Now in third hour English, our teacher, Mrs. Shannon, was late, which probably meant she was printing off a pop quiz. Great.
“Still have the plague, Stella?” Rigley asked as he slid into his desk a few up from mine.
“Mostly no,” I smiled at him.
“Is it contagious?” he turned around in his desk and smirked at me.
“Why? Are you worried about catching it?” Tristan asked sounding amused. Rigley, for all his stunts and shenanigans, was a notorious germaphobe. And he was terrified of getting sick.
Rigley turned his attention on Tristan and his smirk grew, “Well with all the sharing of bodily fluids last night, I have been a little concerned I might come down with something.”
Tristan opened his mouth to shut Rigley up but I cut him off, “I am also worried I’ll be coming down with something, but not of the flu variety.”
The boys in the class erupted in “Oh’s!” and “Booms!”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” Tristan laughed at me.
“Me either,” Mrs. Shannon intoned dryly from the front of the classroom. A boy was standing next to her, smirking at me like he knew a secret or like my joke was highly amusing to him.
My eyes skimmed over him and I felt him watching me in return. It was unsettling.
But I couldn’t decide if it was so much his expression or his overall appearance that disturbed me. He was tall, and thin- almost too thin, but somehow muscled at the same time. He stomach was so flat that his jeans sat low on his waist, even with the help of his studded belt. He wore a simple, thin, worn-out white t-shirt that seemed indecent on him, somehow. His face was striking, but not classically handsome; he was all sharp lines and rough angles. His dark, almost black hair was much longer on top and cut close on the sides, but styled so it looked not styled. He was all kinds of contradiction, finished off with black boots that were untied and sloppy at the end of his dark, washed jeans.
He wore expensive clothes, except for the t-shirt, but looked disheveled at the same time. He was too skinny to seem tough, but he was definitely dangerous. He wasn’t classically handsome, but I could already see the girls around me basically swooning at his feet. So much contradiction for just one guy.
He didn’t or wouldn’t fit in here. Except maybe with Piper. And that thought gave me chills. I didn’t want him anywhere near Piper.
I didn’t know why I felt that way, but I couldn’t help it.
“Sorry, Mrs. Shannon,” I finally found my voice and apologized.
“Ms. Day, just remember, people perceive you by the way you present yourself. Do you want people to think you spent last night swapping bodily fluids with Mr. Merritt?”
“Uh, no, thank you,” I squeaked and then sunk down in my chair, hoping desperately to become invisible.
“Then stop announcing it to the class,” she lectured.
Oh, lord.
“Class,” she called everyone’s attention to the front- and off me, thankfully. “We have a new student today. Ironically, we lost one yesterday. If you haven’t heard Seth Smith transferred and won’t be attending here any longer. In his wake, we’ve received Jude Michaels.” She turned to smile affectionately at Jude, but his attention was still on…. me.
I avoided his dark gaze and let my attention fall to my desk. I wrote my name needlessly on a piece of notebook paper- doing anything to avoid his stare. I didn’t know why it bothered me so much, but I couldn’t stop my instincts from taking over.
“Jude, have a seat please,” Mrs. Shannon asked him nicely. “Class, I expect you to give Jude a gracious welcome.”
And then she went on with her lecture. I assumed Jude got settled in his seat alright, but I didn’t look at him. Not once. I paid perfect attention and answered when called on. Part of it was so I could ignore the new kid. The other part…. to prove to Mrs. Shannon that I was still the upstanding student she thought I was.
At the end of class I collected my books and bag and left immediately while other students lingered so they could introduce themselves to Jude. Mead was so incredibly small that every new student carried celebrity appeal, a phenomenon that the student body loved to dissect and observe.
And once the novelty wore off, the new student would be divided up into whatever clique or social group they belonged in, and we would all move on with our lives.
“Not interested in meeting the new kid?” Tristan asked from my side as we made our way to our next class.
“Not particularly,” I shrugged.
“Any reason why?” he pressed with eyebrows raised.
It wasn’t like me to be unfriendly.
“No, I’m just…. I just feel out of it today,” I tried to smile at him, but it was the truth. I did feel out of it. And today was weird without Seth. It wasn’t like he’d gone to school with me very long, but while he was here I always knew he would be waiting for me in between classes and that he would break the boy-girl barrier at lunch. He was the only boy that sat on the girl side of the table and I loved that. And then I knew he would be waiting for me at home after practice too, so we could train.
He was just this huge part of my life and suddenly he was gone.
It left me feeling disoriented, heart broken, and a million other things I couldn’t name or hold onto long enough to identify. They flashed through me like strobe lights- blinding, a little bit nauseating and bright with white hot intensity.
“Understandable,” Tristan agreed. He offered me a sympathetic smile and we kept walking, thoughts of Seth and the new kid far away.
Fourth period was electives, so I was separated from most of my class while I met up with Piper and Bree in choir, where we sang our little hearts out, of course. And then we joined the boys for lunch.
I wasn’t surprised to see Jude sitting amongst Tristan and his friends. They were naturally the guys that would make an effort to include anyone new, especially if that new person seemed at all athletic. They were constantly playing recruiters. And even though Jude looked a little fragile to me because of how skinny he was, I couldn’t deny the well-defined arm muscles he was rocking.