The Veil (3 page)

What does any of this have to do with being early to precalc? Well, for reasons I didn’t quite understand (I mean, he couldn’t actually
like
precalc, could he?) Lucas was always early to first period. I discovered this four days into the school year, when I accidentally arrived early myself. Now I came early on purpose, every day, to sip my coffee and spend between seven and eight minutes alone with him.

We’ve never actually spoken. Not once. But those seven to eight minutes of totally uninterrupted, quiet alone time with the back of Lucas’s head were my favorite seven to eight minutes of the entire day.

It didn’t even usually bother me when the other students started to come in. The only thing that interrupted my precious few minutes of bliss every morning was,

Unavoidably . . .

Her.

Well, obviously he had a girlfriend. Just as Paul Green had been quickly snatched up by Karinda Walsh (the school beauty of that era), Lucas Stratton had been similarly ensnared by this era’s beauty, less than a week into the school year.

I hated her, of course, but my bad feelings toward Emily Archer actually started way before Lucas transferred to Marin County High. You see, Emily and I were friends once. A long time ago.

Actually, I’m not sure what bothered me more; Emily’s ability to get her well-manicured mitts on the boy who had a starring role in all
of my fantasies, or the sad fact that the object of my affection appeared unable to get enough of her airheaded ways. How did he fail to see through her totally transparent façade and actually fall for her?

It was a mystery that tortured my brain, and that I feared I would never solve.

I like to think there was some chance, however small, that had I managed to make Lucas aware of my existence sooner, he might have picked me instead. I may be more unconventional-looking than Emily (the corn-silk blonde, blue-eyed angel), but I’m not hideous. Not really.

Sure, I would have preferred to look like Emily, but I don’t recall ever being asked my opinion about it. My eyes are blue-green, which sounds like it would be pretty but in reality looks sort of confused, like my eyes couldn’t decide which color to be, so they opted for a sloppy combination of the two leading contenders. My hair also had some trouble settling on just one color and ended up as a strange blend of blonde and red. Indecision is sort of the defining feature of my look, and (perhaps typically) I kind of go back and forth about whether that makes me look interesting or just strange.

Okay, so Emily most definitely had me beat in the looks category. I might have been able to edge her out in a few other areas, but I didn’t have the guts to even try, and now I’d never know. Because if Paul still hadn’t gotten away from Karinda after two years, it seemed very unlikely Lucas Stratton would manage to extricate himself from Emily’s clutches before we all graduated.

At that moment, as if to illustrate my point, a slight flickering of the lights brought me back to reality just in time to see the two of them arrive to class together. They slipped into their seats four rows ahead of me a mere three minutes before the bell rang—so not only did I get less time than usual with my crush, I had to spend that time watching him with
her
.

I couldn’t even eat the second half of my morning bun. I felt like I was going to throw up.

My stomach did not improve, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, as much as I tried to concentrate on Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore’s droning explanation of last night’s homework. I was almost relieved when three annoyingly perky cheerleaders bounced into the room, pom-poms swishing, and gigglingly asked if they could have “just a moment of the class’ time.”

Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore agreed. She had to; this was first period, the only period that student groups were allowed to interrupt with announcements.

The cheerleaders had two posters with them. The first depicted a cougar (our school mascot) ripping apart a puny-looking shark. The second had the words KILL THE SHARKS written out in gobs of blue glitter.

“As you all know,” the shortest and chunkiest of the three cheerleaders began, “tomorrow night our
very own
Marin County Cougars will take on the Sonoma County Sharks. It is
by far
the greatest rivalry of the year, and
everybody
has to be there to cheer our Cougars on!”

“Yeah!” Terrance Seaver, a spiky-haired junior, yelled from the back of the room. His voice was dripping with sarcasm, perfectly in keeping with the staggeringly low level of school spirit at Marin County High.

But the cheerleader seemed to be spurred on by his outburst. “Be sure to come early for the rally! Principal Chatsworth has given us special permission to have a bonfire—yes! a real, honest to goodness bonfire!—on the empty lot next to the football field!”

“In the middle of the day?” Terrance inquired loudly.

“At five,” the chunky cheerleader corrected him.

“It won’t be dark then,” Terrance pointed out. “It’s kind of weird to have a bonfire when it’s still light out, don’t you think?”

The cheerleaders looked at each other.

“It will be dark
enough
,” the chunky one answered, glaring at Terrance. “And it is going to be
awesome
.”

Terrance shrugged, and the cheerleaders appeared at a loss.

“Ladies?” Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore finally prompted them, after a moment of awkward silence. “Do you have anything else?”

Reluctantly, the three reached behind them in unison and picked up identical Hula-Hoops that had been painted blue and white, our school colors. Terrance’s jabs had clearly taken the wind out of their sails, and even though it was obvious that leading the class in a spirited cheer was the last thing on earth any of them wanted to do right then, they took a valiant stab at it anyway:

I screamed.

And it wasn’t because of the annoying song, or because I find cheerleaders (particularly ones who hold Hula-Hoops inexplicably aloft, over their heads) hard to put up with.

It was because of the enormous silver cougar that suddenly jumped through the center Hula-Hoop.

I watched, glued to the back of my seat in shock as it landed, light as a feather, beside Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore before it bounded down the center aisle and headed straight toward the glass window that made up the back wall of the classroom. It jumped straight through the window, shattering it with an earsplitting crash and showering the back few rows of students with shards of broken glass.

