Authors: Liz Reinhardt
I wondered if anyone would recognize me. I was so nervous, I couldn’t look at anyone.
“
Brenna? Brenna Blixen? Is that you?”
I turned and saw a girl with bright red lipstick and curly black hair. She was a little heavyset and had a big nose, but she was cheerful and smiley. She did have a big bow in her hair, but I tried not to hold it against her.
“
Meg Yakovy?” I was suddenly folded in an excited hug.
“
Yeah! You look great! Did you really go to Germany with your parents and the Peace Corps?” Her curls shook around her excited face.
“
No. I went to Denmark. My step-dad inherited some land and a house, and we went there so we could fix it up.” I wiggled in her firm grip and she let me go.
“
Oh.” Her face fell, apparently disappointed by the fact that it hadn’t been the Peace Corps and Germany. “So, did you, like, meet some hot Dutch boys?”
“
Danish,” I corrected. “Um, no. I was in Jutland. It’s a lot of farms and stuff. We didn’t have any neighbors my age.”
Her eyes shimmered with agonized, sympathetic tears. “That must have been so, so terrible. Just you and your parents.” She shivered and closed her eyes. “I would have killed myself.”
“
Uh, it wasn’t so bad.” I hadn’t been in the company of someone my age for months, but she seemed weirdly dramatic.
“
Well, you look really pretty! You should try out for the fall drama. It’s
The Miracle Worker.
It’s going to be amazing.” Only she said it
ah-MAHZ-ing
. And shivered again. She was making me kind of cold.
Aha. Meg and drama club. How could I forget her belting out “Tomorrow” all through seventh grade when she landed the lead in
Annie
?
“
I will, uh, think about it.” The idea of getting on stage and performing sounded almost as appealing as hot pokers in my eyeballs, but I didn’t want to make the first person who talked to me hate my guts off the bat. “So, it was good seeing you, but I have to check in at the office.”
“
Alright!” She hugged me again and shook me back and forth a few times. “It was so, so good to see you, Brenna. I am so, so glad you’re back.” Another warm, perfume-dense hug.
Meg was a nice girl. She signed ‘HAGS’ in my yearbook at the end of eighth, short for ‘have a great summer,’ and added the obligatory, ‘See you in high school!’ But, other than that, I could hardly remember her talking to me. Maybe high school just made her even friendlier?
I made it to the office unnoticed and waited behind kids who didn’t like their schedules and were pretty much being told to deal with it and get to class. Harsh, but it made the line move really quickly.
“
Hello.” I put my hands on the counter and unpacked my biggest smile. I’d worked on my smile a lot in Denmark because, since I had never learned more than a few basic sentences, I found that a big friendly smile (besides marking me as an American) was taken as an appreciated attempt at communication. “My name is Brenna Blixen, and today is my first day.” I handed the lady behind the counter the forms that came in the mail.
“
Brenna Blixen.” The secretary had curly red hair and kind eyes that soothed my anxious nerves. “I heard about you. Didn’t your family take off and go to Austria for a while?”
“
Denmark.” I sighed. Why did Thorsten have to be from the least recognized of all of the European nations?
“
Well, welcome to Frankford High.” She smiled wide. “I’m Mrs. Post, and you can come here if you need anything. Wow, you have a crazy schedule.” She suddenly noticed the paper she held out to me. “You’re going to do Share Time?”
I tried to guess what her tone of voice implied, but I had no idea, so I decided to pretend it was just curiosity, even if it wasn’t. “Yes. Graphic design.”
“
You didn’t strike me as a cosmetology type.” She handed me the paper.
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just shrugged. “Thanks.” I gave her a little wave and walked out.
“
Brenna! Brenna!”
My heart lifted a little. A voice I knew.
“
Kelsie!” I cried and we embraced, a real hug this time. Kelsie Jordan was still petite, still had dark, shiny hair and pretty eyes. She also had a plump butt, something she had always hated, but I thought it made her look curvy and sexy.
“
You look incredible. Not that you didn’t look great in eighth, but you look really cool now.” She swept her hair behind her ear and a pair of silvery bell earrings chimed sweetly.
