The first day at Avalon High School wasn"t a real first day. It was an orientation. Basically you just got a.s.signed cla.s.ses and lockers and stuff. Nothing cerebral involved, I guess to sort of ease us back into the academic routine.
AHS was smaller than my old school, but had better facilities and more money, so I wasn"t exactly complaining. They even had a student guide they handed out on the first official (non-orientation) day, with a small photo and bio on each student. I had to pose for my photo during orientation-me and two hundred giggling freshmen. Yippee-then fill out a form that asked me for my pertinent information: name, e-mail address (if I chose to share it), and interests, so they could put it in the guide. It was so we could all get to know one another...sort of Image for the student population.
My parents were super excited on my first day of real school. They got up early and made me a big breakfast and a bag lunch. The breakfast was okay-waffles that were only a little freezer burned-but the lunch was really sad: a peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwich with Red Hot and Blue potato salad on the side. I didn"t have the heart to tell them that the potato salad would get all warm in my locker before I ever got a chance to eat it. My parents, being medievalists, just don"t think about refrigeration that often.
I took the bag they offered me all proudly and just went, "Thanks, Mom and Dad."
They drove me to school the first day because I said I was too emotionally fragile to take the bus. All of us knew this wasn"t true, but I really didn"t want to deal with the ha.s.sle of not having anybody to sit next to, and people possibly not wanting to share their seats with a total stranger, et cetera.
My parents didn"t seem to mind. They dropped me off on their way to BWI, the local train station, because they had decided to make a day of it and go into the city to consult with other medievalists on their books-my mom about Elaine of Astolat, and my dad about his sword.
I told them to play nice with the other professors, and they told me to play nice with the other high school kids.
Then I went on into the school.
It was a typical first day-at least the initial half was. No one spoke to me, and I spoke to no one. A couple of the teachers made a big deal out of my being new, and from the exotic land of Minnesota, and had me tell the cla.s.s a little about myself and my home state.
I did.
No one listened. Or if they did, they didn"t seem to care.
Which was all right, because truthfully, I didn"t care very much either.
Lunch is always the scariest part of any kid"s first day at a new school. I"m kind of used to it, from previous sabbaticals, though. Like, I knew enough from my experience in Germany that taking my paper bag and going to sit in the library by myself would peg me as a huge loser for the rest of the year.
So instead I took a deep breath and looked around for a table where tall, geeky-looking girls like myself were sitting. After I found some, I went over to introduce myself. Because, basically, that"s what you have to do. Feeling like a complete and total dork, I told them I was new and asked if I could sit with them. Thank G.o.d they scooted down and made room for me. That is, after all, the accepted code of conduct for tall, geeky-looking girls everywhere.
Granted, they could have told me to get lost. But they didn"t. Avalon High, I was starting to think, might not be so bad after all.
I was especially convinced of this right after lunch, which is when I finally saw him. The guy from the ravine, I mean.
I was looking down at my schedule, trying to remember where Room 209 was from my orientation tour, when he came hurtling around the corner, and practically smacked into me. I recognized him at once-not just because he was so tall, and there aren"t a lot of guys who are taller than me, but also because he had such a distinctive face. Not handsome, really. But attractive. And nice. And strong-looking.
The weirdest part was, he seemed to recognize me, too, even though he could only have seen me for, like, five seconds that day in the park.
"Hey," he said, smiling, not just with his lips, but with his sky blue eyes, too.
Just Hey. That"s all. Hey.
But it was a Hey that made my heart flop over inside my chest.
And, okay, whatever. Maybe it was the eyes, and not the Hey so much. Or maybe it was just, you know, a familiar face in this sea of people I"d never seen before.
Except...well, I"d seen the girl standing next to him-it was the blond girl, the same one I"d seen him drive away with-before, and my heart hadn"t flopped over at the sight of her.
But maybe that"s because she was plucking on his sleeve and going, "But I told Lance we"d meet him at the DQ after practice."
To which he replied by putting his arm around her and going, "Sure, that sounds great."
Then the two of them went by me, and were swallowed up in the hordes flooding the hallway.
The whole thing had taken maybe two seconds. Okay, three.
