Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Can I borrow your notes from yesterday?” Cassidy drops into the seat next to me before history class, already reaching for my notebook. “I swear Mr. Edwards talks faster every day.”
Laughing, I push the notebook closer to her. “Maybe if you weren’t texting Mike—”
“I wasn’t texting Mike.” She pauses, lips curling. “Much.”
I hide my smile and continue unpacking my bag.
Cassidy has been my best friend since preschool.
Now, she copies my notes for history, she helps me with math, and somehow we both keep our GPAs high enough to make our parents happy.
It’s a system that works, even if my mom occasionally mentions that I’d do much better in calculus if I spent less time ‘helping everyone else with their problems.’
She’s not wrong, exactly. But there’s something about seeing people struggle when I can help that I can’t ignore.
It's always been this way—since elementary school when I'd stay after to help kids who couldn't tie their shoes yet, through middle school when I spent lunch periods tutoring anyone who asked.
Mom says I need to focus on my own future, my own college applications.
Dad just sighs and tells her to let me be.
Sometimes I wonder if she’s right, though. If all this helping is just me avoiding my own problems, and my own uncertainties about what comes after graduation. It’s easier to fix other people’s struggles than to face the blank space of my own future.
“Ah! You must be the new student.” Mr. Edwards stops mid-lecture when the door opens. I’m still helping Cassidy find the right page in her textbook, the one that’s somehow missing half its table of contents despite it being new. “Class, this is …”
“Ronan.”
The name barely registers. We get new students regularly, usually from Bankwell or Carrington, the next towns over.
Their parents get jobs at the local manufacturing plant, or their families split up, and suddenly they’re here, sliding into our routines like they’ve always been part of them.
Most leave again within a year or two, transferring back out when circumstances change again.
I don’t look up until Cassidy elbows me. Hard.
“What?”
She jerks her chin toward the back of the room. I turn slightly, expecting to see another kid with a too-new backpack and an uncertain smile. Instead, I see empty eyes, dark hair, and sharp edges.
He’s sitting by the window, half in shadow, almost as though he’s trying to fade into the wall. His hoodie is worn thin at the elbows, and his backpack looks like it’s been through a war.
Mr. Edwards returns to his lecture on Sherman’s March.
I should be taking notes—this will definitely be on the AP test—but something keeps drawing my attention back to the corner of the room.
It’s not the new student himself, but the way he sits and watches the room.
The way his pencil moves across the paper.
The way he nods or shakes his head along with what Edwards is saying, catching details I didn’t even notice.
There’s something almost hungry in the way he absorbs the information.
His focus is complete, absolute, as though this classroom is the only thing that exists for him right now.
Most students zone out, checking phones under desks, passing notes, staring out of the windows.
But this boy is locked in on every word Edwards says.
“He wasn’t just destroying resources.” His voice is quiet but steady, cutting through the classroom silence when Edwards asks a question no one wants to answer. “He was breaking their will to fight. Showing them nowhere was safe until they surrendered.”
The words hang in the air, loaded with understanding that goes beyond the textbook. Edwards nods slowly, and I catch something in his expression. Recognition, maybe, or it could be concern. The kind of look teachers get when they see something in a student that worries them.
I write his words in my notes, and underline it twice.
“He looks like trouble wrapped in sin,” Cassidy whispers as we pack up after class.
She’s already pulling out her phone, probably to text Rachel or Claire about the new development. In a school this size, new students are always prime gossip. Fresh blood means fresh stories, and everyone wants to be the first to claim they noticed something interesting.
“Did you see how he just disappeared when the bell rang? Ignored Edwards calling his name, and just got the hell out of there.”
“Because you always stay to chat with the teacher after class,” I point out, gathering up my books.
But I noticed it too. The way he was out of his seat, bag over one shoulder, and moving toward the door without acknowledging the teacher was speaking to him. First one out, gone before most of us even stood up.
“That’s different.” She tosses her hair over one shoulder. “I’ve earned my right to be rude. I’ve been here since kindergarten.”
I laugh, but my attention goes back to the empty desk by the window.
There’s something different about this one.
Something that doesn’t fit the usual pattern of transfers and their attempts to blend in.
Most new students try too hard, smiling at everyone, asking too many questions, desperate to find their place.
This boy is the opposite. He seems to be actively working to remain invisible.
The next time I see him is in English. Same position—back corner, near the exit. Same intense focus on his notebook. Same notebook, in fact. Maybe it was a last minute transfer, and he hasn’t had a chance to buy more yet … or maybe he can’t afford to.
The thought makes me uncomfortable.
When Mrs. Preston starts class by announcing we’re starting ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ his entire posture changes.
There’s a slight straightening of his spine, a shift in the way he holds the pencil.
His fingers spread out over the notebook.
And for just a moment, his expression opens, showing interest, maybe even hunger, before the walls slam back into place.
Interesting.
Something tells me this boy has already read Steinbeck’s work. Maybe more than once. The look on his face wasn’t about discovering something new, it was about returning to something familiar.
Over the next week, I find myself watching him.
Not obviously. I’m not Amy, who thinks subtlety is something that happens to other people.
But I notice things. The way he's always alone, moving between classes like a ghost, claiming empty corners and exit rows.
How he hides in the library reference section during lunch.
In the hallways, people flow around him like he isn't even there.
He always shows up early to history and English, reading ahead in the textbooks before anyone else arrives.
