The Academy - First Days (7 page)

When the bell rang again, we all stood up. We found a hallway that
led outside. North’s first class was at trailer thirty, almost all the way at the
end of the row. I walked between him and Luke, following the sidewalk that lead
away from the main building.

“Who was that guy?” North asked. “The one that kept looking at
you?”

My face heated. I didn’t have to ask which one. I knew exactly who
he meant. “I bumped into him at the mall one day.”

“You mean that day with Silas and Victor?” he asked. His eyes
widened and hands clenched. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“North,” I said, my fingers brushed his arm to get his attention
“He backed off when you two showed up.” It surprised me he heard about that.
How much did the boys tell each other about me? Did he tell the others about
what happened yesterday?

“Yeah,” Luke said. “We don’t have to worry. Sang’s schedule is
covered and he didn’t seem that interested in her.”

North’s lips pursed. He walked us to our trailer.

“I’ll wait for you,” I said to North, “so we can walk to the next
class.”

He nodded and turned away. I kept an eye on him until I lost him
among the other students.

Luke put a hand on my shoulder, urging me inside. “He’ll be fine,”
he said. “You might not have noticed, but he’s pretty scary looking. No one’s
going to mess with him.”

I widened my eyes at him. “I’m supposed to be worried he was going
to get messed with? I was just thinking he was walking too slow and he might be
late to his next class.”

Luke’s eyes lit up and he grinned like he wanted to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

He
said nothing and opened the door for me.

U
nusual
C
lassmates

L
uke and I found seats near the back of the room together. Kota
entered a minute later, falling into the seat in front of me and adjusted his
glasses. “Oh good,” he said, looking at Luke behind me. “I was worried you
wouldn’t make it.”

“Traffic was crazy,” Luke said.

Kota glanced at our seats and the others that were still available
in the room. “Let’s change this.”

Luke shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

“He is?” I asked. Kota’s orders were strange to me and it was
weird to hear Luke acknowledge them.

They exchanged glances and Luke laughed. “We’ve been friends for
so long, we’re just used to him bossing us around.”

“I don’t boss you around,” Kota said. “I make suggestions.”

“We’re too nice to say no.”

The looks that passed between them told me there was more to this.
Was Kota really in charge in some official way from the Academy? I pursed my
lips, biting back the questions.

Kota pointed to three seats. Luke sat in the last one near the
back. I sat in front of him and Kota sat in front of me.

“I’m always in the middle,” I said. I wasn’t really complaining,
just making an observation.

“How can you say that?” Kota said, turning around. “We just
started.”

The bell started to ring as Gabriel rushed in the door. He
collapsed into a seat to my left. “Walking from the second floor is a bitch,”
he said.

“Gabe,” Kota’s tone was warning enough.

Gabriel shrugged, putting his hand on his chest as he breathed
heavily. His red tie was flipped over, revealing the Gucci brand label. He
smoothed his hand over his chest to straighten it. “You try getting down those
stairs. You’d let one slip, too.” His head twisted and his crystal blue eyes
narrowed at me. “Nuh uh,” he said. “Hand them over.” He snapped his fingers and
pointed to my hair.

“Kota,” I whispered.

Kota turned to look at me and the pencils in my hair. His green
eyes lit up. “It’s cute.”

“Nope,” Gabriel said. “I’ll take all your pencils if you don’t get
it out of your hair right now. I want it down.”

I twisted my lips, tempted to ignore him. I felt a hand near my
hair and the bun loosened. Luke handed back my two pencils. He kept the ones in
his own hair. I dropped the two pencils on the desk. Luke ran his fingers
through my hair to undo the twist.

Gabriel grinned, satisfied.

The class started and we were handed an agenda and a list of books
we were to read outside of class with instructions to take special tests that
were in the library.

Ms. Johnson stood in front of the room. The trailer walls were a
faux wood panel and with her brown dress, she almost blended in. She was thin,
pale, with curly dark hair cut short around her ears. “I know you don’t have
your books yet, but that doesn’t mean we have time to slack off. I need
everyone to take out some paper.”

There was a subtle collective groan and a lot of shuffling. I
reached for my bag, pulling out two of the notebooks and two pens, handing a
set to Luke behind me before he finished poking me in the shoulder to ask.

He blinked as I handed it to him. “I guess we did need to bring
stuff.”

“You can keep it,” I said, “if you want.”

He smiled at me in a way that made me shiver. I turned around as I
didn’t know how to respond.

Ms. Johnson put her hands in the air in an effort to quiet the
class. “I don’t have a loud voice so I can’t talk over you.” She paused to
allow the class to quiet down. “Today, I want a poem. We’ll be starting with
poetry and I want you to write a poem for me.”

Another wave of groans swept through the room.

“I know kids don’t like poems but I know you’ve heard of at least
one in your life. I want one original poem from each of you by tomorrow morning
on my desk. You can start now.”

I stared at the blank page in front of me. A poem. I tried to
think of the last one I had read and couldn’t remember. They all had to rhyme,
didn’t they? I wished I could read a few first to get an idea of what I wanted
to go for. How long of a poem did it have to be?

The sound of scratching filled the room as pens and pencils were
applied to paper. I managed to write my name on my page and started with
writing pretty words that I liked in a curly cursive lettering.

I felt a nudge at my arm. I glanced up to see Gabriel holding up
his notebook. He’d drawn the word “poem” into a rose unfolding into bloom. It was
so lifelike that if it wasn’t for the fact that it was in pencil, I would have
thought it was real.

