The New Guy (2 page)

The spot next to Sadie in women’s history is, of course, open for me, and I slip as quietly into the room as I can manage. I don’t know why I bother, because I’m still getting out my textbook and notebook when she throws her pen at me.

“Was it him?” she whispers, if you can call it that. Sadie’s volume only seems to turn down so far.

I nod and keep my attention on my desk, even though I can’t wait to share everything with her.

“What was he like?”

“Miss Sheraton-Hayes.” Ms. Cannon doesn’t even bother to hide a sigh. “If you’d like to talk to Miss McAllister-Morgan, might I suggest after class or at lunch?”

“Great ideas,” Sadie says, somehow not sounding sarcastic even though no one else could pull off that feat. “Sorry, Ms. Cannon.”

I wait until we’re in the hallway after class to broach the subject. “He was actually—”

“Hang on.” Sadie’s attention is completely on her phone. “Everyone’s texting. Did you get a picture of him?”

“A picture?”

“With your phone?”

“I couldn’t take a picture of”—I stop myself and drop my voice to a whisper, a real whisper, not a Sadie-style one—“Alex Powell with my phone.”

“Jules!” She swats me on the arm. “What good is it having my best friend on the Reception Committee if it doesn’t benefit me in any way?”

“It’s really not supposed to benefit you in any way,” I say.

“He’s in Em’s calculus class,” Sadie says. “Imagine being in calculus, doing calculus stuff, with
Alex Powell
.”

I check my phone as well, even though that’s against Eagle Vista Academy rules. There’s nothing about today that doesn’t feel like an exception. “Em just texted. She says that no one is making a big deal out of him being here. Maybe people don’t really remember.”

“It was only two years ago,” Sadie says. “Wait! Why am I checking in with Em? I haven’t even debriefed you yet!”

“I have to get to class,” I say. “I haven’t even been to my locker yet.”

“This is totally worth being late for,” Sadie says, but I fear tardy slips far more than Sadie does, so we split up for now. Em’s in my Latin class, which is my next class, and she raises her eyebrows at me as I sit down.

“You heard, I assume,” she says. “Or you checked your texts for once.”

“Yes and yes,” I say. “I was his liaison this morning.”

“He seems normal,” she says.

“Completely. He was really nice.”

“And hot,” she says. “Very hot.”

“I didn’t notice,” I say for some reason, and Em’s eyebrows find new heights. “No, I noticed. Obviously I noticed. I don’t know why I said I didn’t.”

“Because you’re a professional, and you take your liaison duties very seriously.”

I’m pretty sure Em’s being sarcastic, but it’s true that I do.

“Jules, will you ever forgive us?” Sadie deposits a cupcake on top of my notebook before sitting down next to me at our lunch table. “In the Alex excitement, you were totally forgotten.”

“Nah, Jules is never forgotten,” Sadie’s boyfriend, Justin, says.

“They’re choosing newspaper editor today,” Sadie says. “You’re not worried, are you? You’re obviously getting it.”

“I’m not obviously getting it,” I say as Em and her boyfriend, Thatcher, sit down. “Natalie could get it.”

“Pffffff, Natalie.” Sadie waves this absolutely true possibility
off with a flick of her wrist. “Wheeler would be insane to pick her.”

“He wouldn’t be,” I say, because we are as evenly matched as two competitors can be. We both have perfect GPAs, we’ve both been on the honor roll throughout high school, and we both have a solid mix of extracurriculars. “But thank you for the cupcake.”

“Is there just one cupcake?” Thatcher asks with hope in his eyes.

There is, but I split it with him mainly because I don’t want to make him sad but also because maybe karma will reward my generosity with the editor position. I’m not entirely sure if that’s how karma works, but I’m willing to sacrifice half a cupcake to find out.

We used to share a bigger table with a bigger group of girls, but then people started getting boyfriends, and friends of boyfriends started joining in. So instead of being clustered together at one of the long tables, the huge group split up among the smaller round tables on the other side of the cafeteria. Now it’s just Sadie and her boyfriend, Em and her boyfriend, and me. I’ve decided it’s for the best that boys can’t be my focus right now, because this smaller table comfortably seats five. A boy wouldn’t just be crammed into my way-too-busy life; he’d have to be crammed into the seating arrangement as well.

