactly what she saw in that guy, really." Just writing down the name of Trent Dulmore made me glance across the room, where Trent’s older brother James was sitting. Trent was a junior like me, but he was older than Mary-Anne, who was a senior. "He’s entirely too brash, rude and completely inconsiderate. Plus, he’s always on about Lacrosse. How can she be interested in somebody who can talk of nothing but the upcoming Lacrosse finals? That would get really old VERY quickly, or at least I’m inclined to think. I must ask her about him and how she tolerates that constant blather when I we’re alone sometime. Heaven knows that won’t be tonight. Trying to get some alone time with Joel following me around like a demented puppy dog is like trying to find a point in The Great Gatsby."

"Oh, yeah, I should mention that Joel is down from Taylor. Remember? He transferred there at the beginning of this year. And for some strange reason—I don’t know why—he’s back." I glanced up at the clock and thanked the heavens above that I’m a very slow writer when I want people to be able to read my handwriting. Only twenty minutes of AP Lit remained. "Mary-Anne just told me. She swears that he has got the world’s biggest crush on you. I thought you’d love to hear that. And yes, I’m grinning now."

I was going to get murdered for this note. Tara was probably going to strangle me.

Before I could finish penning my doom, a note landed on the corner of my desk, thoroughly startling me into dropping my pen. Hurriedly, I scooped that up and took the note. A look in Mary-Anne’s direction told me that it couldn’t have been her; she was once again reading through her book of poetry. Apparently, Mr. Thomas had already become boring enough even for her. Behind her, Nathaniel Reiss had one eyebrow raised as he looked pointedly out the window.

"And I think this new kid just passed me a note. Now I’m curious."

Pretending indifference, I unfolded the note and pushed it up under my AP Lit book, so that Mr. Thomas wouldn’t see what I was reading. The handwriting that stared back at me was slanted and scratchy, but perfectly legible, unlike my own. It was short and simple. "Hi. I’m Nate. Who’s the girl in front of me?"

Well, somebody was quite forward for being at a new school. I tapped the end of my pen against my lower lip as I glanced surreptitiously at Mr. Thomas. Deciding that it was safe, I wrote, "Hi, Nate. Her name’s Mary-Anne Greeley," and left it at that. Years at Rose Pointe proved invaluable in helping me deliver the note back to Nate’s desk.

"Okay, he’s definitely interested in Mary-Anne. He’s a bit rude, too. His note said, "Hi, I’m Nate. Who’s the girl in front of me?" Not so much as a "Who are you?" or "Pleased to meet you." How rude is that?"

My ranting was once again cut short by the arrival of another note. This time I kept a firm grip on my pen. The same slanting handwriting looked up at me. "Thanks. I think I forgot to ask you your own name. Sorry about that."

Concealing my snort, I replied, "My name’s Kat." I looked at my note to Tara and then at the clock. Passing notes with Nate would be more interesting than a long-winded spiel to Tara. I decided to go out on a limb. "I think you met my friend Tara in homeroom. She said you were new in town. Where are you from?"

"And in ‘Oedipus Rex,’ which we will be starting next week," Mr. Thomas’s drone cut into my concentration as I passed the note back, "we will see several similar elements of tragedy. Of course, one of the most famous tragedies is about the daughter of Oedipus. We will be covering ‘Antigone,’ her story, directly after we finish ‘Oedipus Rex.’" He looked around the room, but did not notice the three people who were quite obviously sleeping. "Of course, your next paper—" These words woke quite a few people up. "—Will be covering a tragic character in comparison to good old Oedipus himself. Due on the twenty-fourth, of course."

This monologue prompted me to scrounge in the depths of my backpack for the planner that has become my prison. I flipped open to Friday, the twenty-fourth of October, and scribbled in the prompt for the Oedipus Rex paper. In the meantime, the reply from Nate fluttered onto my desk.

"Tara Staples, right? Small, blonde, squeaky? Yes, I’m new. Word travels fast in Rose Pointe. My dad just moved us in this weekend. From Montana."

