At First Sight: A Timber Wolves Companion (8 page)

“You’re in AP Calc because you scored 98% on the placement test. You’re going to do fine. Stop worrying.”

A shadow fell across my desk. “Harper, is there something that you want to share with the rest of the class?”

“It’s Scout,” I snapped in response to hearing my given name before remembering who I was snapping at. “I mean, my name. It’s Scout. You can call me Scout. Please.”

“I think we are a little old to be going by nicknames in class.” Mr. Beck sneered, which did nothing to help his personal appearance. Of course, there wasn’t much that actually would help the man’s personal appearance other than a hairpiece and some clothes bought more recently than 1978.

“Th-th-then you can call me Miss Donovan.”

“Very well,
Miss Donovan
. Now, if you and
Miss Fitzgerald
are done with your conversation, we can all go back to discussing the grading scale for this course.” Mr. Beck turned and began to drone on about how he did not grade on a curve, nor did he give any extra credit or extended deadlines.

I looked forward, waiting for my embarrassment to subside and my heart rate to return to normal. Could I be any more of a dork? One brief exchange with an antagonizing teacher had me shaking like a leaf.

That’s when I noticed a pair of familiar grey eyes staring at me. I was so shocked I didn’t immediately realize that the face they were peering out of wasn’t the same one I had been fastidiously scouring the Internet for over the past three days. The slope of the nose and curve of the jaw were the same, but this face lacked the malice and anger that was so evident on the other.

Jean-Claude’s little brother.

Lake County High isn’t a big school; my graduating class boasts a whopping one hundred and forty-three students. When someone new shows up, everyone notices. I had been hearing about a new guy all morning. Ashley Johnson was all about the “yummy newbie” who transferred in from Montana. She spent half of our first hour class planning their wedding.

And now the future Mr. Ashley Johnson was turned around in his chair, leaning around John Davis, staring at me.

It didn’t take long for my brain to decide that the last thing it wanted was another confrontation and allowed embarrassment to overwhelm me. I dropped my eyes as my face turned a brilliant shade of tomato.

I continued through the rest of the hour with my eyes fixed steadfastly on my desk. I tried to take some notes on what Mr. Beck was covering, but it all basically boiled down to him being a jerk and the class being impossibly hard. I was pretty sure I could remember that without a written reminder.

When the bell finally rang, I quickly gathered my stuff and jumped up, planning to make a quick escape. Instead, I ran directly into the new guy’s chest.

“Sorry,” I muttered, trying to step around him to get to the door. Instead of moving to the side to let me by, like a decent person would do, the new guy just stood there.

“Excuse me,” I hissed through clenched teeth. He finally moved, allowing me clear access to the door, and the blissful anonymity the crowded hallway provided.

***

I breathed a sigh of relief as I sank into the seat next to my best friend, Talley Matthews, in the school’s dilapidated theater. The seats were worn and threadbare, the thick velvet curtain had faded from red to a rustic orange, half of the light fixtures were missing bulbs, and a musty, mildewed scent hung heavily in the air. Despite its ruinous state, I was looking forward to the time I would be spending in the old theater taking the school’s new Shakespeare class.

“How is your last first day of high school going?” Talley asked, without even a hint of irony in her voice.

“It has sucked, big time. Jase totally hogged the bathroom all morning. Then, he insisted on picking up Nikki Anderson, who made us wait fifteen minutes in the car while she painted on her perfect face. And, of course, Jase then made me ride in the back seat of
our
car so that he could stare at her unnaturally perky boobs as he drove us to school. Ashley Johnson is in my AP English class, and Mr. Beck is a complete tool who refuses to call me Scout. And, remember that guy I told you about from The Strip? Mr. Tall, Dark and Insane? His brother is the new guy.”

“There’s a new guy?” Talley was always oblivious to the school’s latest gossip. “What’s his name?”

“His last name is Cole. I don’t remember what his first name is though. Some really generic “A” name. Alan? Andrew?”

“Alex,” an unfamiliar male voice replied from behind me. I turned to see the new guy, apparently named Alex, sitting in the second row of seats.

Crap. How long had he been there?

