Destin scrambles to his feet, a sheepish look obscured by his thick curtain of dark hair. Tailor looks at the ground where he’d fallen. Several downy feathers are being blown away by a breeze.
“My jacket tore...” Destin mumbles.
“Ignoring that you’re wearing a down jacket in eighty degree heat...both of you get inside. Dupree, go get bandages from Ms. Miller before you come to homeroom,” he orders, strolling past us. “If you bleed onto my floor you’re cleaning it up.”
We both hold our breath ’til he’s through the front doors.
“That actually didn’t go so bad,” I say, after he’s out of earshot.
“He must have had his coffee,” Destin agrees. “Lucky.”
I brush off my shorts and wince, feeling my shins stinging for real now. They’re pretty raw, but there’s no blood. I’d probably be okay. I pick my bag back up and gingerly start walking.
I’ve never won a fight with Hyde. I’m not going to lie. It’s honestly pretty stupid of me to keep standing up to him, and I can see it even a few minutes later, as we’re getting our books out of our lockers. But when Hyde’s standing in front of me, being an unmitigated ass, all I can think of is how much I want to punch him in the face. Maybe with a cactus. I grin at the mental image.
Our school is a little different than most. It’s technically a private school, and they like to boast that we have students from all over the world, though a good chunk of the people who go here are local. The people who run the place definitely aren’t from around here, though. I’d heard my mom say somewhere that most of Havenwood’s funding comes from some Japanese company. It’s weird, but I’m not going to complain. The place is honestly really nice, and the cafeteria is choice. The teachers are pretty decent too, even with Tailor being as grouchy as he is sometimes. My only real complaint is the other students.
“Not again,” I groan, rifling around my locker in vain. “The comics I left in here on Friday are gone.”
Destin sighs, his wordless ‘I told you so.’
“And the candy bars? Oh come on!” I’m starving. I really shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.
Our lockers have been pilfered several times each since the school year started. No apparent signs of break-ins, but if it’s not a textbook, it gets stolen, and it’s getting old fast. We’re also having trouble coming up with a culprit. The list is too long.
Besides Hyde, there are a few other juniors and seniors who tend to pick on younger, smaller students. I qualify on both counts, having skipped a grade to be a sophomore. Despite his height, Destin’s whole demeanor practically screams ‘easy target.’ So we’re pretty much doomed on that front.
Then there’s the problem of the local royalty - otherwise known as my sister Hayley’s little clique. She wanders around with her copycat best friend and two rich guys, pretending they’re superior beings. Hayley makes it a point to distance herself from her nerd brother as much as possible. She likes to describe the space around Destin and I as a ‘girl free zone.’
Which reminds me.
“Oh crap!”
“You just remembered what day it was, didn’t you,” Destin says.
“Is she here? Have you seen her?”
“How would I know?” he sighs. “I don’t know what this imaginary person looks like.”
“She’s not imaginary, and she’s going to be the one person around here you’ve never seen before. Duh.”
“If you say so,” he says.
See, I have this problem. I’m all super cool and everything, but I’ve never exactly...ah...had a girlfriend. I mean I’ve had some crushes here and there. Once in sixth grade I kissed a girl on a dare. I’ve just never felt anything close to the adjectives and nouns and verbs people throw around when they talk about what ‘love’ feels like. But...
Well. You know.
Old Ms. Graham lives the stereotype of old lady in a creepy old house who alternates between loading you down with pies and sweets, and telling you stop talking so loud in the library and to floss and brush your teeth three times a day. I’ve been mowing her lawn since I was old enough to handle a push mower. But where most grandparents go on about their grandkids endlessly from the day they’re born, I’d never heard her mention Juliet once until a couple days ago.
That’s not to say I didn’t know she existed. My family has lived in Havenwood my whole life, and the city’s not so large that you don’t still have some small-town gossip. I remember when we were (both) small, Hayley and I snuck downstairs to eavesdrop on a dinner party our parents had thrown, and during a hushed bit of conversation, I first heard that Ms. Bea’s son Simon had a daughter our age.
Maybe it was the fact that they talked about her like she was some secret – that from then on I only ever heard mention of her in passing, in undertones, and never around Ms. Bea. Sometimes they called her “Simon’s girl,” sometimes they called her “Kyra’s girl,” but it wasn’t until last week that I heard her actual name, when Ms. Bea answered the phone while I was helping her move some furniture. She had gradually gone the color of the bleached upstairs walls as she listened to whoever was on the other line. I was really worried she might pass out or something, and she kept alternating between saying, “yes,” “no,” and “are you sure?” Finally she’d hung up and went to an ancient chair that released a puff of ‘in storage forever’ dust as she sat.
“Juliet is coming,” she’d said. She said it like someone had died. I think she’d forgotten I was there, because when she finally did look at me, she seemed shocked and asked me to leave.
And I hadn’t been able to think about anything else since. Well, except when I was getting attacked in the parking lot. But you have to admit that’s distracting.
“She can’t be that tall. Right? I mean look at her grandmother. Woman is tiny. She won’t be tall. Right?”
“Sure,” Destin says. I can tell he’d stopped caring awhile ago, but I can’t stop talking. It’s a disease.
“But your mom is tiny,” I frown, arguing with myself in the absence of his input. “And you’re like a skyscraper.”
He shrugs.
“But she can’t be that tall. Right?”
“Forty-seven,” he says, securely shutting his locker.
“Feet? Tall?”
“Times you’ve said that in the last twenty-four hours,” he says. “It won’t help obsessing over how tall or short she is. It doesn’t really matter anyway.”
I frown, looking into my devoid-of-chocolate locker. Someone is going to pay for this.
“Course it matters,” I say, shutting it and following him down the hall. “Girls don’t like guys who are shorter than them.”
“Never heard you say that either.”
“Just like you’ve never used sarcasm.”
Destin sighs. His thick curtain of bangs hides half his expression, but his body language is always clear. “You always joke about your height.”
“Because it’s hila-a-rious,” I stretch out the word, “and I might as well make the joke before someone else does. And it doesn’t help standing next to the Empire State Building all the time,” I gesture at him.
“Fair enough, but are you sure she’s even coming to our school? She could be at public. You’re more than usually bent out of shape about this. Over a girl you’ve never even seen.”
“It’s this huge mysterious thing!” I say defensively. “I mean nobody says anything about her, even though there was supposedly this whole big ordeal about her parents eloping - old Ms. Graham doesn’t even have pictures of her - and blammo, her dad vanishes and now here she is. Was her dad tall? Do you know?”
If he rolls his eyes, no one could possibly know. His hair obscures it completely. “I have no idea,” he says calmly. “But my guess is that she’s either your height, or about half a foot taller.”
“Why would you say that?” I gasp. “That’s too tall! She’ll think I’m a midget!”
“You can find out for yourself, I guess,” Destin says, “because there are two girls I’ve never seen before.”
