The Thief

do, I thought, as she flipped open her folder and frowned at the contents. I should talk to her. I should ask her a question, maybe.

“Did you, um, did you understand any of that?” I asked.

She gave me a sudden hard look and I cringed. “I understand,” she said, her bizarre accent even more noticeable. Short, clipped vowels and off-balance accents on her syllables. Where on earth was she from?

“Oh,” I relented. “Sure. Of course. I just don’t get, um, what we’re supposed to do now?”

She gave me a blank look and returned to staring sullenly at her folder’s contents.

I should be used to being ignored by now. It still felt like a slap in the face.

My panic from earlier in the morning was returning in full force. I opened my own folder, the pages quivering slightly from the fine tremor in my fingers. There was a map there, but the lines swam in front of my face. The words bled together. None of it made sense. Out of the corner of my eye, Camille was turning her packet sideways, and upside down.

I just wanted to go home. No one wanted me there either, but at least I knew where I was.

Someone cleared their throat.

“Are you - ahem - I mean, hi,” said a voice behind me.

I turned to look, then angled my gaze down about six inches. A boy with shaggy blonde hair looked up at me cheerfully. He honestly didn’t look old enough to be in high school.

“You look lost. I mean new. I mean...hi,” he said. “I’m Mac.”

I blinked at him. Where had he come from? “Um, hi,” I said. “I’m Jul. I am new, yes.”

“Those packets are pretty useless,” he said. A slight southern accent relaxed his vowels. “Lucky for you I know the place like the back of my hand. I was born here. Not uh, here in the school, here in town, I mean. Obviously.”

I smiled weakly. This was better.

“So um, do you know who you have for first period? For homeroom?” he asked.

I looked at Camille. She shrugged, expression blank.

“Homeroom...” I racked my brain. “I think she said...Tailor?”

His face lit up. “Awesome! You’re in our class!”

“Oh, ok,” I said. I couldn’t begin to share in his enthusiasm without context, but it was nice to talk to someone upbeat for a change. “You’re really in tenth grade?” I blurted, and immediately regretted it.

His face fell for an instant, but he recovered almost immediately. “Skipped a grade,” he explained briefly. “Come on, English is upstairs. You’ll love it, Tailor’s got all the charm of a wet cat. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Oh. Alright,” I said. I started to follow and then paused, looking back at Camille. “Are you coming?”

She looked at me, her sideways folder, closed it with a little huff and followed.

Mac led us up the stairs onto the second floor landing, overlooking the atrium. I thought of the boy from earlier. He had been looking at something up here. I blushed slightly, glancing down at where he’d stood. Now, if he had found me wandering the halls...

Oh, let’s be realistic. I’d have been too flustered to even say a word, much less anything intelligent.

“Over here,” Mac said, leading us down the hall to the right, to a door labeled 2-B. “Found the new students!” he announced as he opened it. I was acutely aware that over a dozen pairs of eyes were staring at me. My pulse hammered. Transmute, transmute, transmute, I repeated in my head like a mantra.

Inside, the teacher paused mid-lecture, at the board with chalk in hand. He was thin and bookish, but handsome, though he wore a pinched sort of frown as he turned to us. Then his eyes widened in a moment of real shock as he saw me. It was just like when I’d surprised Bea on the phone - he was afraid of me.

Mac also appeared confused by Mr. Tailor’s reaction. “See?” he prompted. “Jul Graham and...um...” he looked at Camille. “You know, I just realized I missed your name.”

She rolled her eyes.

Mr. Tailor seemed to recover somewhat, but I still didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Like I was liable to end the world at the slightest provocation. “Graham,” he murmured. “Yes, of course. Go have a seat. In the back.”

The back of the room? I clutched my bag to myself and went down the aisle. Was that another way of saying he wanted me as far away from him as possible?

Was this kind of reaction going to become a trend around here? What had I done? I slid into my chair, convinced that the butterflies in my stomach had mutated into parasites of the nervous system. At least I was still breathing ok. Small blessings.

Tailor turned and adjusted his glasses, focusing on Mac. “And why exactly were you wandering around in the hall, Dupree? What excuse did you cook up so that you could play white knight?”

Muffled chuckles from other students around the room. A flush crept up Mac’s neck. “Uh...that is...”

“Oh just sit down already,” Tailor groaned. “I don’t have time for this.”

Mac slid meekly into a desk near the front, next to a tall boy with dark hair that covered his eyes, who slipped him a piece of paper when Tailor turned to Camille.

She was still standing just inside the door, shoulderbag slung across her back, hands stuffed into the front pocket of her hoodie. She met his scrutiny with a bland expression and his eyes narrowed.

“That makes you Teague,” he said with distaste.

She shrugged.

“Do you speak?” Tailor asked.

“Sometimes.”

“What sort of accent is that?”

“Mine.”

Someone in the room snickered, but a quick glare from Tailor silenced the room. “I love clever students,” he said dryly. “They get to sit up front where I can keep a nice, close eye on them.” He pointed to an empty desk.

That was the first hint of discomfort I saw from her, as she slid into the desk, metal bracer clinking against the plastic. Did she not like being up front?

“Alright, unless any more mid-semester students are joining our class today – ” Mr. Tailor picked up his thick, heavily sticky-noted notebook, glanced at it, and dropped back onto his wood desk with a resounding plop – “no, those were the only ones, so now we can actually get something done.”

Mid-semester or not, that was unfair. It wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose. But my cheeks still flushed. I couldn’t see Camille’s face up at the front of the room, but I learned she was left-handed by the way she somewhat awkwardly situated herself to take notes in a right-handed desk. I bent to retrieve my notebook and pencil from my bag, and tried to use the opportunity to sneak a glance at some of my other classmates. Though only a cursory look, it was clear that the beautiful people lived in the back left corner, furthest from the door. There was a blonde girl who had the looks and posture of a model, another girl who was a brunette but otherwise matched her, and two guys sitting against the back wall. One had tousled brown hair that made him look like he’d just woken up, so therefore had probably been styled within an inch of its life; he was staring out the window with his chin in his hand, looking bored to tears. The fourth was him. The guy from the atrium was twirling his pencil in his fingers, apparently paying far more attention than the other three combined as Mr. Tailor talked about the social norms of Elizabethan England that informed the opening act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I continued to rummage in my bag as a pretense to keep staring surreptitiously. Maybe my initial impression had been wrong. He was actually far plainer than the other three. When I considered him separately, nothing about him actually stood out, despite the fact that he was Asian.

His eyes flicked to mine, and he winked.

I straightened up in a flash. My hands were uncommonly steady as I opened my notebook and found a clean page to take notes, but my brain was endlessly repeating what was that? What was that? What was that?

Plain? No. No, certainly not. I couldn’t believe that had even crossed my mind. I kept flashing back to his almond-shaped eyes as they locked onto mine for that brief instant, and my heart constricted.

Oh crap.