Investigating the Hottie (4 page)

“This is it.” He motioned for me to enter the classroom first, so I did. Nice manners. “Just take a seat in front. Moyers always runs a few minutes late to class.”

“Okay.” I moved to one of the seats and twisted around to thank him, only to see the back of his Academy blazer as he sauntered to the back of the classroom to join his friends.
Thanks
.  

I tried to glance at the people he was sitting with before anyone caught me looking, but of course everyone was staring at me. Two guys, both cute but not as cute as Will, and two, unfortunately pretty, girls. Not that I cared, of course. It was hard to label the two guys because everyone wore the same uniform and had the clean-cut appearance required by the school. It was easier in public school. At home, I could tell something about people by their clothes, hair, and accessories.

Two girls came in and sat in the front row next to me. I smiled, and they smiled back. Then, they talked to each other while I stared at the blank blackboard. I pretended that I wasn’t completely uncomfortable.

Just as Will predicted, the teacher arrived two minutes after the bell rang. Once he arrived, he was all business. He acknowledged me then started on the lesson. It was easier to think about American Government than dealing with all those people. Moyers used a Power Point presentation. The class was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.

I took a moment to review my schedule. Next period was Algebra II. I had to remember to seem like I was having trouble since Will might be asked to tutor me.

After that was Art. Great. I couldn’t even draw a freakin’ stick figure. I’d be sure to impress everyone there.

Oh, Will would say. I love your art work. It reminds me so much of kindergarten. Let me tell you all my secrets so you can get the information your aunt wants
. 

My leg was asleep because I had to keep my legs crossed in this skirt. This was exactly why I always wore jeans. I couldn’t relax or sit comfortably without flashing my panties at my classmates.

Now wouldn’t that be embarrassing.

Algebra went off without a hitch. My class back home was a chapter or two behind, so I did have to concentrate on figuring out the problems. Even if Will were going to tutor me, I’d rather know what was going on. The idea of playing dumb grated on my nerves.  

I found my way to the Art room. Tables lined the room instead of desks, and art covered the walls. Will actually pointed me toward a table and sat down next to me. Would wonders never cease?

He apparently didn’t have any friends in this class. Two girls waved from across the room, and he gave them that crooked smile that made my heart thump.

“Art really isn’t my best subject,” I admitted. He’d know soon enough anyway.

He nodded.

I shifted in my seat.
What is the deal with the teachers in this school being late?
 

The Art teacher, Mrs. Roberson, finally came in and started lecturing on a technique for using charcoal. I could probably do as well with a piece of coal as I could with this pencil. Twenty minutes later, I was still staring at a blank piece of paper.

The only consolation was sneaking glances at Will’s tortured face.

He groaned, and I turned to look at him.

He motioned for me to come closer, and I leaned over toward him.

“Art really isn’t my thing either.”

I sat back like I was absorbing the information. The guy was beautiful. The scruffy-hair look was totally sexy on him. Then, I whispered, “So why did you take Art?”

“I don’t know. Why did you?”

Good question. And one I couldn’t answer without blowing my cover. I shrugged. “I guess we’re stuck now.” Had he spent the last month staring at the table?

I followed Will’s gaze to the classmates. The petite brunette had sketched a picture of the Art teacher’s face. It didn’t look exactly like her, but it resembled a person. Definitely beyond my talents. The redheaded guy was finishing up a detailed drawing of a dragon.

Will and I glanced at each other and shared a moment of utter defeat.

My gaze dropped to his mouth. He had yummy lips. They were fuller than mine. Mine were too thin, but his were more like all the famous movie stars’. Full, but not at all girlie. Totally kissable. Yikes!

“If we can’t be the best, we can try to be the worst,” he whispered.

I giggled and then tried to appear innocent when the teacher turned my way. When she went back to helping a student, I said, “Deal. You are going down.”

“We’ll see about that.”

I started sketching, and a few minutes later, I finished. I put my pencil down and cleared my throat.

“You can’t be done already.” He kept working.

“Less is more,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, stopping, “I’m finished too.”

I examined his picture. A sun, a tree, a house. Very primitive. “Ah,” I said, nodding my head. “Classic first grade. Not bad.”