Kelsie had changed her style, too. I had a flashback to both of us in polos, shiny jeans and Keds. Today she wore a hippie-type peasant shirt and dark jeans with sandals and a flowery bandana in her long, dark hair. My mom always said Kelsie’s hair line was too low to make her truly pretty, but I think that was just because my mom didn’t like Kelsie. Because looking at her glowing right in front of my eyes, there was no denying how beautiful she was.
“
You do, too. Look cool, I mean. It’s weird to be back.” I shifted my backpack and tugged on the edge of my sweater. “It’s like I know everyone, but I don’t, you know?”
“
It must be crazy. Let’s see your schedule.” She snatched it out of my hands. “Hey, we’ve got crafts together!” Her head snapped up. “Brenna, they have you down for Share Time!” Her voice didn’t leave me wondering. She was clearly horrified.
“
Yeah, graphic design.” I took the schedule back and folded it into a tiny rectangle that I turned over and over in my fingers.
“
But you were always so smart.” She held up her hands, at a loss.“Why would you go to tech?”
“
It’s just Share Time.” I could feel the scarlet ‘T’ glowing on my forehead and a little, nagging voice in my head wondered if I should have listened to my mother. “I gotta go. I’m gonna be late. Do you know where 204 is?”
Kelsie pointed down the hall, her hand glittering with silver and amber rings, rows of beaded bracelets swishing on her wrist. “Go to the end of the hall, turn left. It’s on the left, the English side. Right side is the art room, so I’ll meet you there third?” We didn’t say anything for a minute, then she pulled me into another quick hug, but this one was a little awkward.
I ran down the emptying hall, determined not to be late to class, and I sat down as the bell rang. Mr. Dawes was a fat, squat man with a ready scowl and a syllabus designed to knock us out from day one. There was a lot I read last year, and a lot I hadn’t. Vonnegut stood out like an old, familiar friend, and the plays by O’Neill sent a shiver down my spine based on title alone. Who wouldn’t fall instantly in love with “Mourning Becomes Electra”? I saw Jane Austen’s name and had the funny feeling we were going to be good friends, and I sighed with relief when I saw
Grapes of Wrath,
mostly because it had collected dust on my shelf for two years, spine uncracked, but I felt like it was something every American had to read.
A quick glance around the room told me that I was in foreign territory. Frankford High pulled from four districts, and my elementary school was one of the smallest, so I wasn’t going to see too many kids from middle school.
“
This is honors English, kids.” Mr. Dawes’s growl made me sit up straighter and cap my pen with purpose. “I don’t accept late work. At all. And I don’t announce every quiz and in-class writing. Stay on your toes.”
He looked slightly like one of Santa’s jolly old elves, just in a really scowly, pissed off mood. He tossed us copies of
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding and we passed around the sheet where we put our names and how beat up the books were, probably so he could fine us accordingly when we handed them back in. I thumbed through the book, which I’d read before. Even though it was about a bunch of killer school boys, I never managed to get into this one. But I decided it was a fresh year, and the best tactic was to give everything an equal chance, even if it disappointed me before. The boy in front of me turned around and stared at me like I was a fish in an aquarium.
“
You need something?” I asked. His direct gaze made me squirm.
“
Who are you?” His social graces were so awful they were almost funny.
“
Brenna Blixen. Who are you?”
“
Devon Conner.” He shuffled his big feet and blinked hard. “Are you new?”
“
Kind of.” I watched him bite the inside of his cheek.
“
Mr. Conner, Ms. Blixen, why don’t you join your classmates in silent reading?” Mr. Dawes scowled.
I ducked my head over my book quickly and Devon followed my lead. Pissed off a teacher on day one, in first period. Great.
I focused on the story, the boys on the mysterious island, lost and confused and clinging to the order that had dictated their lives in their schools back in England. I felt like I had the sacred conch shell in my hand, my feet on the white sand beaches, Jack and Ralph glaring on either side of me, when the bell jarred me back into the noisy classroom where Mr. Dawes waved a hand, dismissing us.
