“Thanks,” I said. And then, because Lex looked so anxious, I added, “I’ll be fine.” I immediately wondered why I felt the need to comfort her.
“Mom?” Lex said. “Is there anything you want to say to Danny?”
Jessica looked up at me, and already the confident creature I’d seen in the office was fading.
“Good luck,” she said softly. “We should go, Alexis.”
Lex squeezed my hand one last time, and the two of them left, disappearing into the flare of sunlight through the front door of the building.
? ? ?
My first class was English. Nicholas walked me to the other side of the school, and I wondered what Lex had said to him to make him agree to this guard dog duty. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.
We arrived a few minutes before the bell, and Nicholas introduced me to the teacher, Mr. Vaughn. He was one of those young guys you could tell was dying to be the Cool Teacher, his tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches tossed over his desk chair and his long hair almost brushing his collar. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves just enough to show the edge of a tattoo on his forearm so his students would see he was hip, and he probably genuinely believed he could change their lives through the power of Shakespeare.
He shook my hand and showed me to an empty desk in the back row of the classroom. Nicholas told me he’d be back to walk me to my next class and disappeared. I sat down at the desk, and Mr. Vaughn perched on the edge of it.
“I don’t want you to worry, Danny,” he said. “You do prefer ‘Danny,’ right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all going to be cool, okay?” he said. “You just hang back here and watch for a while, and we’ll ease you back in. If you get overwhelmed and need to leave, that’s cool too.”
“Cool,” I said. What an idiot.
The bell rang soon after, and kids started trickling in. I kept my eyes down on the copy of Jane Eyre that Mr. Vaughn had given me and felt each pair of eyes on me like an unwanted touch against my skin. Maybe they knew who I was—had known Danny, even—or maybe I was just the new kid. Either way, I reminded myself, it would pass.
When the bell rang at the end of the period, I nonchalantly fled the stares in the room and the thumbs-up from Mr. Vaughn. As promised, Nicholas was already waiting for me in the hallway.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded and hitched my bag up higher on my shoulder.
A girl with a cloud of dark curls passed me. “Welcome home, Danny,” she said. A massive dude in a letter jacket clapped a hand on my shoulder as he followed her and said, “Glad to have you back, man.”
My smile felt more like a grimace. “Thanks.” I turned to Nicholas. “Do you think everyone knows who I am?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “The principal made an announcement yesterday and went to all your classes to warn everyone to act normal.”
“Perfect.” This may have been the stupidest idea I’d ever had. I could feel the eyes on me now like insects scuttling across my skin, and it was way worse than I had braced myself for. I just wanted to disappear, and I knew I could. Lex would swoop in and take me away from here in an instant if I called her, and she would never make me come back.
But.
But if I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity I’d stumbled into—to have a real life as Danny Tate, the kind I’d never been able to have as myself—I had to push through. I could do that. All I had to do was stop being me and start being him, the Danny I had pieced together from photo albums and family stories and my own imagination. The Danny who was cool and confident and rode just a little bit above everything.
“You okay?” Nicholas asked.
I took a breath, raised my chin, and put on my Danny mask. “Yeah, fine. Where to?”
I ignored the looks and the whispers I felt following me as Nicholas led me down the hall, and they didn’t seem to itch as much. My next two classes were the same as the first. A quick talk with the teacher before class where they spoke to me in a low, comforting voice, like I was a rabbit who might spook. Watching quietly from a back seat, pretending not to notice the surreptitious glances and outright stares directed my way. A few words of encouragement from braver classmates and Nicholas waiting to shuffle me to the next classroom.
“Okay.” Nicholas was looking down at my schedule when I came out of biology. Good thing no one actually expected me to do any work, because I hadn’t understood a word of that class. “Next you’ve got beginners’ art with Ms. Scofield.”
Hey, something I might actually be able to do. I’d always liked to draw.
Nicholas silently led me toward the art class, which was on the opposite end of the school. He didn’t look at me or speak to me as we walked, which made it pretty much the same as any other time I spent with Nicholas. I’d made no kind of connection with him yet, and it made him one of the most dangerous people to my goal of becoming Danny Tate for good.
“Sorry you have to lead me everywhere,” I said. “But at least you’re getting out of class early each period, right?”
He tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. “Yeah, I guess.”
I looked down at my shoes and tried to project the air of vulnerability and guilt that worked so well with Lex. “I’m sorry, you know. For all the trouble I’m causing you.”
He sighed and actually looked me in the eye for a moment. “It’s no trouble. Don’t apologize.”
I lifted one corner of my mouth. “You’re a really good big brother.”
I’d always wanted a big brother.
He didn’t know how to react to that. A half a dozen different expressions passed over his face before it settled into a smile. A small one, but it looked real.
“Thanks,” he said softly. Then cleared his throat. “Here it is. I’ll meet you back here before lunch.”
He walked off quickly, and I watched him go. Maybe we were finally making progress.
Ms. Scofield treated me the same way the other teachers had. She showed me to an easel close to her desk and explained that the class was working on still life drawing. At the front of the room was a stool with a bowl of plastic fruit placed on it. The other easels, arranged in a half circle around the stool, had half-started drawings on them.
“Just do your best,” she said.
I picked up a piece of charcoal from the easel and started sketching the outline of a peach. It was nice in the midst of this giant act to do something that actually felt natural. I used to have a notebook that I carried around with me and sketched in whenever I had a chance. Other than my baseball card, it was the one possession I gave a damn about. Someone swiped it from me at a group home in Edmonton.