“Thank you.”

The teacher watched us again but didn’t say anything. She must have been cutting us some slack since I was the new kid. “Okay. What do you think?” I pushed my paper towards him.

“I think I win.”

“What? Mine is terrible.”

“No. It’s a pretty decent giraffe.”

I put my hand over my mouth to squelch a laugh. I tried to breathe. “It’s a . . . it’s a dog.”

He laughed, and I tried to regain control, but my whole body was shaking, and I couldn’t quit smiling.

“Mr. Middleton,” Mrs. Roberson scolded. I guess we pushed her too far.

“Sorry,” he said to the teacher.

“Sorry,” I whispered to him.

“It’s not your fault that you really are the worst artist in the free world.” He drew a star on my paper and handed it back to me.

“Thank you.”

I took a moment to enjoy my victory. This going to school during fall break stuff wasn’t so bad after all.

I ate lunch alone. Well, alone at a table full of freshmen who ignored me. I felt like a total freak. Thank goodness I didn’t have parents who moved a lot. I’d hate to go through this new kid stuff over and over.

I caught Will looking over at me a couple of times. I think he felt sorry for me. I just pretended not to notice, and spent most of the time flipping through my American Government book as if I were reading it. I didn’t know if I could leave the cafeteria early, so I just sat until people started leaving.

The freshmen did give me directions to my English class. They told me that the teacher used to be a Harvard professor until her nervous breakdown. From what they said, she still hadn’t recovered from it.

Mrs. Brown did look sad. She wore navy blue from head to toe. She didn’t have any make-up on, and the brown circles under her eyes gave her a morose look. English was really going to be exciting. Oh boy.

And then, Will never showed up. He wasn’t there for Mrs. Brown’s lecture on Sylvia Plath. He wasn’t in French, and he wasn’t in Biology II when I met my lab partner. From the dyed black hair, thick black eyeliner, and scowl, I figured she was probably another Sylvia Plath fan. When I asked her what her name was, she said, “Does it really even matter?” and went back to digging her pen into the lab table. I’d bet my savings she wore nothing but black outside of school.

I couldn’t believe I had to suffer through the whole afternoon for no reason. I’d spent three hours in classes on fall break, and the suspect was off who knows where doing who knows what. Life sucked. And there went Professor Depression and Sylvia Junior rubbing off on me.

Christie’s convertible waited by the curb when school got out.

I climbed in feeling pretty good about myself. I had managed to talk to the hottie. “Hey, Christie.”

In the navy business suit, she looked a little more average, but I still wasn’t used to her new persona. “How’d it go?”

“Good.” I slammed the door and buckled up. “Day one is over.”

“Did you meet him?” She pulled away from the curb only slightly faster than the average person, an apparent concession to the school zone speed limit.

“Yeah.” I never thought I’d feel so bad to be leaving a school zone.

“And—” she prompted.

“He told me he’s a hacker who wants to join evil forces and take over the world.” Sure enough, she hit the gas hard when we cleared the school.

“A smart aleck. I like that in a partner.”

Partner? Cool
. “I talked to him. What do you want to know?” 

“Well, I already know he’s handsome. I guess you discovered that first hand.” She gave me a brief glance before returning her attention to the road.

Don’t blush. Don’t blush.
I blushed. Darn. “He was… okay.” 

“So, you talked to him?” Christie squealed around a curve, and I grabbed the dash to steady myself.

“I did pretty well, actually. I just thought about what you said. I don’t ever have to see any of these people again after this week. So, no big deal.”

“You’re saying it was easy?”

“No. Not easy, but not impossible either. We joked around in Art class. He’ll probably fail it, but it was fun. It seems that neither of us has any artistic talent.” I turned to look out the window hoping Christie wouldn’t notice me grinning like an idiot as I told her about the contest.  

Christie looked over at me and raised a brow.

“Anyway, I think I can pull this off.”

Aunt Leadfoot sped up. “Of course you can pull it off. I wouldn’t have asked you if you couldn’t. He’s probably got a crush on you already.”

