six
Spanish III was Alec’s first class the next morning. As he took his seat, he couldn’t shake the image of Claire, sitting across from him on that crate yesterday, singing her heart out. She had been so shy and self-deprecating about it, and then it turned out she had a spectacular voice. For a little while, it was as if a quiet bond had formed between them.
Then Choir Boy had shown up.
Alec glanced at Neil, who was sitting on the far side of the classroom. If Neil had sat closer, Alec would have asked him about Claire’s Concert Singers audition. For her sake, he hoped they had accepted her.
A twinge gripped Alec’s insides as he recalled Claire’s reaction to Neil the afternoon before. Alec frowned, cursing himself for falling into a cliché. A few other girls had made overtures in his direction since school started—perfectly nice girls, from what he could tell—but he had no interest in any of them. He hadn’t expected the whole dating question to come up so soon, but it was one of the parts of this human experiment that intrigued him the most. He wanted to try it.
So why did he have to fixate on the one girl who clearly had no interest in him?
He heaved a sigh. This situation, which he’d worked so hard to set up, and had looked forward to for so long, might end up being nothing but an exercise in frustration. He’d be forced to see Claire not just in his other classes every day, but at his locker as well—their locker.
At that moment, to his complete astonishment, Claire herself darted into the room, out of breath and looking flustered—but still beautiful. Her dark brown hair shimmered with tones of red and gold, even beneath the harsh coolness of the fluorescent lights. He found himself staring at her again, just as he had on the first day they met.
Claire’s gaze immediately fell on Neil, and a shy, delighted smile crossed her face. Alec pressed his lips together, the twinge in his insides tightening like a vise. There were lots of empty seats. Presumably, she’d sit next to Neil.
A warmth filled him as Claire sank into the empty chair beside him. “What are you doing in this class?” she asked, sounding just as surprised to see him as he was to see her. “I thought all your classes were honors.”
“The rest of them are,” he admitted. “This was the only foreign language class that fit into my schedule.” Not that it really mattered what language he took. “What about you? I saw your schedule, you were listed in honors Spanish.”
“I had to change it. That class was the same track as Concert Singers.” She darted him a hesitant look. “I tried out yesterday afternoon. And got in! Can you believe it?”
Alec smiled, hoping to convey how genuinely pleased he was for her without betraying his inner turmoil. “Of course I believe it. You deserve it. You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thanks. I still can’t get over it. I had no idea. And I never would have known about it if not for—”
Claire was interrupted midsentence as their teacher, Se?ora Guiterez, a plump, dark-haired woman, rapped sharply on her desk for attention. “?Hola, clase!” The class quieted and focused their attention up front as she continued speaking in Spanish, explaining that everyone was required to do so for the entirety of the period.
To Alec’s amusement, after a brief introductory lecture, the class was subjected to an episode of an old Spanish soap opera. Is this really the way high school students learn languages? he wondered. When the TV clip was done, Se?ora Guiterez asked the class to describe what they’d just seen. After several students gave their impressions, the teacher fixed her gaze on Neil.
“Se?or Mitchum,” she said in Spanish, “in the scene on the balcony, why was Julio so angry?”
Neil looked baffled, replying in halting Spanish, “Because he wear so ugly a sweater?”
The classroom erupted with laughter. Even Se?ora Guiterez couldn’t hold back a chuckle. Alec’s stomach burned as he watched Claire gaze at Neil with an admiring smile. What did she see in him? Other than his stunning good looks and charming personality, that is?
As the laughter continued, Claire never took her eyes from Neil’s face. A pressure began in Alec’s chest that rose through his throat to throb at his temple. Every muscle in his body tensed. The air he was breathing suddenly felt thinner, as if he were on top of Mount Everest. Without further thought, Alec leapt to his feet, crossed the room in the blink of an eye, lifted Neil from his seat, and flung him through the classroom window in a hail of splintering glass. The sound of Neil’s helpless scream was intensely satisfying.
Alec blinked as the laughter in the classroom brought him back to reality. Neil still sat in his seat, undamaged, not a lock of hair on his head out of place.
Is this what jealousy feels like? Alec wondered. If so, it was an emotion he didn’t care for.
“Sí, sí. It was an ugly sweater,” the teacher was saying. “But besides that, se?or?”
Neil tried again. “Because… Maria. And Julio. The girlfriend, she. They are. They were—” He trailed off, at a loss for words.
The teacher’s eyes swept the room. “Anyone else know the answer?”
Claire looked like she was struggling to formulate a reply. No one responded. Alec shook his head, frowning. It was so easy. Here, he realized, was his opportunity to show Claire the difference between himself and the Choir Boy. His hand shot up like a rocket. The teacher pointed at him.
“Julio was furious,” Alec replied promptly in pitch-perfect Spanish, “because his cousin Guillermo had just revealed that Maria is not just his girlfriend. Julio’s father, before he went to law school twenty-three years ago, had met Maria’s mother in a hotel bar in Tierra del Fuego and spent the night with her, making Maria his half sister.”
The teacher’s jaw dropped. His classmates turned to stare at him. Alec darted a look in Claire’s direction. Her eyes were wide and she was smiling at him now, as if to say, Wow. That was good. Really good. Alec grinned triumphantly.
“Well said, se?or,” asserted Se?ora Guiterez. “Are you sure you need to be taking this class?”
Alec paused, his smugness instantly fading. Shite, he thought. What had possessed him? Showing off wasn’t his style. Had he jeopardized his cover? In broken Spanish, he backpedaled, “Sí. No. Sorry, se?ora. I live in Spain two years as child. My grandfather watching this soap opera. I see this episode before.”
As the teacher nodded and patiently corrected his grammatical errors, Alec secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully, people would forget all about this by tomorrow and go back to laughing at Neil’s jokes.
He wasn’t sure that Claire bought his explanation, though. For the rest of the class, he felt her eyes on him, as if she sensed that there was something strange going on. Alec kept his own eyes fixed on his textbook, and as soon as the bell rang he darted out of the room without looking back.