One #2
Not by doing or saying anything; in fact, he acted like he hadn’t even noticed me there.
But that bothered me, too—that I couldn’t ignore him for some reason and that he was pretending to ignore me.
I just knew he could feel the hot sparking line of dislike that connected us across the room.
Something was wrong. He was wrong, though I couldn’t say why.
I turned the pages of my textbook without really processing the words.
I realized halfway through class that I wasn’t even on the right page.
I had turned to the marine biodiversity chapter, the section about plants that grew one hundred feet underwater, where the sunlight barely reached.
The open page of my notebook was empty save for the doodles in the margins: tall, winding clumps of seagrasses.
I was grateful that Cella and I had the same classes. She wouldn’t mind lending me her notes.
***
I wasn’t even surprised when Mason entered my seventh period: drama. If I thought about it hard and self-critically, I’d probably earned my fair share of bad karma.
Miss Jenkins clapped her hands in her fluttery way. She was Carrington High School’s only theater teacher, so this was my second time taking a class with her. Cella liked this sort of thing.
“You must be Mason! Welcome . . .”—Miss Jenkins greeted him with a weighty pause—“. . . to drama class.”
She raised her arms with a flourish. Mason adjusted his backpack on his shoulder, looking over the room.
Miss Jenkins told him to take any seat. He seemed to really consider.
He squared his shoulders, and I watched warily as he weaved his way through the room, passing multiple empty desks on his way to our back corner. He smiled down at Cella.
“Mind if I sit here?” he asked, sounding shy, of all things.
She said, “No, not at all.”
I said, “Yeah.”
Mason half turned, directing his words my way but keeping his eyes on Cella, like I wasn’t even worth a full look or she was just so distracting. “Wasn’t asking you.”
I licked my teeth over the soreness in my gums. My fangs were pushing at the pink flesh, fighting to slide out.
The feeling reminded me of being seven years old, unaccustomed to being around so many humans, smelling blood from across the playground as some boy or girl sniveled after scraping their knee.
I had learned to control the urge, like we all did, but there it was.
Mason sat next to Cella. My mouth hurt, and I curled my hand into a fist on the desk, distantly aware of the eyes on us. Nobody sitting nearby had missed that small disagreement, and they watched, surprised and prying and not trying to hide it.
They knew who I was, even if I didn’t know them. They knew that, unless provoked, I saved my attention for Cella. And if I was provoked, they knew to avoid my glare. Yet here Mason was, reveling in it, smugness all over his face.
“Call time!” said Miss Jenkins, her version of one, two, three, eyes on me. “As you know, today we’re starting our first big project!” She was always so enthusiastic it almost made me feel sorry for her.
She explained that we would be working in groups of our own choosing, three members each.
She would assign each trio one of Shakespeare’s famous plays to study and analyze.
We would have three weeks to write an analysis and craft our own short play that mirrored our Shakespearean play’s features.
A new story with parallel characters, placed in a comparable setting, and conveying the same major theme.
She gave us five minutes to get into groups. “Try to work with someone you haven’t worked with before!”
Before she even finished speaking, students started turning their desks toward the friends they always worked with. Naturally. Valiant effort, though.
Cella and I were a given, and I didn’t give a damn who the third member was, so long as it wasn’t—
“Mason?”
I actually felt my eye twitch. I hadn’t realized that happened in real life. The voice wasn’t Cella’s, thank fuck. A pair of girls, pretty and perfectly charming, had approached Mason from his other side.
From several desks away, two other girls waved Cella over. “Hey, Marcella, right?”
That was more surprising. As far as I knew, she didn’t have any other friends in this class. Despite all of her good impressions, Cella had always stuck as closely to me as I did to her. We didn’t need anyone else.
“Oh,” said Cella, half standing like she wasn’t sure. I shrugged to show that I wasn’t bothered—I knew she wouldn’t ditch me. Still, as she walked their way, I let my narrow gaze rake over the girls. They averted their eyes.
Her leaving left only an empty desk between Mason and me. He was busy with that pretty pair, leaning forward in his seat and flashing a high-watt smile.
“Sounds like fun,” he was saying, laughing like he was embarrassed, scratching the back of his neck. “Thanks for the invite. It’s too bad I’ll have to miss out, though. There’s someone else I’m hoping to work with.”
There was that eye twitch again.
Cella came back as the pretty pair was leaving. All three of them looked dejected.
“Emily and Jenna want to work with you,” Cella said dryly. “They’re too scared to ask themselves. You know how it goes.”
I grimaced. I did know. It wasn’t the first time a girl had tried to reach me through Cella. Not even close. Apparently, I was unapproachable. Cella always called it my “mean mug.” It wasn’t like I went out of my way to make people nervous, but it was convenient.
“You and that mean mug,” she said now, sitting heavily back in her chair.
I started to turn my desk toward hers, letting the legs scrape loudly, knowing the girls were watching. I’d only turned halfway when Mason said, “Since Ray of Sunshine here is accounted for, want to work with me?”
My chair screeched on the linoleum.
“Oh,” Cella said again, the curve of it lingering on her open mouth. She gave me a deer-in-headlights look. I answered with a don’t-you-dare look.
“We’re working together,” I told Mason.
“Just you two?” he said. “The numbers work out, then.”
Cella swept her gaze around the classroom, where nearly everyone was already settled in their groups. I saw the exact moment I lost. The thing about Cella, the thing that set us apart, was that she tried to be nice. She tried hard. She wanted badly to be liked. It hadn’t always been that way.
“I . . . don’t see why not,” she said. Mason beamed.
“I see why not,” I chimed in.
“Do you have a problem working with me?” he asked innocently enough. He had that dare in his eyes again, waiting for the satisfaction of making me squirm.
“You’d better not slow us down,” I said.
Miss Jenkins hollered “Call time!” and asked each group to write their names on the whiteboard.