welcome, dear. And if you ever have any trouble, just come to me. I marked the office with a bee.” Mrs. Zalinsky pointed at her nameplate on the counter. Two bumblebees were drawn hovering around the Z in her name.
I examined the map. Sure enough, there was a little black-and-yellow bee floating next to the office. “I’ll bee sure to do that,” I joked.
Mrs. Zalinsky chuckled as she reached for a ringing phone.
I waved over my shoulder and opened the office door. The volume level rose considerably as I entered the bustling hallway. I glanced at the map just in case Mrs. Zalinsky was watching—I’d been well trained to keep up appearances—and turned left toward physics, my first class of the day.
Despite the fact that I’d arrived early, people were everywhere: crowding the hall, cramming books into lockers, making out in front of classrooms. They were just like the students at the six other high schools I’d attended, except here there were more of them. I loved it.
A sudden burst of sound to my left caught my attention. A group of about twelve guys, standing in a slightly curved line and wearing matching navy blazers, had started singing. An a cappella group? That’s new. A crowd surrounded them, snapping and nodding along to something I recognized after a few seconds: “The Longest Time” by Billy Joel. A song I hadn’t heard in years wasn’t exactly what I expected from high school boys. Homesickness pricked my chest as I tried to figure out where I’d last heard it.
I slowed, watching the tallest guy singing lead in the center of the group as I passed. He had light brown skin and short dark brown hair, but even seeing the words come out of his mouth couldn’t make the memory hovering at the edge of my brain come into focus. When his eyes met mine, I ducked my head. I hadn’t even been watching him for a full minute, but it was all the time I needed to see it: the way the other boys took their cues from him; the slightly larger amount of space around him than any of the other guys, like his all-around awesomeness needed room to breathe; how every eye in the crowd followed him. He was popular. Charismatic. Not one to blend in. Therefore, not someone I wanted to know.
I kept my head down and studied my feet—lack of eye contact makes you more forgettable—as I turned the corner to the hall that would take me to physics. Which is why I didn’t see the person barreling toward me until right before we collided.
I had just enough time to spread my feet and bend my knees slightly. I felt the crash in my whole body, muscles tensing, air rushing out of me in a muffled umph, but a tiny step back was all I needed to absorb the impact. The other person hit the floor with a loud thud, knocking everything I was holding in my hands across the hall. Before I could even cringe at the lack of blending in, a prickly sensation crept up my neck at the feeling of eyes on my back.
My chest tightened as the velvety a cappella voices, the mass of students, the entire hall disappeared. Fragmented images flashed in my mind: feet pounding on concrete, a hand tight on my arm, a broken piece of wood. Then, as fast as the images had come, they were gone, replaced with the hum of conversations and a person sprawled on the ground in front of me and too many students gathered around us. I swallowed hard. They’re not watching you, they’re just curious. No one here knows you.
I took a deep breath, trying to loosen the knot in my chest. “Walk much?” I mumbled, quiet enough I knew the guy who’d run into me wouldn’t be able to hear. And I was certain it was a guy. The level of solidness I felt before he bounced off wasn’t something a girl could achieve unless she was a professional bodybuilder from Russia.
“I’m so sorry,” a deep voice said. “I shouldn’t have been running. Are you okay?”
I didn’t glance at him or any of the people now whispering about us as I bent down to gather my stuff. “I’m fine,” I replied without any malice. I wasn’t really annoyed at him, I was annoyed at myself. That’s what you get for letting some stupid Billy Joel song distract you. Remembering never helps anything.
“Here.” The guy shifted on the floor and collected the map from where it had landed a few feet away. He smoothed it out, even though it didn’t have a mark on it, reached around the legs of a few nosy onlookers and held it out to me.
I grabbed it and shoved it into my bag. All I wanted was to get to physics and disappear into a seat in the back.
“Sloane Sullivan?”
My heart skipped a beat at hearing my name from some random guy. I flexed my hands, my always-on-alert muscles ready to put my self-defense skills to use. Then his hand came into my field of vision. He was holding my schedule, his thumb resting next to my name, and I almost laughed at how jumpy I was being. Get a grip. It’s not like you haven’t done this first day thing before.
“Cool,” the boy said. “My grandfather’s first name was Sullivan.”
My eyes locked on the scuffed floor as my breath caught in my throat.
“Everyone should have two first names.”
Every inch of my body froze as a completely different image popped into my head: black hair sticking up in all directions, deep blue eyes bright with amusement, mouth quirked into the same goofy grin it always wore when he said those words, words he’d said so many times before.
My pulse took off as the guy crouched in front of me, making it all but impossible to stand without facing him. “Let me help you up. It’s the least I can do for a fellow double-first-namer.”
The whole world slowed to a crawl as I forced myself to look up.
Right into the unmistakable deep blue eyes of Jason Thomas.
I studied the wide eyes staring back at me from only a foot away. It was impossible they belonged to Jason. But the pools of almost green around his pupils that melted into a deep ocean blue set against an even darker blue ring around the edges were exactly like I remembered. Exactly like I’d stared into a million times before.
This is bad. Very, very bad.
It had happened once before. Three and a half years ago, when we were living in Flagstaff. I thought I’d seen Ms. Jenkins, the elderly widow who lived across the street from me in New Jersey, come out of a gift shop one Thursday afternoon. I’d been inside a bookstore next door and was certain Ms. Jenkins hadn’t seen me, but I still took the long way home and told Mark. Three hours later, we were in the car on the way to our next lives.
And I hadn’t known Ms. Jenkins nearly as well as I knew Jason.
A crease appeared in between his eyebrows. He opened his mouth slightly then closed it, all while searching my face.
The contacts! I prayed the brown would be enough to throw him off. But when his gaze dropped to the left side of my neck, I knew I was in trouble. Mark’s voice sounded in my head, as clear as if he was standing right next to me: Lesson number six: take control of the situation.
I shifted my hair to cover the faint pink scar on the side of my neck—the only proof I’d once had a large dark brown mole there—and stood. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I grabbed my schedule with one hand and took hold of Jason’s outstretched hand with the other, helping him up. “I’m
