Chapter Four
Bellwood High is a massive redbrick buildingwith a clock tower. I peer through the car window at the crowd entering the school, and my stomach tightens.
“You guys ready?” Uncle Davis asks, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Just a sec.” Adrian looks in the mirror, gathers his silk curls in a bun, and grins at his reflection. “Okay. All good. See ya, Dad.” He steps out of the car and gestures for me and Esosa to do the same.
“Everything okay?” Uncle Davis turns to the backseat. “You guys a little nervous? There’s nothing to worry about. Adrian will be there if you need anything. And if you need to reach me, you can do so on these.” He opens the glove compartment and pulls out two phones. “One for you and one for you.”
I stare at the iPhone in my hand while Esosa squeals.
“Really?” she asks. “Our phones from Nigeria only work here with Wi-Fi. It’s been such an inconvenience.”
“Well, I couldn’t possibly send you to high school without functional phones, could I?”
“Thank you, Uncle,” we say together.
“You’re welcome. I’ve saved my number in both. If it’s too much, just call me. And I’ll pick you up.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Esosa says. “We’ll be fine. Right, Enore?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding. “We’ll be fine.” I’ve spent weeks preparing for this. The DVDs Adrian gave me were my only source of preparation, but they were informative. The first movie I watched was Mean Girls. It terrified me. But High School Musical eased my nerves slightly. Heathers and Jawbreaker revived my angst, and Bring It On was a surprise antidote. In the past weeks, I have watched sixty teen movies, a genre I didn’t know existed until recently. They’ve been entertaining, engrossing, and educational. I’ve studied the social landscape of an American high school and have put together ten rules that will lead me down a straight and narrow path to graduation. If I follow all my rules, this day and the days following should be perfectly ordinary.
“Okay.” Uncle Davis smiles. “Well, have a nice day.”
I exhale, step out of the car, and walk up to the building.
This might as well be a scene in a teen movie—the first day of school for the new girl in town. In Mean Girls, Cady moves from Africa to America. On her first day of school, she walks to the doors alone—dazed and terrified. Rightfully so, because people bump into her without apologizing, a football flies right across her face, two students scuffle like amateur wrestlers, and someone tosses a burning book on the grass. It’s total chaos. Thankfully, my walk to the school doors isn’t that eventful.
With my sister and cousin, I cross the threshold and enter the building.
“I could help you guys look for your locker and your first class,” Adrian offers, stopping in the middle of the busy hallway.
“No,” Esosa says. “It’s okay.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Go ahead so you’re not late for your class. Besides, I have my schedule.” I pull out the folded paper from my pocket. “Don’t worry.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause I don’t mind.”
My sister and I nod.
“Okay,” he says. “See you guys later.”
He means after school. With our different schedules, we likely won’t see each other until then.
“Hey,” Esosa says when it’s just the two of us. “Put my number in your phone.” She calls out the digits, and I save them. “Text me, so I have yours.”
“Okay.”
Her phone pings with a message, and she smiles. “Ah. There’s nothing like the sound of an iPhone notification.” Her smile flattens as she watches me. “Text me throughout the day. Just so I know you’re okay.”
“You too,” I say.
“I’ll let you know I’m alive with a series of hilarious GIFs.”
A moment of silence passes between us. I want to say something about the situation, about the huge change we’re currently experiencing, about how scared I am. But I don’t.
“We’re going to be okay, right?” my sister asks, her fake but believable American accent still intact. “Right, Enore?” She’s looking for the same assurance I gave her earlier this morning.
“Yes,” I answer. “We’re going to be fine. No shaking.”
She smiles. “I’ll see you later.” When she turns around and walks down the hallway, people respond to her confident strut by receding slightly and making way for her. Typical.
The time on my phone reminds me I have five minutes to find my first class. Quickly, I shuffle through the crowd and glance at the small plaques on the doors with engraved numbers and letters. My search makes me completely oblivious to the traffic in front of me. I bump into someone, then stumble backward and hit someone else.
“Um… sorry,” I say to the tall red-haired girl glaring at me.
My apology means nothing to her. She rolls her eyes and walks away.
Has this one mishap earned me a high school nemesis, someone who will remember this incident and enact her revenge over the course of the year? I curse under my breath, then turn around to offer another apology. Hopefully, this person is more forgiving.
“Sorry.” I’m too embarrassed to make eye contact. “That was an accident.” Based on the size and style of the white-and-green sneakers I’m staring at, it’s possible I bumped into a guy.
“Don’t worry about it.” The deep masculine voice confirms my hunch. “I wasn’t really paying…” He trails off, and his shoes shift toward me. “Wait a minute. Don’t I know you?”
“Um… no. I don’t think so. Sorry again. Bye.” I turn around but only take a step forward. Again, I’m looking at white-and-green sneakers. The guy I just apologized to stands in front of me.
“I do know you,” he says. “Sixteen Candles.”
I squint and sort through my mind, trying to make sense of those words. Sixteen Candles. When things become clear, I look up and smile. “Burglar on a budget.”
He laughs. “I actually have a name, you know.”
“You also have hair.” Wavy black hair; some locks fall backward while some dangle on his forehead, right over his hazel-green eyes that are set on me.
Seeing him like this—without tinted glasses, a baseball hat, and an oversized hoodie—helps me realize something I didn’t when we first met. He looks like the male lead in a teen movie—the one that girls pine and scheme for. Seriously, he could go up against the best of them—Jake Ryan, John Tucker, Troy Bolton, Aaron Samuels, Noah Flynn. The only difference is his skin, his golden-brown complexion. He isn’t white. The male leads in the movies I’ve watched are usually white. I think of two rare instances when they weren’t—#Realityhigh and Love Don’t Cost a Thing.
“Did you think I was bald?” he asks.
