“How did you know my name?”
“It’s written on your notebook,” he said, pointing at the red spiral under my MP3 player.
“Oh, right,” I said, blushing. “If you want to take a shot at it, go ahead. Though, I have to warn you that I’ve already heard it all.”
The smile on his face disappeared. A tiny scar above the right corner of his upper lip became visible. He looked confused.
“No,” he shook his head. “No, I don’t want to make fun of it. I was thinking that you don’t hear a name like that … around these parts.”
Now I was the one confused.
“These parts… Of Maryland?” I really had no idea what he meant by that.
He cleared his throat. “Let me try that again,” he said, again putting on his smile. “Hi, I’m Viper. Viper Amest.”
He said it exactly like that. I would have been more disoriented by the sudden subject change if I hadn’t been so distracted by his smile. It took me a few seconds to realize that he was waiting with his hand out for me to take. I eventually got there and extended my own to grasp his in a shake. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his skin was paler than mine.
“I know, I know,” he said, interpreting the look on my face. “My name is just as unusual as yours.”
I shook my head and smiled. One that was far less striking than his, I was sure.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Viper looked at me. “Don’t worry about it. I get those looks all the time.”
“But I really shouldn’t be the one giving it to you,” I said.
“Well, I don’t mind it.” He got up from his seat. “It was very nice meeting you, Emmeline.”
I turned over my wrist and looked down at my watch. As I did, the warning bell rang down the long white hallway. Although it was something it did every day without fail, that day it caught me off guard.
I gathered my things. “Please, call me Emma,” I said.
I unfolded my legs and placed my feet in the saddle shoes sitting to the side of the wooden table my things were on. They blended too well with the black and white checkered floor. I might have lost them if it weren’t in my routine to place them exactly where they were.
“I’ll see you around, Emma,” Viper said with one last parting smile.
“Bye,” I said.
He turned and walked down the hallway.
“I highly doubt you will,” I said under my breath. I stood up and smoothed my hands over my pleated black skirt. I tugged at the blossom of white shirt that flowered out of the top to make sure it was still tucked in well enough.
I looked down to make sure I had gathered everything and placed it in my black backpack. I couldn’t help but glance in his direction again. I did a double take. A sliver of red sock could be seen between the cuff of his black slacks and the top of his dress shoes. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a welcome change from the uniform black and white palette that plagued the school’s interior. I shook my head, smiled, and turned to walk up the stairs to the mathematics rooms on the second floor. The administration was going to think it absolutely sinful.
* * *
I would have bet money on Viper never talking to me again. I kicked myself all the way to class for not coming up with better parting words.
Geometry managed to push it out of my head. I had the Pythagorean Theorem to keep my mind off things. Well, that was until someone said something that dragged me back.
While concentrating on my worksheets I heard the sound of fabric sliding against plastic. It wasn’t louder than the murmur of classmates being tutored, but it was loud enough that it caught my attention.
I assumed it was Emily turning to her other neighbor for help. My assumption was confirmed when her feet adjusted to the new positioning of her body. There was a clicking sound when her heels hit the tile floor.
The world had been ruined the day she’d stuck those noisy tacks into the soles of her shoes. She apparently thought that she didn’t get enough attention without them—something I found very hard to believe.
It was really too bad my guess on the subject matter of her conversation was wrong.
“Have you seen the new guy?” she said. The question was barely audible over the other discussions taking place.
Madison was the lucky crony sitting next to her. I never understood why Emily was the head of their little group and not Madison. She didn’t alter one thing about her appearance aside from a little makeup, and she was so much prettier than Emily for it. She probably would be just as tyrannical so it didn’t make much of a difference.
Madison’s dark eyes swiveled under her black eyebrows to look at Emily’s face. Her glossy brown lips curled in a smile. “Oh, my God, yes. Is he hot or what?”
“Tell me about it,” Emily said. “He’s in my first period history class.”
