Just five days before school resumed Ms. Northington resigned her position at Lake County High. Apparently, she met a nice Finnish man on a cruise over the summer, fell madly in love, and was moving half-way around the world. Of this I had been informed. What no one bothered to tell me was that crotchety old Mr. Beck had come out of retirement to fill her position. If someone had mentioned it, I would have changed my schedule. AP Calculus was going to be bad enough without having Satanʼs right-hand man as a teacher.

One of Mr. Beckʼs many faults was believing high school seniors should still be forced to sit in alphabetical order, which left me stuck behind the aromatic John Davis. I knew that between Mr. Beckʼs soporific voice and my brainʼs insistence on trying to solve the mystery of Johnʼs unique scent, I was going to have a hard time keeping focused.

“Scout, do you understand anything Mr. Beck is talking about?” came a frantic whisper from my left.

“Itʼs the first day. Heʼs just going over the class rules and stuff,” I explained as quietly as possible.

The tiny girl in the chair next to me nervously gnawed on her nonexistent fingernails while simultaneously bouncing her left leg up and down at about a million miles an hour. Joi Fitzgerald was sweet, but she could make a Tibetan monk anxious. “How on earth did I end up in AP Calc? Iʼll never be able to keep up.”

“Youʼre in AP Calc because you scored 98% on the placement test. Youʼre going to do fine.

Stop worrying.”

A shadow fell across my desk. “Harper, is there something that you want to share with the rest of the class?”

“Itʼs Scout,” I snapped in response to hearing my given name before remembering who I was snapping at. “I mean, my name. Itʼs Scout. You can call me Scout. Please.”

“I think we are a little old to be going by nicknames in class.” Mr. Beck sneered, which did nothing to help his personal appearance. Of course, there wasnʼt much that actually would help the manʼs personal appearance other than a hairpiece and some clothes bought more recently than 1978.

“Th-th-then you can call me Miss Donovan.”

“Very well, Miss Donovan. Now, if you and Miss Fitzgerald are done with your conversation, we can all go back to discussing the grading scale for this course.” Mr. Beck turned and began to drone on about how he did not grade on a curve, nor did he give any extra credit or extended deadlines.

I looked forward, waiting for my embarrassment to subside and my heart rate to return to normal. Could I be any more of a dork? One brief exchange with an antagonizing teacher had me shaking like a leaf.

Thatʼs when I noticed a pair of familiar grey eyes staring at me. I was so shocked I didnʼt immediately realize that the face they were peering out of wasnʼt the same one I had been fastidiously scouring the Internet for over the past three days. The slope of the nose and curve of the jaw were the same, but this face lacked the malice and anger that was so evident on the other.

Jean-Claudeʼs little brother.

Lake County High isnʼt a big school; my graduating class boasts a whopping one hundred and forty-three students. When someone new shows up, everyone notices. I had been hearing about a new guy all morning. Ashley Johnson was all about the “yummy newbie” who transferred in from Montana. She spent half of our first hour class planning their wedding.

And now the future Mr. Ashley Johnson was turned around in his chair, leaning around John Davis, staring at me.

It didnʼt take long for my brain to decide that the last thing it wanted was another confrontation and allowed embarrassment to overwhelm me. I dropped my eyes as my face turned a brilliant shade of tomato.

I continued through the rest of the hour with my eyes fixed steadfastly on my desk. I tried to take some notes on what Mr. Beck was covering, but it all basically boiled down to him being a jerk and the class being impossibly hard. I was pretty sure I could remember that without a written reminder.

When the bell finally rang, I quickly gathered my stuff and jumped up, planning to make a quick escape. Instead, I ran directly into the new guyʼs chest.

“Sorry,” I muttered, trying to step around him to get to the door. Instead of moving to the side to let me by, like a decent person would do, the new guy just stood there.

“Excuse me,” I hissed through clenched teeth. He finally moved, allowing me clear access to the door, and the blissful anonymity the crowded hallway provided.

***

I breathed a sigh of relief as I sank into the seat next to my best friend, Talley Matthews, in the schoolʼs dilapidated theater. The seats were worn and threadbare, the thick velvet curtain had faded from red to a rustic orange, half of the light fixtures were missing bulbs, and a musty, mildewed scent hung heavily in the air. Despite its ruinous state, I was looking forward to the time I would be spending in the old theater taking the schoolʼs new Shakespeare class.
“How is your last first day of high school going?” Talley asked, without even a hint of irony in her voice.

“It has sucked, big time. Jase totally hogged the bathroom all morning. Then, he insisted on picking up Nikki Anderson, who made us wait fifteen minutes in the car while she painted on her perfect face. And, of course, Jase then made me ride in the back seat of our car so that he could stare at her unnaturally perky boobs as he drove us to school. Ashley Johnson is in my AP English class, and Mr. Beck is a complete tool who refuses to call me Scout. And, remember that guy I told you about from The Strip? Mr. Tall, Dark and Insane? His brother is the new guy.”

“Thereʼs a new guy?” Talley was always oblivious to the schoolʼs latest gossip. “Whatʼs his name?”

“His last name is Cole. I donʼt remember what his first name is though. Some really generic

“A” name. Alan? Andrew?”

“Alex,” an unfamiliar male voice replied from behind me. I turned to see the new guy, apparently named Alex, sitting in the second row of seats.

Crap. How long had he been there?

“Should I call you Scout or Miss Donovan?” he asked with a smirk.

I glowered. “Scout will be fine.”

“Iʼm Talley,” my best friend chimed in, turning around to stretch her hand out towards Alex.

What was she doing? Was she going to shake his hand like they were closing a bank deal or something equally adult and boring?

To his credit, Alex didnʼt look at Talley as though she was breaking some unwritten high school code, and extended his own hand to her. “Nice to meet you, Talley. Cool name. Very non-generic.” His grey eyes seemed to dance their way over to mine. The huge grin on his face revealed perfectly straight white teeth and a pair of honest-to-goodness dimples.