“Hey, Jules?”

I look up to see that Alex Powell is standing near our table. Very near. Other tables have noticed too. It feels as if more than half the cafeteria is looking our way. But I think it feels that way because, literally, more than half the cafeteria is looking our way.

“Hi,” I say in perfect liaison tone. “Do you need any help navigating the cafeteria?”

“No,” he says, and smiles. Actually, he’s already smiling, but he smiles more. Alex’s smile possibilities seem vast and unending. “I navigated it pretty well. Cool if I…”

He nods at the table, and of course on one hand it’s obvious what he’s suggesting. But on the other, I cannot believe this is what he is suggesting, so I don’t say anything.

“Sit down,” Sadie tells him. “Justin, get him a chair.”

“You don’t have to sit with me because I’m your liaison,” I say. “There aren’t any liaison rules about lunches or anything. There are barely any liaison rules at all.”

“Jules, stop saying
liaison
,” Em says.

Justin returns with a chair that he somehow makes fit around the table. Alex drops his tray on the table and sits down next to me as if it’s something he does every day.

“The nachos were a good choice,” Em says with a nod to his lunch tray. Alex wouldn’t have any idea that to someone not in our little circle, that was
a lot
for Em to say and he should feel special.

“That’s a relief.” Alex grins, and I can feel how it’s very
much in my direction. I wish he would use his special powers elsewhere. Obviously in no real world is Alex Powell flirting with Jules McAllister-Morgan, but it’s so easy to forget that for whole seconds at a time. Plus I have no real experience to go by, unless you count Pete Jablowski, who kissed me two summers ago at gifted camp and then ran away.

(I actually do count that.)

“Where did you move from?” Sadie asks. “Was it somewhere colder?”

“Ann Arbor, Michigan, most recently,” he says. “So, yes.”

“Why did you move?” she asks.

“My dad’s job,” he says. “It happens a lot.”

“Oh, I’m Sadie,” she says. “This is Justin, Thatcher, Em, and of course you know Jules.”

I know to Alex it must look like I’m part of—well, not a
popular
crowd, but at least a cool one. Everyone could fill their own square in some sort of person bingo. Em’s in all black in the way that’s not gothy but artsy and intimidating, Thatcher’s glasses are orange, so everyone knows he’s really comfortable with himself, Justin—who looks like the skater that he is—has a tattoo on his right bicep because his older sister is a tattoo artist, and Sadie generally exudes cool but also specifically has very violet hair as well as a tiny hoop through her nose.

It’s fate that this is my crowd and that these are my friends. Sadie’s parents and my parents are best friends, and have been since before we were born. We were destined to be best
friends, which is why our lunch table most certainly looks like A Lot of Cool People, plus me, wearing J.Crew.

I don’t think it’s ever too early to put forward a professional appearance.

Sadie’s questions seem to have ended for at least the moment, which is good because I trust Sadie’s good intentions but not necessarily her ability to refrain from asking about obvious topics of interests. So I’m a little relieved that Alex has a chance to eat his nachos, and also that he’s not forced to confront his past as a singing and dancing dreamboat.

He looks over at me right as I think the word
dreamboat
, and I have a split second of thinking he has magical mystical mind-reading powers. “So what
are
the liaison rules?”

I’m nearly as sure that he’s teasing me as that he doesn’t have any psychic abilities, but I’m not positive. I force myself just to smile and not inform him of the required liaison bullet-point items and time limits. How does anyone deal with boys full-time? I’m exhausted trying just to be normal.

Talk turns to the usual subjects as people finish eating, and I stay quiet for an assortment of reasons, like Alex’s presence, like that Sadie generally carries enough conversation for all of us, like my memorized multi-item list of why I’m the best choice for newspaper editor.

After the warning bell rings, Alex walks side by side with me out of the cafeteria. “I just have to take a left to get back to Maywood Hall, yeah?”

