“Lily,” I said quickly, embarrassed and wishing I could duck away. “Sorry, I don’t know why I called you Spence. Maybe it’s ’cause you look like a Spence.”
Stop. Talking. I mean, what was I even saying? What did a “Spence” look like, anyway?
Cole continued to grip my hand, and he eyed me curiously. As if there was something about me he might recognize. “Do I?”
“Totally,” I said, but how the hell did I know?
Just then the bell rang, and the spell between us broke. I forced a small laugh and said, “Saved by the bell.”
Cole released me, motioning again to the classroom just around the corner.
“Rennick’s cool,” he assured me. “He won’t give you a hard time about being late on your first day. But don’t push it. I’d hurry.”
I nodded, waved shyly at him, and rushed away. It was several minutes later, after I’d gotten to my first period, apologized to Mr. Rennick, and been assigned a seat, that I realized my birthmark was burning.
After last period I made my way through the mob of students to the front door, and out into the bright sunshine. The day was hot, the sun blinding, but I welcomed it because I’d officially survived my first day. As I made my way down the steps to the sidewalk, I paused next to a streetlamp to fish around for my sunglasses and had just put them on when a car slid up to the curb.
The chatter around me went abruptly quiet, and I looked up to see a white Rolls-Royce idling next to me. “Oh, crap,” I muttered.
The window rolled down and an elderly man with silver hair, partially covered by a chauffer’s cap, winked at me. Arthur—my grandmother’s driver.
“Good day, Miss Bennett,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.
Arthur reached for the door handle. He was about to get out of the car and come around to open the door for me.
“Don’t!” I said as my heartbeat ticked up.
Glancing subtly to my right and left, I took in the dozens of kids standing nearby, and even some not so nearby, all of them speechless. There were lots of dropped jaws and wide eyes. And then my own gaze came to rest on a familiar figure twenty feet away. Cole stood next to a couple of other guys, all of them staring in shock at the car. Except for Cole, whose brow was furrowed, like he couldn’t quite figure out how a Rolls-Royce and I went together.
I wanted to dissolve. To turn into vapor and float away on the breeze. Except there was no breeze. Only the gleaming polish of the pearl-white Rolls to act like a spotlight on me. My mind raced with options. Walk away and pretend the Rolls was there for someone else? Open the door and get in as fast as possible? Point down the street and yell, “Ohmigod! Look at that!” before making a run for it in the opposite direction?
I was about to go with option three when Arthur said, “Miss Bennett?”
I bit my lip and saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Cole was laughing at something one of his friends said, and I could just imagine that he and his buddies thought my situation hilarious. Awesome. Just awesome.
Yanking the door open, I hustled inside as fast as possible. “Go! Please, Arthur, just go!”
“As you wish, miss,” he said, without a hint of irritation. Arthur was a sweet old guy; at least, that was my impression from the little I’d been around him.
My early-morning encounter with Cole aside, the rest of the day had been a crapfest of repeatedly getting lost; sensing that with each new classroom, all eyes were locked on me; enduring whispers of, “Who’s the new girl?”; and struggling at lunch to find anywhere to eat that didn’t make it conspicuously obvious that I didn’t have any friends. It’d been miserable.
And, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, Sophie had texted me ten minutes earlier, putting a capper on an awful eight hours. Once we’d driven past the school, I sat up and pulled out my cell to look at her message again:
Lil I know you don’t want to talk to me but you’re not anywhere in school today and there’s a rumor going around that you’ve moved out of Richmond! Is it true? I can’t believe you’d do that without telling me!
I hadn’t told a soul that Mom and I were moving to Fredericksburg because I was still too hurt over everything that’d gone down, and it wasn’t like anyone had tried to reach out to me over the summer. Michelle and Quinn had taken Sophie’s side in the dissolution of our friendship, and those guys and Tanner had been my whole inner circle—my four closest friends.