I looked over at the big wooden desk at the front corner of the classroom. Mrs. Moyano didn’t look up from her gradebook, oblivious to the inappropriate conversation taking place right in front of her. She rubbed a polished finger across the edge of her bottom lip. I was pretty sure that she was looking into a compact under her desk and adjusting her lipstick. Which was probably a good thing since it was indeed outside of her lips in a few places.
“You are so lucky, Emily.” Hannah was sitting in the desk in front of Emily. She turned to the pair to join the conversation. “I haven’t had him in any classes yet, but I saw him in the hallway this morning. What’s he like?”
I had known it would be only seconds before Hannah jumped into the conversation. I had always been jealous of how well she wore her light brown, pixie haircut. I never knew what it was that made short hair not look good on me. It might have been that I was too tall, or that my nose was too big, or the fact that short hair didn’t cover the big mole under the corner of my right eye like longer hair was able to do. Whatever it was, I had learned to live without short hair, which was fine. Long hair served its purpose for me. And I was always glad that at least my mole didn’t stick out like the one on the chin of our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Trocki.
I placed my right-hand knuckles under my cheekbone and glanced at the girls through the corner of my eye. My hair slid from its place on my back and draped the side of my face. I normally would have flipped it back out of the way, but at the moment I figured it would help make my staring less obvious.
Emily gathered all of her long, bleached blond hair and put it over a shoulder. Her brown eyebrows beneath the blond hair were much less impressive than Viper’s. His eyebrows were slightly darker than the hair on his head but still unmistakably golden.
“He seems nice,” she said. “Mr. Slater made him stand up and do the whole ‘what’s your name, where are you from’ thing.”
“Well?” Madison said. “What’s his name? Where’s he from?”
“His name is Viper Amest,” Emily said, still smiling from her pedestal at the center of their attention. “He and his family moved here from Seattle.”
“Wow,” said Hannah. “Talk about moving to the other side of the country.”
“Exactly,” Emily said. “So obviously he doesn’t know anything about Maryland. I’m thinking of hanging out with him during lunch, you know. Offer to show him around—”
I dropped my calculator on the floor when I heard that he had lunch with us.
I looked back at Emily just as she threw me a look of disgust. “God, Emma, why don’t you pay attention to what you’re doing?” She looked at Madison and Hannah.
I hated her. I looked down at the worksheets we were supposed to be working on again. Everything on it might as well have been written in a foreign language. Madison and Hannah both laughed and went right back to their conversation.
“Please, Emily, we know what you’re thinking,” Hannah said.
“Right,” said Madison. “We know you want to add him to your list of boyfriends.”
“Well, come on, can you blame me? You’ve seen him,” she said.
“We know,” Madison said. “But what makes you think we’re going to let you hook him?”
“Yeah,” Hannah said. “What if Madison or I want to hook him before you do?”
Emily looked at her two friends with raised eyebrows. “You guys can try if you want, but he’s going to end up with me. As usual.”
I seriously did not understand how Emily was able to hold onto what friends she had.
“Care to make a little bet out of it?” Madison said.
“Sure,” Emily said. “You guys are on.”
A nauseating sensation filled my stomach. I should have known they’d just make him into another game.
“Emily, Hannah, and Madison, would you mind getting started on your worksheets?”
Mrs. Moyano finally noticed their non-math related conversation. “If you have questions, you need to ask me in class so you can do your homework. I don’t want any excuses if you don’t have the work done next class period.”
They smiled at her sweetly and looked down at the blank sheets on their desks.
By that point I couldn’t keep my mind on the triangles in front of me. I knew I didn’t belong there.
* * *
“Okay, so complete problems one through twenty for homework,” Mrs. Moyano said. The bell had just rung for first lunch. “Please do your homework, people. You need all the practice you can get before the chapter test in a few weeks.”
