How Not to Spend Your Senior Year (2 page)

No, I am not dissing myself, nor am I suffering from some undiagnosed self-esteem problem of astronomical proportions. I'm just stating the natural result of my number one approach to fitting in at a new school.

Always blend in. Never stand out from the crowd.

This is actually a lot easier than it sounds. All you have to do is be reasonably pleasant to everyone you meet and resist the impulse to make extreme fashion choices.

It's also more interesting than you might expect. To be an observer. To be, as it were, a crowd of one. In my case, it was also the only practical thing to do. There wasn't very much point in getting noticed or getting attached when I knew that, sooner or later, and usually it was sooner, I'd be moving on.

There is one other advantage of not drawing attention to yourself: It makes it much easier to figure out who the players are.

On my left, the computer geeks and skateboard dudes. To my right, the always-dressed-in-basic-black
artistic types. Front and center, the popular crowd. Each school has its own unique variations, of course, but in my experience, students everywhere fall into two main categories: those who want to be noticed, and those who don't.

If you fall into the second category, as I always did, you develop extremely good adaptation skills, enabling you to identify the players at a glance, then blend right in to virtually any situation you encounter. After all the new schools I've had to adjust to over the years, I think I can in all modesty state that I possess camouflage skills that can make any blue mutant you care to name look like a total piker.

They all deserted me the day that I met Alex.

It happened my very first day at Beacon, a thing I think I mentioned before. I was standing across the street from the big brick building that would, in just a few moments, become my brand-new (and I sincerely hoped my last) high school, gazing upward. You're probably thinking I was sizing up the school.

I wasn't.

Instead, the thing that had captured my attention was this big metal column topped by . . . absolutely nothing. It was doing this in the parking lot of what I had to figure was the main supplier of off-campus food: a retro-fifties fast-food joint.

Maybe it's supposed to be some kind of art,
I thought as I stared at the column. I was living in the big city now, after all. Public art happened. Not only that, it didn't have to make sense. In fact, having it
not
make sense was probably a requirement.

“They took it down for repairs,” a voice beside me suddenly said.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but the truth is, I jumped about a mile. I'd been so mesmerized by the sight of that column extending upward into space, supporting empty air, that I'd totally lost track of all my soon-to-be-fellow students rushing by me. To this day, I can't quite explain the fascination. But I've promised to tell you the 100 percent truth, which means I've got to include even the parts which make me appear less than impressive.

“Huh?”

Yes, all right, I know. Nowhere even
near the list of incredibly clever replies.

“They took it down for repairs,” the voice said again.

“Took it down,” I echoed. By this time, I knew I was well on my way to breaking my own blending-in rule, big time. Sounding like a total idiot can generally be considered a foolproof method of getting yourself noticed.

“The car that's usually up there.” The guy—it
was
a guy; I'd calmed down enough to realize that—said. I snuck a quick glance at him out of the corner of my eye. First fleeting impression: tall and blond. The kind of muscular-yet-lanky build I might as well just come right out and admit I've always been a sucker for. Faded jeans. Letterman jacket with just about every sport there was represented on it.

Gotcha!
I thought.
BMOC. Big Man on Campus.

This made me feel a little better for a couple of reasons. The first was that it showed my skills hadn't abandoned me completely after all. I could still identify the players pretty much on sight.

The second was that in my vast, though
admittedly from-a-distance, experience of them, BMOCs have short attention spans for anyone less BOC than they are. Disconcerting and intense as it was at the moment, I could nevertheless take comfort in the fact that this guy's unexpected and unnatural interest in me was also unlikely to last very long.

“An old Chevy, I think,” he was going on now. “It's supposed to be back soon, though. Not really the same without it, is it?”

He actually sounded genuinely mournful. I was surprised to find myself battling back a quick, involuntary smile. He did seem to be more interesting than your average, run-of-the-mill BMOC. I had to give him that.

Get a grip, O'Connor,
I chastised myself. “Absolutely not,” I said, giving my head a semi-vigorous nod.
That ought to move him along,
I thought.

You may not be aware of this fact, but agreeing with people is often an excellent way of getting them to forget all about you. After basking in the glow of agreement, most people are then perfectly content to go about their business, remembering only
the fact that someone agreed and allowing the identity of the person who did the actual agreeing to fade into the background.

This technique almost always works. In fact, I'd never known it not to.

There was a moment of silence. A silence in which I could feel the BMOC's eyes upon me. I kept my own eyes fixed on the top of the carless column. But the longer the silence went on, the more strained it became. At least it did on my side. This guy was simply not abiding by the rules. He was supposed to have basked and moved on by now.

“You don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about, do you?” he said at last.

I laughed before I quite realized what I'd done.

“Not a clue,” I said, turning to give him my full attention for the very first time, an action I could tell right away spelled trouble.
You just had to do it, didn't you?
I thought. He was even better looking when I took a better look.

He flashed me a smile, and I felt my pulse kick up several notches. My brain
knew perfectly well that that smile had
not
been invented just for me. My suddenly-beating-way-too-fast heart wasn't paying all that much attention to my brain, though.

“You must be new, then,” he commented. “I'd remember you if we'd met before.”

All of a sudden, his face went totally blank.

“I cannot believe I just said that,” he said. “That is easily the world's oldest line.”

“If it isn't, it's the cheesiest,” I said.