He turns pages carefully, as though books might break if he’s not gentle.
Sometimes there are dark circles under his eyes, and a slight tremor to his hands when he thinks no one is looking his way.
And he wears the same three T-shirts in rotation. On Thursday, the black one has a tear near the hem that wasn’t there Monday. By Friday, the gray one has a frayed collar. Small details that most people wouldn’t notice, but I do. I always do.
“Earth to Lily.” Cassidy waves her hand in front of my face. We’re in the library during study hall, supposedly working on our calculus homework. “You’re staring again.”
“I’m not staring.” I drag my attention back to the textbook on the table. “I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“About how math is slowly killing my soul.”
“Liar.” She taps my notebook with her pencil. “You’ve been on the same problem for ten minutes.”
“It’s a hard problem.”
She snorts, then leans back in her chair, studying me. “You did algebra in your sleep last week. What’s really going on?”
I hesitate, then nod toward the dark corner where he’s sitting. “Just wondering about the new guy.”
She doesn’t even have to look to know who I’m talking about. “Ronan.”
“Yeah.”
“What about him?”
“Doesn’t it seem strange? The way he just appeared and won’t talk to anyone?”
Cassidy shrugs, twirling her pencil between her fingers. “Maybe he’s shy. Or doesn’t like people. Some people don’t, you know.”
“It’s more than that.”
“How do you know?”
“I just … notice things.”
“Yeah, you do.” She grins. “Like how you noticed Mike before I did, and told me I should ask him out.”
“You were making googly eyes at him every day in the cafeteria. I had to say something before I threw up from the disgustingness of it.”
“Googly eyes?” She throws a wadded up piece of paper at me. “I do not make googly eyes.”
“You absolutely make googly eyes.”
We’re both trying not to laugh now, and Mrs. Carson shoots us a warning look from the circulation desk. Cassidy makes an exaggerated innocent face, then leans closer, dropping her voice to a whisper.
“Okay, but seriously. What is it about this guy that has you so interested?”
I consider the question. “I think he’s alone. Like, really alone. Not just new-kid-that-hasn’t-made-friends-yet alone.”
She turns to look at the dark-haired boy with his head bowed over a book in the darkest corner of the library. He’s positioned so his back is to the wall, and can see anyone approaching.
But I can’t stop watching him. His essays always come back with perfect grades.
I see Mrs. Preston hand them back, the red A marked clear at the top, but he never raises his hand in class.
He never volunteers or engages beyond those brief, brilliant moments when a teacher asks him a direct question.
But why? What makes someone so determined to disappear?
He’s been at our school for two weeks before I write the first note. It’s nothing dramatic. Just an offering of information that might interest him.
The library has a better copy of Steinbeck in the reference section. The one with his original notes.
I slip it onto his desk before history class starts, then pretend to be absorbed in my book when he walks in.
From the corner of my eye, I watch him find it, watch his fingers unfold the paper with a gentleness at odds with his rough exterior.
I watch him read it once, then twice, a small frown creasing his forehead.
Then he folds it carefully and tucks it into his pocket.
He doesn’t look around, or try to figure out who sent it, but the next day I spot him in the reference section, fingers tracing over Steinbeck’s marginalia.
He reads slowly, sometimes pausing to write something in his notebook.
His expression is different here—softer, more open. And something about it makes me smile.
There's a beauty in watching someone connect with something they love. The way his shoulders relax slightly, and his breathing seems to even out. For these few minutes, whatever weight he's carrying seems lighter.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Cassidy says at lunch.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you find someone who needs saving.”
“I’m not trying to save anyone.” I focus on my sandwich, so I don’t have to meet her eyes. “It was just a note about a book.”
“Uh-huh.” She steals my apple. “Just a book … right.”
“It was! The library does have a better copy. I was being helpful.”
“You’re always helpful.” There’s no judgment in her voice, just affection. She bumps her shoulder against mine. “It’s your superpower. Or your fatal flaw. I haven’t decided which.”
“Could be both.”
“Definitely both.” She steals one of my fries now. “What’s the plan with this one? Are you going to actually talk to him at some point?”
“I don’t have a plan.”
“Liar.”
“I don’t!”
She gives me a look that says she’s not buying it, but doesn’t push. Instead, she launches into a story about her disaster in a chemistry experiment, and I let myself be pulled back into the normal routine of our day.
But later, during English, I find my eyes on him again, watching him read. His copy of ‘Grapes of Wrath’ is already filled with notes, margins crowded with words —some underlined twice, others circled. As though he’s having a conversation with Steinbeck himself.
I wonder what it would be like to see inside his mind. To understand what he sees when he reads those pages. To know what connections he’s making that the rest of us miss.
Mrs. Preston asks a question about the Joad family, and for a moment, I think he might answer.
His hand twitches toward his notebook. His mouth opens slightly.
But then he catches himself and the moment passes.
Whatever he was going to say gets swallowed back down, locked away behind those walls he’s built.
It happens so fast that I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t already looking at him. I witness the war that happens in that split second—the desire to engage versus the need to stay hidden. And the need wins.
It always wins with him.
After class, I watch him gather his things. First one to the door again. The hallway swallows him quickly, and he’s gone before I even make it out of the classroom.
I tell myself I’m just curious. That one note didn’t mean anything. It was just a small kindness, the kind I’d offer to anyone.
But I’m already thinking about writing another one.