“Correct,” I say, accidentally in my perfect Eagle Vista Academy Reception Committee Vice President Jules voice. Even for me, I’ve been a severe dork in front of Alex at this point. “I’m going that way too, actually.”

I now vaguely remember from glancing at his schedule this morning that we have Topics in Economics together, and I think American literature too at the end of the day. Obviously I didn’t memorize his schedule on purpose; it’s just hard not remembering when you have the same classes. If I were a question-asker like Sadie, I’d get to the bottom of why Alex is hanging around with me, but I’m keeping it all locked inside. Plus he’s new, and I’m an expert on the school, so it’s likely incredibly obvious.

And, anyway, by the time he selects a desk near Sadie and me in American lit, the last class of the day, my brain in overdrive mode has shifted from figuring him out to my Why Jules Should Be Newspaper Editor checklist.

“Are you nervous?” Sadie asks me. I know she means to whisper, so I’m okay that other people probably hear her. “He’d be crazy not to pick you.”

I glance over at Mr. Wheeler, who takes roll call every day by “studying the classroom,” which means we always get at least five minutes to talk while he squints around the room figuring out attendance. “We’ll see. And, yeah. I’m nervous.”

She leans over and tousles my hair. We’re almost exactly the same age—I’m only a month older than Sadie—but I
never mind when she takes care of me. “Text me as soon as you know. We can celebrate or mourn accordingly tonight.”

“I’m not sure I can,” I say. “Mom and I are making meatballs, so that’ll take a long time, and I have a lot of homework.”

“Try,” Sadie says because she seems to have stumbled upon time-bending abilities I’ve never been able to manage myself. If I have meatballs
and
cellular and molecular biology to worry about, I have no idea how socializing can also be slotted in. “Also save me some meatballs.”

“That much I can promise!”

“What’s up?” Alex asks. “Being nervous, I mean. Not the meatballs.”

“They’re announcing newspaper editor after school today,” I say, just loudly enough for Alex and Sadie to hear me. “And it’s a really big deal to me.”

“She’ll obviously get it,” Sadie says. “Jules is a very organized genius, if you haven’t noticed.”

“She’s already a VP,” Alex says. “Editor too? Is that allowed in the constitution?”

After the last bell rings, I file out with the rest of the class, even though Mr. Wheeler’s classroom doubles as the newspaper office. I like putting away my books and getting out my special red notebook and folder that I only use for this.

When people see or hear about my schedule, the automatic assumption is that I’m padding my college applications. Yes, I have newspaper, reception, and student council.
Yes, during summers I have one of those I-file-unimportant-paperwork-because-my-parent-works-here internships. Yes, I walk dogs one weekday afternoon and one weekend morning every week. But it’s not only so I look good to Brown, or to any other school. All this stuff
matters
.

Okay, maybe not the filing. But everything else! And at least at the office I get to dress business-casual like I’m an adult, and the department assistant always buys me lattes when she picks up coffee orders for all the lawyers.

Alex leans against the locker next to mine. “Thanks for showing me around today. Liaison or not.”

“Oh, it’s just because I’m—” I cut myself off from any more liaison talk. “You’re welcome.”

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

I think he’s going to walk away, but he doesn’t. “Oh! See you tomorrow too.”

“Good luck with newspaper.” He grins at me before heading off down the hallway. I don’t know why the smile feels like the first one anyone’s ever shown to me, so I focus on switching out my books and walking back into Mr. Wheeler’s office.

I sit down next to Thatcher, who’s already been the photography editor for the past year because he’s really talented but also because he owns his own camera, and it’s a
really
fancy one. Mr. Wheeler swore up and down that the camera wasn’t to blame or thank for Thatcher’s title, but we all suspect otherwise.

My bullet-point list is written in my red notebook, and I turn to it and reread while people file into the room. I’m only on item number four (
Showed leadership capabilities by becoming the first Reception Committee member to be elected vice president as a sophomore
) when I hear Thatcher’s camera’s shutter click.