He winced. “I'd ask you to let me make it up to you, but I'm thinking that would make things even worse.”

“You'd be thinking right.”

This time he was the one who laughed, the sound open and easy, as if he was genuinely enjoying the joke on himself. In retrospect I think it was that laugh that did it. That finished the job his smile had started. You just didn't find all that many guys, all that many people, who were truly willing to laugh at themselves.

“I'm Alex Crawford,” he said.

“Jo,” I said. “Jo O'Connor.”

At this Alex actually stuck out his hand. His eyes, which I probably don't need to tell you were this pretty much impossible shade of blue, focused directly on my face.

“Pleased to meet you, Jo O'Connor.”

I watched my hand move forward to meet his, as if it belonged to a stranger and was moving in slow motion. At that exact moment, an image of the robot from the movie
Lost in Space
flashed through my mind. Arms waving frantically in the air, screaming,
“Danger! Danger!”
at the top of its inhuman lungs.

My hand kept moving anyhow.

Our fingers connected. I felt the way Alex's wrapped around mine, then tightened. Felt the way that simple action caused a flush to spread across my cheeks and a tingle to start in the palm of my hand and slowly begin to work its way up my arm. To this day, I'd swear I heard him suck in a breath, saw his impossibly blue eyes widen. As if, at the exact same moment I looked up at him, he'd discovered something as completely unexpected as I had, gazing down.

He released me. I stuck my hand behind my back.

“Pleased to meet you, Jo O'Connor,” he said again. Not quite the way he had the first time. “Welcome to Beacon High. So, where are you from, if you aren't from around here?”

“Pretty much all over,” I said, retaining just enough presence of mind to give my standard, non-specific reply.

“O-kaay,” Alex said, drawing out the second syllable as if trying to decide whether or not to ask more.

From across the street at the school, the warning bell that signaled the imminent commencement of classes trilled sharply.

“Sounds like we'd better get going,” Alex said.

“Uh-huh,” I responded.

He stepped back and made a gesture as if ushering me forward. I walked beside him toward my newest school, trying to convince myself that the reason I suddenly felt so dizzy and lightheaded was that I'd contracted some bizarre Seattle flu bug.

You know that phrase, everywhere you go, there you are? Well, my first day at Beacon provided me with the inspiration for a variation:

Everywhere I went, there was Alex Crawford.

Following our surprising encounter in the carless-column parking lot, I'd done my best to return to my normal blending-in behavior, an endeavor which was aided by the fact that first period English was a class Alex and I did not have in common.

I'd timed my arrival at the first classroom with my usual attention to detail. I wanted the room full, but not too full.
Then I'd entered calmly and taken a seat about three quarters of the way back.

This is the seating chart equivalent of the no-extreme-fashion-choices concept, just so you know. All the way at the back says
troublemaker
to the teachers. Too far forward and your fellow classmates think
teacher's pet
.

The inevitable announcement that there was a new student brought the equally inevitable several minutes of unwanted attention. After which, when I did nothing further of note, my new classmates were content to relegate me to the same category as white noise. A thing that was perfectly fine with me. By the time first period was over, my head felt back to normal, and I was well on my way to congratulating myself on my quick recovery from my encounter with Alex Crawford.

Right up until the moment I walked out of the classroom and straight into his arms.

It was hard not to. He was standing right outside the door.

His hands came up to grasp and steady me at the same time as he flashed me that
mind-numbing smile.
How on earth did he get here so fast?
I wondered.

“Hey, Jo O'Connor,” he said.

“Hey, yourself,” I mumbled.

At that moment, I made a snap decision, a thing I usually avoid. My usual new school adjustment techniques just didn't seem to be getting me anywhere, at least not with Alex Crawford. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Only a fool tries the same thing twice, though. If fading into the background wasn't going to work, maybe standing out by being obnoxious would.

“What did you say your name was, again?” I asked.

Alex laughed.
Oh, nice move, O'Connor,
I thought. It was the same kind of laugh he'd given before. Open, easy, unself-conscious. A laugh that softened all my defenses and pretty much made my heart want to melt like one of those little pats of butter you get at Denny's, left out in the sun.

It also got the attention of anyone nearby who had somehow miraculously failed to notice the extra attention Mr.
BMOC was paying to the new girl. Assuming there had actually been anyone.

“Not to be rude or anything,” I said as I took a step back. This forced Alex to let go of my arms. Unfortunately it also resulted in me stomping on the feet of whoever was trying to get out behind me.

“Hey, watch it,” I heard him say.

“But I believe it's traditional to let the first-period students exit the classroom before the second-period ones go in,” I went on.

“I'm not going in,” Alex said simply. “I'm walking you to your next class. History, right?”

Right,
I thought. Right before I thought,
This has absolutely got to stop.
If I couldn't nip whatever was happening with Alex Crawford in the bud, there was no telling where I'd end up, though it seemed a pretty safe bet that making a fool of myself would somehow be involved.

“How do you even know where it is?” I asked, my tone aggressive. “What if it's nowhere near where you have to be?”

At this, the student behind me decided he'd waited long enough. He gave a quick
shove. An action that sent me right back into Alex Crawford's arms.

“It doesn't make a difference,” Alex said.

My brain struggled for most of the rest of the day, but even then, I think it knew that my heart had won.