“Should I call you Scout or Miss Donovan?” he asked with a smirk.

I glowered. “Scout will be fine.”

“I’m Talley,” my best friend chimed in, turning around to stretch her hand out towards Alex. What was she doing? Was she going to shake his hand like they were closing a bank deal or something equally adult and boring?

To his credit, Alex didn’t look at Talley as though she was breaking some unwritten high school code, and extended his own hand to her. “Nice to meet you, Talley. Cool name. Very non-generic.” His grey eyes seemed to dance their way over to mine. The huge grin on his face revealed perfectly straight white teeth and a pair of honest-to-goodness dimples.

“Thanks,” Talley replied, meeting his smile watt per watt. “My mom went into labor with me at O’Talley’s restaurant. It was the only thing her post-childbirth drug-addled mind could come up with when they asked her for a name.”

“Cool. And how does one become a Scout? Are you like a super cookie salesman?” He was obviously pleased with his own attempt at being clever. I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were still focused intently on my face.

“It’s because my name is Harper Lee,” I said in the most annoyed voice I could muster.

“And so people call you Scout?” I allowed a condescending smile to spread across my face. I had missed moments like these ever since they assigned
To Kill a Mockingbird
our Junior year. “Why not Boo?” Alex asked, effectively robbing me of my smugness.

Jerk.

My spirits sank even lower as I looked up to see the last batch of students making their way towards the stage. Ashley Johnson practically skipped her way to the seat beside Alex.

“Hi, you must be new,” Ashley gushed, pretending she didn’t already know exactly who he was. Knowing her super-stalker abilities, she probably already knew what size wedding band she needed to buy him. “I’m Ashley.”

Alex finally stopped staring at me to focus on the Bimbo Barbie sitting next to him. I watched as his eyes assessed her, from her super-styled bottle blond hair all the way down to her designer 4-inch heels. Apparently, he liked what he saw. “Well, Ashley, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Alex Cole.”

I turned back around in my seat so I wouldn’t have to actually see Ashley’s breasts as they struggled to free themselves from the tiny tank top she had them stuffed in as she leaned over to talk to Alex. Sadly, this didn’t stop her grating voice from reaching my ears.

“That’s a real interestin’ accent ya go there, Alex. Where are y’all from?” Ashley always had a bit of a southern drawl, but she was really laying it on thick.

“I just moved here from Montana,” he answered, hamming up his own accent so that he sounded like a member of The Barenaked Ladies.

“How on earth does someone from Montana end up down here in Timber, Kentucky?”

I was actually curious about that myself. Timber isn’t exactly a thriving metropolis. Most of the county is covered by Land Between the Lakes, a national forest that is beautiful and mildly entertaining in the summer months, but lacking modern amenities like a Target or movie theater. Occasionally someone would move up from Nashville to escape the city, but most of our families have been here forever. I hadn’t even met someone from Montana until three days ago.

I’m not sure if he was being truthful or trying yet again to be clever, but I could tell from the momentary silence behind me that his response of, “This is where the car broke down,” wasn’t exactly what Ashley was expecting either.

Before Ashley could extract more information from her future groom, or cause my ears to bleed, Ms. Ryder strode onto the stage. The sight of her electric blue legs engulfed in red cowboy boots captured our attention even more effectively than her dramatic recitation of
Richard III
.

The next hour flew by in a blur as Ms. Ryder excitedly went over the details of the course. The class was small, only a dozen of us, and the local art guild was providing funding for a few field trips to see some live performances. I was so excited by the time the bell rang that I almost forgot about Alex.

“So the new guy is kind of a hottie.” Talley said from one of the cafeteria’s cheerfully colored booths. She was munching on a carrot stick, her latest attempt at going on a diet. I silently predicted that they would be replaced with McDonald’s french fires before she made it home that afternoon.

“When did you start using words like ‘hottie’?”

“You’re avoiding the topic.”

“What topic?”

“The hotness that is Alex Cole. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.”

Of course I noticed. I was in possession of two functioning eyeballs and an appreciation of the opposite sex.

