drawing it out dramatically. “Sorry about that. But hey, we’ll be in the same class!”
I looked to see which subject she was talking about. Latin. Wait, Latin?
I realized I had been put in freshman Latin.
I never really paid much attention to which classes I’d actually be taking. Christine was on the board at Vincent Academy and pulled some strings to allow me to take the placement exams late—which was why I was starting three weeks after the school year had already begun. I forgot that the Vincent Academy required students to take two years of Latin. All I knew about Latin was E Pluribus Unum.
I looked down at Ashley and tried to be optimistic about it. “Well, at least I have a friend in class!”
She smiled her billion-dollar smile and showed me to my locker, in a narrow hallway next to the chemistry lab and boiler room. I felt like some goblin, tucked away in the basement dungeon. I would not have been surprised if Freddy Krueger stored his books next to me.
“Okay, now I have to go to my locker.” She smiled again, giving me an apologetic look. “It’s on the second floor. I won’t see you until Latin, which is the last class.”
“After lunch,” I replied woodenly. “Oh, crap!” I moaned.
“What?” Ashley looked alarmed.
I realized I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to go to lunch alone—and here, each grade took a separate lunch period because the cafeteria was kind of small.
“Nothing,” I said, throwing on my brightest fake smile. “I thought I forgot to bring something.”
“Oh. Okay, well, I’ll see you in Latin. You’ll hate it,” she promised, then added, “but Mrs. Dell has a moustache so it’s kind of funny to watch it move as she says anything that ends in ‘-ibus.’ It truly…flutters in the breeze,” she added dramatically.
I giggled, and gave her a hug.
“Thank you,” I said into her mess of curls, and gave her a bigger squeeze so she knew how much I really did appreciate it.
She bounced back to the stairwell and turned back to face me, looking older than the fourteen years I knew her to be.
“You’ll be fine.” Ashley looked at me solemnly with her giant blue eyes before skipping up the stairs, her overstuffed backpack bouncing up and down on her hip.
I eyed the emergency fire exit door and considered making a break for it.
“Don’t be stupid, Emma,” I whispered to myself. “Just two more years of high school. It can’t be worse than living with Henry.”
I shoved my notebooks into my locker and slammed the metal door defiantly.
Here we go.
Getting to school a little early was a good plan. My first class was still empty, so I was able to discreetly slip the form the gray lady gave me to my first teacher, Mrs. Urbealis, who greeted me warmly and said, “Sit anywhere.”
She looked sharp and clever. I figured I could ask.
“Anywhere? Come on, where should I really sit?” Back in Keansburg, I always had the third seat in the second row. In every single class. Enough of a breeze if the window was open, and if it was cold out, the first row got the brunt of the chill. Great seat. Sonny, the funniest guy in class, always sat in the front…Cyndi, our class president sat behind him. I stared at the desks, knowing that they had been unofficially assigned since the first week of freshman year.
Mrs. Urbealis broke into a knowing smile.
“Okay, Emma. I would say, take that seat.” She gestured to the last seat in the seventh row. The last seat in the classroom. If this were a chessboard, I’d just be a rook. Appropriate, since I felt like a rookie.
I smiled gratefully and sat down, pulling out my notebook and absentmindedly doodling on the green cover. I usually drew circles or loops…nothing meaningful. I got lost in my doodles, and started daydreaming. Maybe New York wouldn’t be so bad. This is the city that people spend their entire lives trying to get to, right? There were enough distractions…it wouldn’t be like home, where I knew everyone and was still so utterly alone.
I looked down at my green notebook cover and realized I’d just drawn a bunch of eyes. I shuddered at the ominous artwork and flipped the cover open, checking out the other students who had started to file in. They were all a little…glossy. I had wondered where everyone was right before the bell rang, then realized that all the girls must have been polishing their looks in the bathroom. Lips perfectly shiny. Hair brushed and freshly flat-ironed, or arranged in carefully messy curls. I self-consciously reached up to my cowlick, making sure it was behaving and staying in place, relieved to find it in line with the rest of my hair.
Good little soldier, I thought, patting my hair.
The bell rang, and Mrs. Urbealis called the class to attention.
“Okay guys, you know where we left off. Let’s continue with Tammany Hall and the political machine. Please open your books to page 106.”
I ran my hand over my history textbook, then turned the cover back. A large snap rang through the mostly quiet room as I broke the spine on my brand-new book. I could feel the eyes of every student in that room staring at me through my wall of hair, which was doing nothing to protect me.
“Class, we do have a new student. Miss Emma Connor.” She paused.
Please, oh, please, do not make me come up there and tell you a little something about myself.
“Let’s make her feel welcome, shall we? Show her the Vincent Academy way?”
She gave me a warm smile and I felt better, hoping, deep down, that the Vincent Academy way would be a good thing.
It turned out that my next class, math, was in the same room, so I just sat in the same desk, as did the girl in front of me. She turned around with a big smile.
“Hi, I’m Jenn,” she said with a big smile. “Jenn Hynes. How’s your first day?” She seemed friendly enough, the kind of girl I would have hung out with back in Keansburg. All those friends ditched me because they either were afraid of Henry, or were afraid of how it looked to be friends with me, the poster child for tragedy. I stopped getting invited anywhere, since I wasn’t considered fun at parties anymore. When I did bother to show up, I turned into the designated-driving police and was deemed a total buzzkill.
“Oh, it’s okay so far.” I tried to match her bright smile. “So far so good.”
“Where are you from?”
“Philadelphia.” I readied myself to churn out the performance of a lifetime. “My parents—well, my mom, actually—” Why not make it my mom who got the job? Yay, female empowerment! “—got a job transfer. They needed her in Tokyo, and I didn’t want to go, so I moved to live with my aunt Christine.”
Jenn seemed to believe my story, so I continued prattling on.
“Yeah, my family decided to move, but I don’t speak Japanese, and sure, they have schools that are English-speaking,