“Right. Like that’s going to happen.” I was much more likely to get a crush on him. Oh dear God, if I wasn’t careful, I was going to end up with a crush on him.
Why couldn’t he have been ugly?
 

“You up for a soccer scrimmage tonight?” Christie asked.

You just couldn’t predict what she’d say next. “Soccer scrimmage?”

“We’ll grab your stuff and go to the field.”

“I didn’t bring anything for soccer.” The colorful trees zoomed past as she accelerated again.

“I bought you some shoes and shinguards earlier.” She hit the gas to pass a slower car. “There’s a pick-up game every night at the University. I thought you might like to play.”

“With college guys?” I wasn’t so sure.

“Mostly. Some high school. From what I hear, sometimes professors show up too.”

“Are you playing?”

“No. I’ve never played. But I’ll run on campus while you play. It’s a great place to run.”

“Is this part of my physical training?”

“No. It’s optional.” She laughed.

I started to say no, but I really wanted to play some soccer. It helped me de-stress. We scrimmaged guys all the time at practice. “Can I back out when I get there if I need to?”

“I don’t see why not.” She glanced behind her and changed lanes.

“Okay. I’ll give it a try.” A thought occurred to me. “Do I get to wear a sports bra?” The padded bra set-up wasn’t too bad, but it would be good to get back to normal.

“Yes.” She chuckled. “Let’s grab a bite to eat. I think they start up at six-thirty or seven.”

Maybe my stomach would settle by then. I really wished I had my driver’s license.

Christie ordered from a deli when we got back to the condo. From the sounds of it, she did that pretty often.

“Okay, chickie,” she said, putting down the cordless and looking over where I lounged on the couch. “Unload your bra. I need to take a look at some of the pictures.”

“Somehow that just sounds wrong,” I said.

Christie laughed. “Oh my God. Was that a joke? And here I thought you were so traumatized you’d lost your sense of humor.”

“Not lost, just temporarily deactivated, I guess.” I stood and headed to my purple-palooza bedroom to change clothes.

Christie had laid out my soccer stuff. I grabbed a sports bra from my bag. “Aaah. Something normal in my freaky life.”

The shinguards were shiny and new. The ones I had at home were pretty pathetic. She’d bought some Adidas cleats that I’d been wanting for a while. How could she have known that? And I was a little worried she’d bought pink or purple soccer socks, but she’d selected a nice, boring navy blue. The cleats had been pre-dirtied so I just put on my own T-shirt and shorts, and the shinguards and socks.

I carried the shoes into the living room and set them on the dining room table, since anything else would show dirt and be harder to clean. “Thanks for the cleats, Christie. I’ve been wanting some of those.”

“Really?” Christie said, avoiding my gaze. “I broke them in for you, so you’d blend in.” She sat with the laptop on the coffee table, her favorite position. I handed her the component from my bra.

She plugged it into the laptop.

I looked at the television for the images.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll just type in a search for Will, and…”

Dozens of square pictures of Will appeared on the screen. Will in homeroom. Will in algebra. Will in art. Will looking at me. Will smiling. Will looking away. Will. Will. Will.

“Well,” Christie said. “I see you managed to spend a lot of time looking at him.”

I, of course, had no response, so I wrinkled up my nose and stuck out my tongue. “Na-na-na.” I reclaimed my spot on the couch.

“You’d better not be complaining. Here.” She hit a few keys. “This is what I spent my day looking at.”

“Aaah!” I jumped when the image of a middle-aged man with a comb-over and sadly abundant nose hair flashed on the screen.

“Sometimes, ugly on the inside does translate into ugly on the outside,” Christie said. “This guy’s a real piece of work. He’s a brilliant chemist, but he has a history of trying to take shortcuts. He’s the main suspect in the case Nic and I are working on. We think a hacker got lucky and accessed an old truth serum formula that was never supposed to see the light of day. The thief, who we can’t seem to find, hooked up with a greedy chemist, and Dr. Ivan is our most likely suspect.”

“Is that actually hair curling out of his ears?” I cringed.

“Yep. Unfortunately, I can verify that.” She settled back on the couch to talk to me more easily.

“So, what are you doing with this guy? Watching him?” My poor aunt.