But it left me feeling like someone had kicked me in the chest. Which just-well, it isn"t like me. I am not that way. You know, the Oh my G.o.d, he looked at me, I can barely breathe type. Nancy"s the romantic optimist. I"m the practical one.
Which is why it made no sense at all that the minute I got to my next cla.s.s, I was whipping out my copy of the student guide and frantically thumbing through it until I found him, paying not the slightest bit of attention to the reading syllabus my new World Lit teacher was trying to go over with us.
He was a year ahead of me, a senior. His name was A. William Wagner, but he was known as just plain Will.
I thought that suited him. He looked like a Will.
Not that I know how a Will should look, really. But whatever.
According to the book, A. William Wagner was quite a star. He was on the school football team, as well as a National Merit Finalist and president of the senior cla.s.s. His interests included reading and sailing.
It didn"t say anything about Will"s dating status, but I"d seen him twice now, both times with the same stunningly pretty blonde. And the second time he"d put his arm around her, and she"d talked to him about meeting someone at the Dairy Queen after practice. She had to be his girlfriend.
Guys like A. William Wagner always have girlfriends. You don"t have to be the practical type, like I am, to know that.
Since I had nothing better to do-Mr. Morton, my World Lit instructor, was trying to interest us in Gaelic legend, which I probably would have found interesting if I didn"t eat, drink, and breathe Gaelic legend whenever I was in the presence of my parents-I looked the girlfriend up in the guide, too. I found her picture-in my cla.s.s-and saw that her name was Jennifer Gold, and that her interests included shopping and, what a surprise, A. William Wagner.
Her extracurricular was cheerleading.
It so figured.
I flipped through the student guide, looking for the blond boy I"d seen with Will and Jennifer that day in the park, I found him, eventually. Lance Reynolds. He was in Will"s cla.s.s, a senior. He was listed as a guard-whatever that was-on the football team, as well as having an interest in sailing.
As first days of school went, this one hadn"t been all that bad. I"d even made some new friends. Some of the girls I"d sat down next to at lunch turned out to be on the track team. One of them-Liz-lived on the same road as me. She said she"d see me on the bus in the morning.
When I came outside after school and saw Mom and Dad sitting there in our car, I didn"t melt with relief or anything. I just got into the car and said, "Home, Jeeves," in a jokey way. On our way back to the house, they asked me about my day, and I told them it had been fine. Then I asked them about theirs. Mom went on about some new text she"d found that actually mentions Elaine-not me, her Elaine-in Arthurian legend, unconnected to the famous Tennyson poem about her. Which, you know, is so exciting. Not.
And Dad talked about his sword until my eyes started to cross.
But I listened politely, because that"s what you do.
Then, when we got home, I went up to my room, put on my bikini, came back downstairs, and got onto my raft.
My mom came out onto the deck a little while later and looked down at me as I floated.
"You"re kidding me with this, right?" she said. "I thought we were through with this, now that school has started."
"Come on, Mom," I said. "Summer"ll be over soon, and we"ll have to close up the pool. Can"t I just enjoy it for the short time I have left?"
My mom went back inside, shaking her head.
I leaned back against my raft and closed my eyes. The sun was still hot, even though it was after three. I had homework-homework, on the first day! I"d been right about that Mr. Morton, the World Lit teacher...he was a bad public speaker and a tyrant with the essay a.s.signments-but that could wait until after dinner. There were e-mails, too, from my friends back home, that needed to be answered. Nancy was begging to come visit. She"d never been to the East Coast, let alone stayed in a house with its own pool before. But she had to come soon, or it would be too cool to swim.
I had established a very strict floating regimen. I floated on my back, in the center of the pool. If the raft drifted too close to any of the kidney-shaped pool"s sides, I shoved off with my foot. The guy who owns the house had put all these big rocks around the edges of the pool, to make it look more like a naturally occurring pond, or something (except you don"t see that many ponds with chlorine and filters in them. But whatever).
Anyway, you had to be careful how you shoved off from the rocks, because there was this one really big rock that had a huge-as big as my fist-spider that lived on it. A couple of times when I hadn"t looked where I put my foot, I"d almost squashed the spider. I didn"t want to upset the delicate ecosystem of the pool, so, like with the snake, I was trying hard not to kill this spider. Also, of course, I didn"t exactly want him to bite me and send me to the emergency room.