Before I could reply, however, a nudge on my elbow distracted me. Mary-Anne had apparently wrenched herself away from the poetry book. She was looking at my planner expectantly, waiting for me to pass it over. It was rare enough that I caught an assignment that she missed, but I still gave her the planner. When she was done copying, she showed it to Nate, who nodded at both of us and wrote the assignment down on a sheet of paper. By the time I received my planner back, the bell was about to ring and Mr. Thomas was reviewing the conditions for the paper that was due Friday. I ignored him as I packed my bag and folded Tara’s note.

Most of the class stumbled out of the room sluggishly when the bell rang. Of course, most of them had just woken up from fifty-minute long naps. Mary-Anne and I took a little longer to leave for the packed hallways. To my surprise, Nate followed the pair of us, like we were guides. "Wait—Kat," he called before I could be swept into the current. Mary-Anne had already gone out ahead of both of us. "Sorry about the note. I really didn’t mean to be rude. I just wanted to make sure I was sitting in the right spot."

I hitched my backpack up. "It was no big deal, really," I assured him. My eyes roved over the hall, not really looking at him. "He gave you two options Mary-Anne and I are both Miss Greeley to him. We don’t discriminate."

Nate looked confused. "Wait—are you two sisters or something?"

"Nope—cousins. We’re the same age, but she’s a year ahead of me. Don’t ask, it’s a long story." I glanced into the crowd, but Tara’s bright curls weren’t anywhere to be spotted. That wasn’t a problem; I could deliver my note later. In the meantime, I turned to Nate, determined to play Good Samaritan. "Need any help navigating the hallways? It’s a bit hectic."

"A bit?" Nate eyed the throng like it was some kind of berserk enemy. "Maybe I’ll take you up on that." He took a piece of paper out of his back pocket and studied it. In the dimmed light of the C1 corridor, I recognized it to be a class schedule. "Do you know how to get…uh…to C-Two-Zero-Eight? Can you tell me how, at least?"

"Better yet," I said, smiling, "I’ll show you. I’m going to the room next door. I’ll be your guide for now. How’s that sound?"

Relief spread over Nate’s hawk like features. "Great. You really shouldn’t take these hallways unarmed."

"Yeah, but they don’t allow us to bring machetes now. I mean, after that incident my freshman year…" I looked around the rush for an opening. "Okay, quick, hold onto my backpack and don’t let go, whatever you do." With that, I plunged into the crowd, heading for the staircase that exclusively connected C1 and C2. I could feel Nate’s grip on my backpack tighten as the crush pushed in on us from all sides. He was still with me when we reached the staircase, though. Already, I could tell that he was better at fighting his way through than Tara was. We arrived at the staircase unscathed, a miracle in itself.

Nate and I reached our classrooms with several minutes to spare, because C208 and C209 were right next to the staircase. "Well, this is where I leave you," I told him outside of C208. "Have fun."

Nate eyed the door, his expression only slightly apprehensive. "Oh, yes," he said sarcastically. "The joy of all joys. Advanced Calculus." He crammed his schedule back into his back pocket.

I gave him a shrug. "You picked it, not me." Math and I have never gotten along. In science, I prefer biology to chemistry, to avoid numerical values as much as possible. The fact that Mary-Anne is slightly better at mathematics than I am has something to do with the fact that they chose to move her a year forward in school, instead of me. I don’t mind too much. Nobody will ever hear me protest to being in basic math. "It was nice meeting you—or should I say guiding you? Just remember: this is a one-day thing. Tomorrow, you find your own way."

"You mentioned that machetes weren’t allowed?" Nate said, eyebrow rising as he looked pointedly at a group of seniors. He failed to notice the fact that they were all leaning against lockers and thus out of the way of any passing traffic.

"This is C2—it’s a senior hallway. You shouldn’t have any problems. Seniors know how to walk." I seriously hoped that he was joking about the machetes. After all, I barely knew him. They crack down on weapons pretty hard at Rose Pointe. A girl in my year was nearly expelled over a nail-file. "I guess I’ll see you in AP Lit tomorrow."

Nate swiveled his head back to look at me. "Oh, you’ll see me sooner than that," he said cryptically, and disappeared into C208.

Well, that was one particularly perplexing individual. Not really wanting to interpret his remark, I shrugged to myself and headed across the hall to C209, Basic Mathematics Level Three. Little did I know that the New Kid, Nate Reiss, would have a lot more impact on my life than first met the eye…