I picked up my backpack from the floor and walked out the door. Sounds were indiscernible while making my way down the staircase. Everything sounded muffled. Once I’d reached my locker on the first floor, I gave the bottom of it a kick. My locker only opened with some form of abuse bestowed upon it. I glanced to my left expecting to see Emily with the sneer she always gave my routine. However, today she wasn’t fixing her hair at her locker for lunch. I figured she and the other two were storming the lunchroom early in search of Viper.
I spun the combination dial to the correct numbers, gave the locker one more kick for good measure, and it popped right open. The technique had been perfected over the first quarter of my freshman year.
I was switching out the books in my bag when I saw a flash of red close to the floor to my right. It didn’t quite register until I heard his voice.
“So how was geometry?”
I turned my head to look at him just as I was closing my locker. In hindsight that wasn’t the smartest thing to do. My locker door slammed right on the tip of my left middle finger. My eyes watered.
The right corner of Viper’s lip twitched. It seemed to take all of his effort not to smile. He was content with watching and wondering whether or not that really had happened.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
Blood gathered around my fingernail. I stuck my finger in my mouth to stop the bleeding.
“It’s okay,” I said, rummaging in my locker for a bandage. “I was just a little startled.”
I clenched my teeth. The only bandage I was able to find was bright pink. It had white kitty heads with bows floating around it. With no other choice I sighed and wrapped it around my finger. It pounded slightly under its pink binding.
I slammed my locker shut after making sure all of my extremities were clear of it and turned to Viper.
He stared at my bandage. “You’re testing me, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said with a slight smile. “Headed to lunch?”
“Yeah,” I said.
I picked up my bag and started walking in the direction of the cafeteria.
He turned and walked with me.
“I don’t have it until tomorrow,” he said.
“Hm,” I nodded, and then stopped when I realized I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Wait, what?”
“Sorry, geometry, I mean,” he said.
“Right,” I said and nodded again. “Yeah, it’s okay. Math really isn’t one of my favorite subjects.”
“I know what you mean,” he said.
He flashed me one of those smiles he’d graced me with earlier. I could feel my cheeks getting hot.
I turned my face so he wouldn’t notice my pink cheeks. “How did you know I was in geometry?”
“I was trying to find my way to Latin,” he said. “I saw you walk into the classroom.”
“Oh,” I nodded.
Latin had the least amount of rooms of all the foreign language classes and they indeed were just down the hall from the math rooms.
“And why are you spending your time on a dead language?” I said with a smile to make sure he knew I was joking.
“It’s the only language I have previous experience with,” he said shrugging.
I looked at him. “Do people speak Latin often in Seattle?”
“Oh. You heard about that, huh?”
We walked into the cafeteria. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the attention of every girl in the cafeteria was grabbed by our arrival, but the head of every girl sitting at the tables near the door turned to look our way. I could have gone without the murmured question of what in the world he was doing with me. Attention was certainly something I wasn’t used to. I could read exactly what everyone was thinking from the shocked looks on all of their faces. We had not been inside the cafeteria long when Emily, Madison, and Hannah started making their way to Viper’s side.
I looked at the many faces across the wide, high ceilinged room. It was all too clear that my presence next to him was not welcome in the slightest. The line to buy lunch was on the other side of the room. It looked further away with every passing second.
“Hey, Viper, what’s up?” Emily said when she was the first one to reach him.
“Hi, Amelia. Not a lot, I guess,” he said with a glance at me.
Madison and Hannah tried to stifle their laughter unsuccessfully.
“Um, it’s Emily, actually,” she said.
I was impressed with how politely she had corrected him. I shook my head and started my journey to the lunch line. A journey I was surprised took only a few seconds. Ignoring them the best I could, I took my spot. I couldn’t believe that they were actually going on with their evil plan. They were using the new guy to prove a point. Though, I had no idea as to what that point was exactly.
“So, what’s good to eat here?” Viper said.
They all got in line right behind me.
“Try the veggie wrap,” Emily said. “They’re pretty good.”
“No,” said Madison. “Go for the burgers, they are so much better.”