So I always opened my eyes whenever my raft floated to the edge of the pool, just to make sure I didn"t step on the spider when I shoved off again.
That afternoon-on the first official day of school-when my raft b.u.mped into the side of the pool, and I opened my eyes before shoving off, I got the shock of my life.
Because A. William Wagner was standing on top of Spider Rock, looking down at me.
CHAPTER FOUR.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow"d;
On burnish"d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow"d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
I screamed and almost fell off the raft.
"Oh, sorry," Will said. He"d been smiling. After I screamed, he stopped. "I didn"t mean to scare you."
"Wh-what are you doing here?" I stammered, staring up at him. I couldn"t believe he was just...well, standing there. Beside my pool. In my yard. On Spider Rock.
"Uh," Will said, starting to look a little self-conscious. "I knocked. Your dad said you were out here, and let me in. Is this a bad time? I can come back, if it is."
I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. I couldn"t believe this was happening. I had lived for sixteen years without any boy ever having paid the slightest bit of attention to me, and then one day, without any warning at all, the cutest guy I had ever seen-and I do mean ever-just shows up at my house. Having come, apparently, to see me.
I mean, why else would he be here?
"How-how do you know where I live?" I asked him. "How do you even know who I am?"
"Student guide," he said. Then, seeming to realize that I was more than a little freaked, he added, "Look, I"m sorry if I startled you. I didn"t mean to. I just thought...well, never mind. You know what? I was wrong."
"Wrong about what?" I asked. My heart was still thumping really hard inside my bikini. He had startled me much more than that spider that lived on Spider Rock ever had.
But it wasn"t just that he"d startled me that was making my heart hammer. I have to admit, a lot of it was because of how good he looked, up there on that rock, with the late-afternoon sun glinting off his dark head.
"Nothing," he said. "I just-I mean, you smiled at me that day in the park like..."
"Like what?" I sounded casual, but inwardly, I was freaking out on multiple levels: one, that he remembered me-he really remembered me!-from that day at the park, and two, that it hadn"t just been me. The smile thing, I mean. He"d felt it, too!
Or maybe not.
"Look, never mind," Will said. "It"s stupid. When I saw you-first in the park, and then again today, it just seemed like...I don"t know. That we"d met before, or something. But we haven"t, obviously. I mean, I can see that now. I"m Will, by the way. Will Wagner."
I didn"t let on that I already knew this, from having looked him up the same way he"d looked me up. Because I didn"t want him to think that I had a crush on him, or anything. Because how could I have a crush on him? I had only seen him twice before. This made it three times. You can"t get a crush on someone you"ve seen only three times. I mean, if you"re Nancy, you can. But not if you"re practical, like me.
"I"m Ellie," I said. "Ellie Harrison. But then...I guess you knew that."
The blue-eyed gaze was back on mine, but this time, it didn"t seem as intense. Plus, Will was grinning.
"Pretty much," he said.
He really was very good-looking. It wasn"t often that good-looking guys so much as looked my way, let alone showed up at my house to see me. I"m not ugly, or anything, but I"m no Jennifer Gold. I mean, she"s one of those Oh, I"m so little and helpless, please rescue me, you big strong man types of girls. You know, the kind all the cute guys in school fall in love with? I"m more the kind of girl little old ladies come up to in grocery stores and ask, "Can you get that can of cat food down off that really high grocery store shelf for me, dear?"
Which basically translates to Invisible to Boys.
"I just moved here," I said. "From St. Paul. I"ve never been to the East Coast before. So I don"t know how we could have met before.... Unless"-I eyed him uncertainly-"you"ve been to St. Paul?"
Which was nuts, because if he had, I"d have remembered.
You better believe I"d have remembered.
"No," he said, grinning. "Never been there. Look, really, forget I said anything. Things have been really weird lately, and I guess I just..."
His expression darkened, just for a split second, almost as if a shadow had pa.s.sed across it.
Except that that was impossible, since there was nothing standing between him and the sun.