“I didn’t know what to think. You left a lot to the imagination.”
He bobs his head. “Yeah. Well, I’m totally disguise-free now, so how about an official introduction?” He extends his hand to me. “Davi Santiago.”
“Enore Adesuwa.”
We shake hands the exact moment the school bell rings. There’s a sudden eruption of chaos, and I don’t have the time to appreciate the fact that we’re touching and it feels kind of nice. People leaning against lockers immediately stand upright. Conversations end as small groups break apart. People walk quickly while I’m frozen, dazed, and clueless.
“What class do you have?” Davi asks.
“Um…” I look at my schedule. “AP Calculus. But I’m not sure where that is.”
“Wait a minute.” He glances at the paper in my hand, then smiles. “Looks like we’re in the same class.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Come on. It’s this way.”
On our walk to class, that involves multiple turns on the first floor, people say hi to Davi—too many people. Some smile, some pat his shoulder, while others bump his fist. I watch the interactions thoughtfully and come to an obvious conclusion.
He’s popular.
Damn it.
I am dangerously close to breaking a rule.
Rule #1: Avoid interacting with or befriending anyone who is popular.
It’s one of my most important rules. If I associate with someone who is popular, I can’t achieve my goal of going unnoticed. Maybe eventually, I’ll walk down the hallway and people will know my name. Maybe they will invite me to parties. And maybe for a while, it will be nice, like it was for Cady in Mean Girls. But as that movie and others like it prove, the climb up the social hierarchy is always fun, but the fall is long and hard.
We enter a classroom, similar to the ones I’ve seen in movies. Here, the rows of single desks differ from the wooden, two-person desks in my old school. Back then, I would sit with my best friend, Tolu, whispering and laughing whenever the teacher turned away. Tolu and I were never apart because, unlike the schools in America, we didn’t have to gather our belongings at the sound of the bell and switch classes. We had every subject in one classroom. The teachers did the moving, while we sat under the perpetually swirling ceiling fan, jotting down the lesson on the blackboard, whispering jokes whenever we got the chance, and looking through the window for a distraction in the courtyard.
I take a seat in the back of the class, and Davi settles into the seat beside me.
Rule number one rings in my head, and I break eye contact with him and focus on the teacher—a tall white man with a sparse ponytail.
“I hope you all had a good summer,” he says. “I see a lot of familiar faces and one new one.” His stare zooms in on me, and I shrink in my seat. “Hello there. You must be…” He glances at the clipboard in his hand and then back at me. “Enore. Welcome to Bellwood High. I’m Mr. Mitchell.” His smile is so expansive, his eyebrows shoot up. “I like to start the first day back with a little warm-up exercise—have everyone talk about what they did during summer. Why don’t you start?”
Every single person in the room turns to me, and I dig my teeth into my lip. This is really the worst-case scenario for someone who wants to go under the radar.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Mitchell encourages me. “No need to be shy.”
“Um…” I look at Davi, and when he smiles and bobs his head, something tense inside me loosens. I don’t expect that to happen—for the tension to just dissolve, but it does. I exhale and shuffle in the chair, no longer slouching. “I moved to America. From Nigeria. That’s what I did during the summer.”
“Damn!” a guy with wild curly blond hair says. “I only moved from my bed to the couch.” He and the rest of the class laugh, and I worry they might be laughing at me, but then Wild Curls nods and says, “Nigeria. Cool.”
“What part of Nigeria are you from?” Mr. Mitchell asks.
“Edo State—the southern region.”
“Well, welcome to America and Bellwood.”
“Thank you.”
He turns to another student, and I stun myself by raising my hand.
“Um… excuse me.”
“Yes, Enore.” Mr. Mitchell looks at me expectantly.
“My name. You aren’t saying it correctly.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” He glances at the clipboard. “I pronounced it the way it’s spelled. But please tell me the right way.”
“It’s pronounced Eh-no-ray.”
He nods and repeats the syllables. “How was that?”
It was better but not perfect. He doesn’t have the rhythm any Nigerian could easily convey. But maybe I should get used to people saying my name like this—with a layer of it stripped away. “Yes.” I nod at Mr. Mitchell. “You got it.”
Class ends ninety minutes after it begins, and it’s a relief to learn I have no more morning classes with Davi.
“I can still walk you to your next class—show you where it is,” he says while shoving books into his bag.
Even with my rule, I can’t turn down his offer. I don’t know my way around yet, and it’s nice to have a guide. “Thank you. That would be helpful.”
As we walk, he gets more attention. I wonder what clique he falls under. He’s popular, yes. But is he a jock? A rich kid? Or just one of the school’s extremely attractive people? I need specifics. Just then, I remember what he said when we met.
“You mentioned something the other day. Something about a coach?”
He nods. “Yeah. Coach Bathurst. The football coach.”
“You’re on the football team?”
“Yeah. We have our first away game next week. And debate club also starts next week.” He blows out a breath. “The madness begins again.”
“You’re in the debate club?”
“Yeah.”
A football player who’s in the debate club and also in AP Calculus. Usually teen movies paint the popular jock as an idiot with high expectations of his future but no ambition beyond sports. That clearly isn’t Davi.
“Your next class,” he says when we stop at an open door.
“Thank you.”
“I noticed we have the same lunch period. We could have lunch together. Um…” He clears his throat. “With other people too.”
Other people. That would likely include the rest of his clique—the popular kids. The thought of eating lunch with them unnerves me.
The second bell rings, and Davi looks down the hallway. “I gotta go, but I’ll see you in the cafeteria later?” He smiles sweetly, and my resolve slips away.
“Okay,” I say.
“All right. Cool. See you later.” His smile expands, and he turns and walks away.
It hasn’t even been a day yet, and here I go about to risk my whole plan for a boy.