“Look at his face.”
I follow her gaze to where Mr. Isaacs is finally walking through the door, his expression dumbstruck, as if in a daze. His trademark horn-rimmed glasses are missing, and as I take in the red blotches on his cheeks, I realize he’s been crying. I can’t look away. I’ve never seen an adult cry before. Mom always held it in, waited until she was behind the closed door of her room.
Mr. Isaacs reaches the podium in front of the whiteboard, and for the first time he looks lost in his usual place. Charlie turns off the music, and without our teacher so much as saying a word, everyone takes their seats. My classmates might have been blissfully ignorant seconds ago, but it’s clear from Mr. Isaacs’s demeanor that this isn’t going to be a normal school day. Not even close.
His mouth opens and closes twice before he finally finds his voice.
“I’m sorry—so sorry—for what I have to say.” He takes a shaky breath, then stares straight ahead at a point on the wall. “One of your classmates, he…he was found dead early this morning.”
I see Brianne’s jaw drop, I hear the gasps around me, but my mind can’t process it. And then Mr. Isaacs says a name.
“Chace Porter.”
I’m dreaming this, of course. It’s the worst kind of nightmare, but the sweetest relief will be mine when I wake up. I pinch myself so hard I nearly draw blood. Not dreaming.
A roar rises up from my stomach and chokes me. An animal inside struggles to get free, to hurl itself at the teacher and send claw marks gashing down his tearstained cheeks for telling us this lie, for making this mistake.
And then I feel her eyes burning a hole into my back—the girl who made me hate the social butterflies. I turn and meet her glance, taking in the frozen expression and trembling lower lip. Our classmates congregate around her, stricken and wailing, clueless that they are comforting the wrong person.
I stare down at the hardwood floor. Where are my sobs, my screams? I can’t seem to make a single noise, even though my cries are deafening in my mind.
Lana is still looking at me, and as the realization hits that he’s gone, that she and I are all that’s left from the mess of our triangle, I feel the desperate urge to crawl out of my skin and disappear. I jolt out of my seat and make for the door, blind to the police officer entering the classroom just as I’m making my escape.
And I run straight into the policeman’s chest.
The second I spot him, I know. This is the boy I’ve been hearing about. He’s there under the oak tree, oblivious to the rest of us, focused instead on juggling a soccer ball between his feet. I watch him, and something pulls at my chest.
I’m clearly not the only one who notices him. It seems like most of us returning juniors are putting on a show this afternoon, pretending to be interested in each other’s summer stories, pretending we care, when we’re really just staring through our sunglasses at the new guy. We never get boys like this at Oyster Bay Prep. Our male classmates are all the same: bland, blond sons of the patriarchy, with their old-money manners and hand-me-down sense of humor. None of them have a clue how to get you really interested—how to push you up against a wall and kiss you like they actually mean it. I can tell, just by watching this stranger with the soccer ball, he can. He’s different—dark, muscular, with the body of a man, not a boy. His eyes have a glint to them, like someone dreaming up a wild dare. There’s nothing too safe about those eyes, nothing familiar.
“Isn’t that what’s-his-name? You know, the congressman’s son?”
Stephanie’s voice snaps me back to reality. In just a few minutes, our headmaster will quit her long and boring welcome-back speech and the barbecue will begin. How many girls will make a beeline for the hot new guy, competing to be first, to be the one who gets to show him around campus? I’m not about to sit back and count.
“I’m going to go find out,” I tell Stephanie with a fluff of my hair.
He looks up as I come closer, and I thank the Lord we didn’t have to wear our lame uniforms to the barbecue. My silk romper is so much more flattering, with its deep V-neck, figure-skimming shorts, and sapphire shade that sets off my bronze skin and dark hair. I catch his eyes roving over me appreciatively, not in the creepy way of men wolf-whistling through their car windows, but in the way I always imagined my future boyfriend would look at me. Like he can’t believe his luck.
“Hi. I’m Lana Rivera.” I hold out my hand, giving him my best flirty smile. “I’m guessing you’re a transfer?”
As if I didn’t already know.
“Hello, Lana Rivera.” He flashes me a grin as he shakes my hand, and a dimple appears in each of his cheeks. “Yeah, I just transferred from St. John’s in DC. I’m Chace Porter.”