I screamed again as I ducked and threw my arms protectively over my head. My Sully’s cup, still clenched in my right hand, lost its lid, and lukewarm coffee spilled down my back in a damp trickle.

I stayed like that, with my head buried beneath my arms and coffee dripping down the back of my sweater, for a good long moment before two things dawned on me:

   1. I hadn’t felt a single shard of glass fall on me, and

   2. I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard anybody else scream.

My two thoughts were immediately confirmed when I raised my head and found Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore, three stunned cheerleaders, and all thirty of my fellow classmates staring at me in horror.

I twisted around in my chair. The window was all in one piece, exactly as it had been. There was no cat-shaped hole in it, nor was there any sign of broken glass. Anywhere.

“Miss Russell?” Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore asked hesitantly, from the front of the room. Then, when I didn’t respond right away, “Addy?”

I turned back around; everyone was still staring at me. If the window behind me really had been shattered by the cougar, I probably would’ve taken this opportunity to jump through it and escape. But it hadn’t been, and I doubted I could get through it as easily as the giant cat had. I was trapped.

I racked my brain for something to say, something to satisfy all of those staring eyes and make the room forget about me. But my brain was too preoccupied just then to help me.

The seconds ticked by. The fluorescent light above my head flickered and hummed, and the room continued to stare, unblinkingly, in my direction, while I stared dumbly back.

God, I hate precalc.

“Sorry,” I said finally. Then I had a sudden flash of inspiration. “I, uh . . . spilled my coffee.” I held up my lidless, dripping coffee cup.

Somebody giggled.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“That’s why we don’t allow food or drinks in class, Ms. Russell,” Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore scolded, more gently than normal, since she was clearly worried about me. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need to go to the ladies’ room? Or maybe the nurse?”

“No,” I said, as two more people giggled. I could feel the back of my sweater sticking to me where the coffee had soaked it; not even a trip to the dry cleaner was going to save the sweater now. “I’m fine. Really. Thank you.”

Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore shrugged and turned back to the board. I sighed with relief as the cheerleaders shuffled out the door and, one by one, my classmates turned back around to the front of the room.

Except for one person. Of all people, it was Lucas Stratton who remained halfway turned around in his chair, eyes fixed on me long after everyone else had lost interest. I looked away, determined not to stare back at him, but not before I noticed that his expression was not horror-struck like everyone else’s had been. Instead, the look on Lucas’s face was strangely . . . curious. As though he was pondering something absurd, something he could hardly bring himself to believe.

“Lucas?” Ms. Fetterly-Dinsmore said warningly.

He turned back around, after giving me one last, unbelieving look.

——

I
TRIED NOT TO FLAT-OUT RUN
from the room when the bell signaling the end of precalc finally rang, but I somehow managed to be the first one out of the door anyway. Luckily, there was no one else in the bathroom when I ran inside, dumped my bag on the floor of the closest stall, and emptied my stomach into the toilet.

I finished retching and managed to get myself off of the bathroom floor before I heard the first person come through the bathroom door behind me. I sat on the toilet, shivering violently for a solid two minutes before I was able to get it together, flush my mess away, and shakily let myself out of the stall.

“Um, there’s something on the back of your shirt,” a sophomore whose name I did not know pointed out helpfully, while I splashed water onto my sheet-white face.

I twisted around in front of the mirror to get a better look at the brown stain, which by then had spread all the way across the back of my new white sweater. Apparently, the only part of the whole “cougar-in-my-math-class” hallucination that had been real was when I’d spilled my coffee.

And my jacket, which would have covered the stain perfectly, was still hanging on the back of my chair in precalc. Some birthday I was having.

I threw some more water on my face and headed for my locker.

I was in the unlucky half of the junior class “randomly” selected to have a locker on the bottom level, which means I had to squat down on the ground several times a day to retrieve my books. It was usually a bit annoying, but after the strange events of the morning, I was glad to sink to my knees on the cool concrete and rest my head briefly against the metal door of my locker.

But the second I heard Emily’s exaggerated, ditzy laugh, I snapped my head up. I fumbled for the lock, spun the correct numbers into place, and jerked my locker door open.

Emily’s locker was three down from mine, on the top level for the third year in a row (whether from dumb luck or an ability to flirt with influential school administrators, I’d never know). Usually, I was happy to find Emily at her locker, because it meant Lucas Stratton would almost certainly be along soon to walk her to class. Usually, I was thrilled that my proximity to Emily’s locker tended to land me in proximity to Lucas as well.

But not right then. This was the first moment in a very long time I had absolutely no desire to be near him.

He was there anyway, leaning casually against the locker to the left of Emily’s, the books for his next class already in hand, as she chatted inanely at him and fussed around with something inside her bag. The well-defined muscles of his arms and chest were visible through his thick gray sweater, and even though he stood perfectly motionless, he still somehow managed to exude a smooth fluidity, which I knew from careful observation was even more pronounced when he moved. I’d never heard of Lucas participating in any kind of school sport—I wondered, not for the first time, how he stayed in such good shape. He didn’t seem like the type who spent all of his free time at the gym.

I unzipped my school bag, pulled out my lunch, and stuffed it onto the top shelf of my locker, trying hard to think of anything besides Lucas. I looked at my watch and realized, with a start, that I should be hurrying. My pit stop in the bathroom had eaten up three of the five minutes I had between periods, and my second period Spanish class was on the opposite side of the school, as far from my locker as you could possibly get.