I had to race across the school, stopping a few times to ask directions before I found my next classroom. I got there last, again, slipping into the chair at the bell. The teacher barely looked up.
This was my AP class, in American government, where I’d be at least a year younger than every other student. My classmates checked me out coolly, a group of sharks just waiting for the chum.
A total of eight students and our teacher, a graying hulk of a man in a too-tight button down who wrote with a ruler, sat in an antechamber around a u-shaped table. The teacher took names with impersonal speed and wrote each one in his plan book with the ruler underneath his pen at all times. It struck me as weird, but the other students were paying no attention, busy organizing notebooks, laying out pens, examining textbooks with sharp, eager eyes. Whoa, alpha class.
There was one exception.
He had inky black hair that looked both perfectly styled and like he’d just crawled out of bed. His dark brown, almond-shaped eyes flicked slowly around the room, clearly unimpressed with everyone and everything. His olive skin was smooth except for the prickle of five o’clock shadow already darkening his jaw. Those nearly-black eyes settled on me and his lips curved into a taunting grin that tugged at me and made me fight not to grin right back. He didn’t have a backpack, didn’t have any papers out, didn’t seem the least bit interested in his textbook. He was calm amidst all the busy chaos, leaned back in his chair with a sleepy, bored look in his eyes.
“
Sit up before you break your neck, Saxon!” the teacher barked. The dark-eyed boy gave him a sharp salute and banged the chair down on all four legs, never taking his eyes off of me. My mouth dried up and my heart hammered fast and erratic.
“
I’m Sanotoni, for whoever’s new. Who’s new?” The teacher looked down at the roll book and up at me. “Blixen? Like the reindeer?” The class chuckled with him.
I cleared my throat. “Like the Danish author. Pen name Isak Dinesen.”
“
I like this one.” Mr. Sanotoni pointed at me with his ruler and laughed, a strange sound that was something between a bark and a howl. Everyone else joined in except Saxon.
Sanotoni snapped up and pulled down a map of the United States. “We’re dividing into parties and setting up a mini caucus,” he ordered. “Let’s make it a three party system in honor of the kooks who think that might ever work.” He barked/laughed again, counted us off quickly, handed out pamphlets and instructed us to start working answering the campaign sign-in questions using the textbooks he passed out. A petite girl looked at Saxon then me, rolled her eyes, and headed over with lots of huffing and sighing.
Saxon sauntered towards me, plopped his textbook down on the table and fell into the chair with a lazy smile just for me.
That smile made me think of a predator for some reason. I shivered suddenly. Meg Yakovy’s dramatics had definitely rubbed off on me.
“
I’m Brenna Blixen.” Kind of unnecessary since Sanotoni just mocked my reindeer-based name, but between Saxon’s sexy stare and the girl’s pronounced scowl, I felt like someone needed to make normal introductions.
“
I’m Lynn Orr,” snapped the dark-haired girl with daggers shooting out of her eyes. “This is Saxon Maclean. Are you planning on actually working this term, Saxon?”
“
Why should I bother? Don’t you already know all the answers, Lynn?” His words stretched out slow and sweet as warm taffy. He turned the wattage of his lazy smile on Lynn, and that smile only widened when she snarled in his direction.
“
You’re such a stoner. I don’t even know how you got in this class.” She threw her textbook open with a pout.
Saxon uncrossed his long arms and leaned close to her, his words sliding out with lazy glee. “Well, it wasn’t based on the fact that my mommy’s the big, fat mayor. Isn’t that how you got in?”
“
Screw you, loser,” she hissed, her hands clawed around the edges of her book, her teeth bared.
“
Um, so I think the answers to questions one through three are on page eighteen,” I announced a little loudly. “About registration requirements. Here on page eighteen.” I thumped my index finger on the page, hoping to distract them away from jumping across the table and ripping each other’s throats out.
“
You’re right,” Lynn sneered at me, her glare fixed on Saxon. He crossed his arms and flexed, the biceps bulging under the sleeves of his t-shirt, clearly enjoying Lynn’s simmering temper. “Aren’t you going to write this down, Saxon?”