“He’s one of the beautiful people. God help us all.” Talley gave me what I like to think of as her why-the-Hades-do-I-put-up-with-you look. “Don’t look at me like that. You know you’re the only beautiful person in this school who isn’t completely vapid.”

Talley learned to quit arguing with me over the fact that she was beautiful long ago. On this one fact I was stubbornly certain. Talley’s eyes are a deep blue, set off by her thick, shiny black hair that looks perfect even when she has bedhead. Her skin is as pale as mine, but the sun is much kinder to her. Since it was mid-August, her nose had an adorable scattering of the cutest freckles any human has ever possessed. Couple those features with the fact that she was the kindest and most joyful person alive, and it all added up to a very attractive girl. It was a shame everyone seemed too focused on the fact that she weighed over 200 pounds to notice.

“What about Jase?” Talley asked, looking over my shoulder.

“What about him?

“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” my brother asked, sliding into the booth next to me.

“Of course you’re beautiful.” Not to be gross or anything, but he actually kind of is. “You’re also completely vapid.” Which is only partially true.

“Aw. You’re just saying that because you know I have no idea what vapid means.”

“It means quit eating all my Doritos.” I snatched my nearly empty bag out of his hand. “What are you doing here, Jase? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“Nope. This is my lunch period.”

Talley froze with a carrot stick halfway to her mouth. “No way. How did that happen?”

“Tal, isn’t it obvious? Scout and I are mature, responsible Seniors now. Don’t be so shocked that the school administration has taken notice.”

Since an incident in the third grade, Jase and I were separated at school as much as possible. We were never in the same classes or allowed to join the same clubs. It really hadn’t been an issue since we got to high school. Jase’s interests tended to skew towards athletics while mine had a more academic feel. Yet, I knew for certain the superintendent, who just happened to be our father, still intended for our schedules to never intertwine. Obviously, someone wasn’t paying attention.

“You? Me? The same lunch? That’s going to be odd.”

“Odd?” Jase looked at me, totally confused. “It’s going to be awesome!”

It is common knowledge that things have to work a certain way in the world of high school politics. The super-cool, yet approachable, star athlete was supposed to date the prettiest girls, attend the coolest parties, and eat lunch with the rest of the elite, not his socially awkward sister.

“Shouldn’t you be holding court with Twiddle-Dee, Twiddle-Dum, and Twiddle-Moron over there?” I asked, referring to a table in the middle of the dining area where three of Jase’s teammates - Tyler Burkeen, Seth Roberts, and Jordan Daniels - were hanging all over a cluster of cheerleader types, occasionally tossing a french fry towards the back of James Kiplinger’s head.

“I see those guys all the time.”

“You live with me. Our bedrooms are roughly five feet from each other.”

“Are you trying to say that you don’t want to eat lunch with me, Scout?”

“Of course she wants to eat lunch with you,” Talley said. “She’s just worried that you’re going to make her have an actual conversation with someone other than you or me.”

That wasn’t entirely fair. It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t as affable as they were.

“You know, they really aren’t that bad once you get to know them,” Jase said, watching as Jordan managed to get a ketchup coated fry to stick to James’ shirt.

“Jordan Daniels is not only a complete jerk, but he’s also as dumb as a box of rocks.”

“He doesn’t still call you Al the Albino does he?”

“No.” Not since Jase slammed him into a wall in the boy’s locker room and suggested he quit. “That doesn’t mean that he suddenly stopped being a half-wit. I overheard him asking one of the secretaries where to put a stamp on an envelope last year.”

“Okay, so Jordan is an idiot, but Tyler and Seth are pretty decent, and I think you would like some of the girls if you would just give them a chance.”

Sure, we would become the bestest of friends. We could have sleep-overs where we braided each other’s hair and talked about how super-cute and hunky Jordan is.

Gag.

I was about to turn back to my table when a pair of steely eyes caught my attention. Alex Cole sat two tables away from us, once again staring. Only this time, it wasn’t at me. Instead, he was looking at Jase with an expression which could have easily been interpreted as murderous. His eyes were hard and I could see the muscles in his cheeks jump as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.

I could also see Ashley Johnson babbling on like a ditz beside him. I briefly wondered if she was discussing possible honeymoon locations.