to the island receding like an ocean wave, exposing the oppressive heft of my unshakable life story.
There are no rewrites in store for me here. No blank canvases. What was will continue to be. That Harper and her pack of perfectly coifed skanks knew where I come from—that they knew about my mother’s sickness and subsequent suicide—reinforces what a part of me already guessed: if I want a better life, I’m going to have to fight for it. As Anne Merchant. Not as some watered-down, poser, more acceptable version of myself.
A commotion at the end of the hall interrupts my thoughts, and I glance up to see three silhouettes hurriedly heading my way. Two are tall and lean, and the other is shorter and marginally buff. It’s clear that one of the tall guys is hauling the other two toward Villicus’s office, in spite of their reluctance. Their bickering reaches me before they do.
“It’s called the First Amendment,” the shorter guy cries. His voice seems to be holding back a laugh, and, as they come into the light, I can see him grinning. “Freedom of speech. Freedom to assemble.”
“That’s enough, Mr. Stone.” One of the tall guys is, in fact, a tall man, who is dressed impeccably in an expensive-looking suit with a cashmere scarf and overcoat. His dark hair is brushed elegantly away from his face, and his frosty blue glare glows against his olive skin. Obviously, he’s a member of the faculty. I hope he’s not my teacher, though, because it would be tragic for my GPA if I spent my class time gawking at the teacher and stammering through my comments.
“I should be allowed to protest the Big V race,” the Stone boy insists, “without your kid getting on my butt for it and without Villicus tearing me a new one!”
“Pilot, your picket sign read ‘The Only V I Want Is Between Her Legs,’” the tall boy says and, frustrated, sits on the bench across from me. He drops his face into his hands and sighs. “That’s not protesting. That’s peacocking. Aggressively.”
Pilot Stone smirks. His dark gaze dashes my way, and he smiles mischievously. I raise my papers in front of my face so it’s not quite so obvious that I’m eavesdropping.
“Dr. Z, come on,” Pilot says as he squeezes into the bench next to me, forcing me to shove down when there’s hardly space to do so. He smells clean, and his leg and arm against mine are nice and warm. “I won’t tell Villie about Ben here destroying my property—”
“Your property! It was offensive garbage on craft paper!” the tall boy cries out.
“—if you just let this whole thing go.”
The negotiating stops quickly with a long, heavy pause. I wish now that I wasn’t holding my syllabus up as high as I am so I could see their faces. Relying on my peripheral vision, I strain to make out Pilot’s expression, but all I can see is that he is looking in the direction of Dr. Z, who is standing in front of Headmaster Villicus’s office.
“Wait to be called in,” Dr. Z orders before rapping on the door and abruptly disappearing inside.
I lower my syllabus to see Pilot mockingly salute the spot where Dr. Z was just standing and the tall guy with the swimmer’s build—Ben, I believe his name is—run his hands through his thick sandy hair.
At once, both Pilot and Ben turn their gazes on me.
I have to tell myself not to blush. Because if these guys are even remotely representative of the male population in this student body, well, I can feel my optimism returning already.
ADMITTEDLY, I’VE NEVER BEEN ASKED TO GO TO THE movies or for coffee. I’ve never held hands with a guy. And—unless you count a very strange moment when, at the age of eleven, after sketching a beautiful dead boy in his open casket, I kissed his cheek—I seem to have made it to and past my sweet sixteen without being properly kissed.
If love and romance were a credited course in school, I would flunk out.
If the tally of notches on your bedpost was any indication of your likelihood of finding love in the future, I’d be doomed to a life of collecting cats, culminating in death-by-suffocation-under-a-hoard-of-creepy-china-dolls.
But just because I haven’t exactly allowed myself to become the human equivalent of a school bus—ridden regularly by everyone—doesn’t mean a) that I’m dead inside or b) that guys feel dead inside when they look at me. I mean, I don’t know what they feel. Probably nothing like what they feel when girls like Harper and her gang o’ skanks walk by. But there have been times—memorable moments—when I’ve caught dudes looking at me in class. And, in grade eight, I heard a guy tell his friends he’d had a sex dream about me, which, I eventually admitted to myself, felt sort of cool. If it came down to it, I’d rather be smart than pretty, but a part of me would like to believe that, down the road, I might turn out to be both.
“First day?” Pilot asks me, breaking the silence.
Ben darts a glare at Pilot then averts his bright mint-green gaze in a way that makes me think he might never look at me again.
“I’m Pilot. You must be the new junior, Anne Merchant.”
Great. Does everyone know my story? “Is it your first day, too?”
Pilot shakes his head and fixes his twinkling gaze on me. His irises are so black, they appear to merge with his pupils in an unsettling yet beguiling way. Everything about him is dark and masculine, from his ultra-short black hair to his rich skin tone to his wide, strong-looking shoulders.
“I came here last fall,” he says. “From California. My dad knows your dad.”
Before I can register my surprise at our connection, the door to Headmaster Villicus’s office swings open, and Dr. Z looks out sternly. “Mr. Stone. He’ll see you first.”
“I’ll catch up with you in class,” Pilot says, smiling at me as he gets up. “I’m a junior, too—and a double major, so we’ll have some classes together. I’ll help you find your way around, cool? See you, Annie!”
The door has barely closed behind him when I breathe a sigh of relief. It was only moments ago that I was fretting over the extremely high likelihood that I would live a friendless existence here. I can’t help but beam.
Which Ben catches me doing.
He scowls and looks away again. I close my lips to mask my crooked tooth, which my mom always said gave me character but which everyone else seems to be repulsed by, and refuse to let Ben get to me. I don’t need everyone to be my friend. Just one person—just Pilot—will do, thank you.
I strain to eavesdrop on Pilot’s conversation with the headmaster, but I’m unable to make out more than the low rumble of mumbles. So I distract myself by rifling through my orientation packet. In catering to the greatest minds among the world’s most privileged youth, Cania Christy holds itself to a standard of education that goes beyond the AP-level courses I had in public school. I used to take Bio; here, that’s The Ethical Dilemma of Euthanasia. Exploring the Science of Consciousness is what regular schools would call
