Lexi kept her head down and started moving. She’d been the new girl often enough to know the tricks of the camouflage trade. The best tactic was to blend in, disappear. You did that by looking down and moving fast. Rule one: never stop. Rule two: never look up. By Friday, if she’d followed this pattern, she’d just be one of the kids in the freshman class, and then she could try to make a friend or two. Although it wouldn’t be easy here. What could she possibly have in common with these kids?
When she made it to Building A, she double-checked her schedule. There it was. Room 104. She merged into the crowd of students, all of whom seemed to know one another, and let their tide carry her forward. In the classroom, kids slid into their seats and kept talking excitedly.
Her mistake was to pause. She looked up just long enough to get her bearings, and the classroom went quiet. Kids stared at her; then whispering began. Someone laughed. Lexi felt her flaws keenly—her thick black eyebrows and crooked teeth and frizzy hair, her lame jeans and lamer sweatshirt. This was the kind of place where every kid got braces at adolescence and a new car at sixteen.
In the back of the room, a girl pointed at her and started to giggle. The girl seated beside her nodded. Lexi thought she heard nice butterfly, and then: did she make it herself?
A boy stood up, and the room went quiet again.
Lexi knew who he was. Every school had a guy like him—good-looking, popular, athletic, the kind of boy who got what he wanted without even trying. The football captain and class president. In his aqua blue Abercrombie T-shirt and baggy jeans, he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, all golden and smiling and sure of himself.
He was coming toward her. Why? Was there another, prettier girl behind her? Was he going to do something to humiliate her, to make his friends laugh?
“Hey,” he said. She could feel everyone looking at them, watching.
Lexi bit her lower lip to hide her crooked teeth. “Hey.”
He smiled. “Susan and Liz are bitches. Don’t let them get to you. The butterfly’s cool.”
She stood there like an idiot, dazzled by his smile. Get a grip, Lexi. You’ve seen good-looking guys before. She should say something, smile; something.
“Here,” he said, taking her arm. At his touch, she felt a little jolt, like an electrical charge.
He should have moved, led her somewhere. That was why he was touching her arm, right? But he just stood there, staring down at her. His smile faded. She couldn’t breathe all of a sudden; the whole world drained away until only his face was left, only his amazing green eyes.
He started to say something, but Lexi’s heart was pounding so fast, she couldn’t hear his words, and then he was being pulled away from her, led away by some beautiful girl in a skirt that was smaller than a dinner napkin.
Lexi stayed a moment too long, staring at his back, still feeling out of breath. Then she remembered where she was and who she was: the new girl in the bedazzled pink sweatshirt. Tucking her chin into her chest, she bolted forward, made her way to a seat in the back row. She slid onto its slick surface just as the bell rang.
As the teacher droned on about the early days of Seattle, Lexi replayed that moment, over and over. She told herself it meant nothing, the way he’d touched her, but she couldn’t let it go. What had he been going to say to her?
When the class ended, she dared to look at him. He moved with the crowd of students, laughing at something the girl in the miniskirt said. At Lexi’s desk, he paused, looked down at her, although he didn’t smile or stop. He kept moving.
Of course he didn’t stop. She rose slowly and walked to the door. For the rest of the morning, she tried to hold her head high as she moved through the crowded halls, but by noon, she was lagging, and the worst was yet to come.