I waited a moment before I answered, trying to be sure that Mr. Philips wouldn’t call me out. I don’t think I could handle embarrassment like that again.
“No,” I replied. “I don't like golf.”
I left out the part about how Nana would preach against such things as golfing on Sunday, and the part about not having the money for such expensivetickets.
The mysterious boy, Mr. Gaines, dropped the conversation as soon as Mr. Phillips called him out.
“Water H20 and Methane CH4 are similar in size, yet water is a liquid at room temperature and methane is a gas. What is the fundamental reason for this . . . Mr. Gaines?”
“Water's ability to form strong hydrogen bonds,” he answered without hesitation.
I was surprised. I had usually come to know that people who are extremely good-looking don’t usually have the brain to go with it. This boy may be trouble, but he was smart at least.
Mr. Phillips nodded in agreement and moved on to the next student, asking a similar question. I tried to pay attention but was too distracted to really take in the lesson.
“I’m Alaric. Didn’t you say your name was Mari?” Alaric asked, sliding in his seat to face me more fully.
I nodded while furiously writing notes. I had come into the school year late, and the last thing I wanted to do was get farther behind. Or in any more trouble.
I was shocked when Alaric grabbed my hand that was writing notes. A bolt of electricity passed from him to me. My breathing became shallow.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered while taking my pencil. “I’ve got the notes. You can borrow them.”
I snatched my pencil from him. “Thanks, but no. I can do this myself.”
He flinched as if slapped, turning his body back to face the front of the room. I did the same and continued to take notes. But it was impossible to ignore Alaric as he continued to glance at me throughout the rest of the period. But he didn't speak to me again.
I found myself a table in the courtyard of the fancy new school, sitting underneath the canopy of a tree that seemed so out of place in this concrete jungle. I sat alone, my lunch of soup getting colder as I pushed it around with a spoon in my right hand, while reading a book with my left. I didn’t have much of an appetite, and I just wanted to escape the world around me for a little while. While the courtyard was chilly, the cafeteria was bursting at the seams with students, making the air feel suffocating. So I shivered in the cold, where I could actually take a deep breath and read.
That’s what books did for me. While Nana was working, the only reprieve would be my books. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. Melville, Chopin, Hawthorne, Plath, Hemingway. Anything to help me escape when life was too much to take.
“Fitzgerald, huh?” A voice broke through my reprieve.
I glanced up to find a tall, dark-skinned girl around my age. Her hair was braided intricately and styled long downto her waist as it hung close to her ebony complexion. Her brown eyes, wide with interest, bore into mine.
I stared, embarrassingly too long, as I took in her beauty and stature. She was not one to be messed with.
“The book,” she continued, nodding her head to my left hand, which still clung to the paperback, as she sat down across from me. “The Great Gatsby. It’s good, but I favorThe Last Tycoon.”
“Fitzgerald never finishedThe Last Tycoon. He died before it was finished,” I replied, still reeling from this brazen girl and her sitting casually across from me like she had known me for years. It was unsettling.
“Yeah, but my mother works for Fitzgerald’s publisher, and that has its perks beyond having absent mother syndrome,” she winked. “I can get my hands on all the manuscripts. I’m Sara-Kate, by the way.”
She stuck her hand out, and I tentatively took it.
“Mari.”
“So, Mari. What brings you to Windsor Academy? You don’t seem like you’re from around here.”
I sighed heavily, picking up my book again. Another student interested in the Southern Belle.
“It’s that obvious?”
“Pretty much,” she said, tilting her head. “Not many people bring real books to lunch. It’s like spotting a unicorn.”
I laughed, in spite of myself, slowly closing my old copy and putting it carefully back in my bag.
“I just moved here from Georgia,” I explained quietly, peeling the skin off my orange as I pushed my now chilled soup to the side.