My mouth popped open in surprise. I wrote something quickly on my
paper and held it up for him to read.

I thought you said you weren’t good at art?

He smiled and then wrote something back on his page, holding it
up.
It isn’t good.

I wrote back.
You’re crazy. It’s beautiful. You belong in art
class.

He beamed. I admired his smile and the way his ears turned a red,
almost matching the ruby studs in his lobes.

“Unless you’re willing to read what you have to the class, I want
eyes on your own paper,” Ms. Johnson said. While she was smiling, she clearly
meant her threat.

We both tucked our heads down, grinning. Gabriel wasn’t too bad.
He might have stolen my hair clip and was demanding, but he was fun.

Sometime during the writing session, I felt Luke touching my hair.
I wanted to check to see what it was but I felt Ms. Johnson’s eyes on me and
after getting caught with Gabriel, I didn’t want to risk having to stand up in
class.

When the bell rang, Kota got up, said a quick goodbye to all of us
and dashed out the door. I looked to Luke and Gabriel. They both shrugged.

Outside the trailer, Luke went on to his next class and Gabriel
stood by with me as I waited for North.

“You don’t have to wait,” I told him. “I should be okay standing
here, right?”

“I know,” he said, grinning. “I’d feel better though.”

I reached up to tug my hair behind my ears. Part of me hoped he
would get the hint and give my clip back but he didn’t seem to notice. “Will
you be late?”

“Will you stop worrying about me?”

“But if your class...”

He reached out with a straight hand and gave me a light chop on
top of my head. “Stop it. I’m not going to be late.”

“Late for what?” North said, approaching. Being so much taller, he
stood out among the rest of the students. He had his hands in his pockets and
walked up to us. He looked at Gabriel. “What are you doing to her?”

“Nothing!” Gabriel hiked up his book bag and waved to us. “See you
at lunch.” He started off alone toward the trailers.

I watched him leave. Maybe I didn’t have to worry about North, but
did I have to worry about Gabriel?

“He’ll be fine,” North said as if reading my worries on my face.
He wrapped an arm around my neck and pulled me around until we were walking
together toward the building.

“How was class?” I asked him, trying to ignore the sensation to
shiver at his touch.

“Nathan’s right. Public school is a pain in the ass.”

We ran up to the second floor together. Nathan was waiting for us,
sitting in the back with two empty seats in front of him.

“It’s about time,” Nathan said. “I about gave up holding these
seats.”

“Switch places with me, Nat,” North said.

“I want the back, though.”

They both stared at each other. Faces became stern. I hesitated to
sit down, not sure how to handle this.

“I could... I could sit in the back,” I said. I tried to give a
cheesy smile, hoping they’d settle down. Would humor bring their tempers down
or just irritated them more? Where was Kota when I needed him?

Their eyes slid to me and they seemed to relax. North took the
front seat. I sat in the middle again with Nathan behind me.

“What happened to your hair?” Nathan asked me as we waited for the
geometry teacher to finish passing out some papers.

I reached for the back of my head, feeling something like braids
or twists. “Luke happened.” I tried pulling one around but the lock of hair I
grabbed was too short for me to stretch where I could see.

Nathan laughed.

“Let me see,” North said.

I turned myself around, showing him the back of my head. He
laughed, too.

“Is it bad? It’s purple or something, isn’t it?”

“It’s loops.” North pulled a strand around to show me how Luke had
twisted it so much at the tips that it made a natural loop and held together.

I smirked at it, taking the strand from him. I used my fingernails
to comb through the lock to brush the loop out.

The teacher started talking so I had to sit back. Nathan started
pulling the other loops, trying to untwist my hair. “You’ve got to watch out
for Luke,” he whispered to me. “He does this shit all the time.”

The geometry teacher passed out some worksheet homework for us to
get started on that night and gave us our book assignments for the week.

North slumped very low in his chair and leaned back. His head was
almost back against my desk.

I leaned, looking over his face. His eyes were closed. “Tired,
North?”

“Mmm.”

“You stayed up too late.”

He grinned. “Yup. There’s this girl named Sang, and she’s a
terrible influence on me.”

I giggled loud enough that it caught the attention of some of the
others around us. I blushed and pretended to focus on the worksheets we were
supposed to be doing. Luke and North might have been step brothers, but they
were so different, and not in a bad way.

After geometry ended, Nathan walked with me to the music room.

“What’s Mr. Blackbourne like as a teacher?” I asked him. My heart
was thudding as I remembered Mr. Blackbourne and his A-perfect face and stern,
steel eyes. It was exciting to me to finally get to learn to play something but
I wondered how I could possibly focus on music when someone like Mr.
Blackbourne would narrow his critical gaze on me.

“He’s fair,” Nathan said. He walked close to me in the corridors.
His arm brushed against mine and on occasion the backs of our hands touched but
he never reached for it again like he did that morning. Why was I thinking I
wanted him to? “He can be very strict. Just remember: he yells because he cares.”

My mouth popped open. Yelling? I wasn’t so sure how I would handle
someone like that trying to teach me a musical instrument. In the past, I had a
few teachers who liked to yell when students weren’t paying attention and I
always felt so numb when they did. I couldn’t focus on the rest of class when
it happened.

Nathan held the door to Music Room B open for me but let go to let
it swing shut when I was inside, saying goodbye. I missed him instantly,
wishing he could have stayed a moment or two.