Where the Staircase Ends(5)

“Watch where you’re going!”

Someone rammed into me from behind, knocking my backpack askew.

Wait, what backpack?

I looked down and my sundress was gone. Instead, I was wearing jeans and my favorite blouse, the one my mom hated because, well, she pretty much hated anything that I liked. My lips were sticky from gloss. My hair was down. But wasn’t I …

I couldn’t finish the sentence. Wasn’t I … what? My mind grappled for the answer but couldn’t find one.

It was the first day of school, first period. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. But why did I feel like I was just someplace else?

I stared at the door to my classroom, shaking my head in confusion.

Strange. I took a hesitant step forward.

Maybe it was just nerves. I looked at the other kids milling around the classroom, their eyes flicking toward the door like they were waiting for someone. Last year, Sunny and I sat in the back row whenever there wasn’t assigned seating. We’d stack our bags and notebooks on the empty chairs around us until we’d decided who we wanted to sit by. This year, I only had two classes with Sunny, and so far things were playing out exactly as my nightmares predicted. The room was filled with faces I didn’t recognize and kids whose names I couldn’t remember, with the exception of Alana James who I intentionally ignored. Someone else had nabbed the back row and laid claim to the surrounding desks. There was no one for me to sit by. I picked at the polish on my left thumb, trying to look like I didn’t care.

“Are you lost?” Brandon Blakes came up behind, his barked words making me jump. I had the strangest sense of déjà-vu. “I think you must be lost. You do realize this is advanced chemistry, right?”

He sashayed closer to me, swishing in such a way that I thought of Sunny’s nickname for him: douche fag. I was never really sure about the latter part of the nickname, but he was undoubtedly the biggest douche I had ever met.

“Yes, Brandon, I realize this is advanced chemistry. I’m not lost,” I said in the biggest you’re-an-* voice I could muster. Arguing with Brandon was not the way I wanted to start the school year, especially since he was probably going to be in most of my classes now that the educational powers-that-be decided to dump me into almost all honors courses.

I started to move toward the opposite side of the room, but he scampered along after me, breathing like a steam engine. He wore a neatly pressed long-sleeved plaid button down tucked into his equally tidy pleat-waisted pants. If it wasn’t for his perfect posture and youthful face, he easily could’ve been mistaken for a forty-year-old man. A prissy forty-year-old man.

“Please tell me you’re not in this class,” he said, making no attempt to hide his contempt. He didn’t like me because I was Sunny’s best friend, and he hated Sunny about as much as anyone could hate another person. Not that I could blame him. Douche fag caught on pretty quickly.

I shrugged my backpack off my shoulder and racked my brain for a response that would remedy the situation. Just because I was in his world now didn’t mean I was going to let him act like a jerk all year long.

He continued to yip at me, saying something about how the educational system was really going to hell if they were letting people like me into the advanced classes. I was about to tell him where he could shove his unwanted opinions when Justin Cobb walked up and placed his hand on Brandon’s shoulder.

“It’s barely eight thirty,” Justin said, giving Brandon’s shoulder a squeeze. “How could Taylor have already done something to piss you off?” He used his grip to steer Brandon to the opposite end of the classroom and press him into an empty desk, not in a mean or violent way, but in a way that let Brandon know who was in control of the situation. “How about at least letting her get settled before you start harassing her? No need to make her feel unwelcome on the first day.”

Brandon looked slightly stunned, blinking up at Justin while color rushed into his cheeks, but apparently the message was received because he didn’t shoot me his usual stink eye.

I must’ve looked like a fish standing there with my mouth hanging open. Before I could even mumble a thank you, Justin shot me the smallest of winks followed by a sly, knowing smile as he slid into a desk in the back of the room. Then he crossed his arms over his chest, stretched his legs out in front of him, and closed his eyes, as though he was settling in for his morning nap now that the damsel (me) had been rescued by the prince (him).

There was a desk open next to him, but I didn’t want to come off like a stalker. Instead, I claimed the desk caddy-corner to his so I could watch him without being obvious, which was a smart move because once I started looking at him it was hard to look away. I mostly saw Justin at parties or after school by the water tower, where all the smokers hung out. I never got a good look at him because his face was typically hidden under the brim of a baseball cap, but hats were verboten inside school walls according to the hallway Gestapo, so this was the first opportunity I had to really look at Justin close up. I finally saw what all of the fuss was about.

There was the obvious stuff, like his height and the lean muscles that fought against the fabric of his T-shirt. But up close I could see the way his dark eyelashes brushed against his cheeks, which were dusted with the tiniest hint of freckles barely visible against his tanned skin. There was something endearing in the way his dark hair held the slight shape of the hat he’d worn earlier that morning, the disheveled locks begging to have a hand smooth them back into place. But the thing that made me want to keep looking was his grin—an open parenthesis stretching across his face. Even when sleeping, the corners of his mouth stayed tipped up in his Mona Lisa mystery smile, as though life was a happy joke and he was the only one in on the punch line. I wanted in on the joke. I wanted in on the joke in a bad way.