Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (4 page)

I passed a door marked BASEMENT ACCESS. A
chain ran between the handles, secured with a sturdy new steel
lock. A lot of my classmates used to go down there to fool around
and drink during class hours, so it didn't surprise me that the
school finally took preventative measures.  

I started to move on, but stopped when I
thought I heard voices. Listening, I frowned. Whispering, and from
close by. The hallway in front of me was empty, and there were no
TVs or radios nearby that I knew of. Besides, it wasn't that kind
of sound.   

I turned to my left. The voices seemed to be
coming from behind the basement access door. I crept towards it,
part of me thinking the whole thing was ridiculous. The door was
locked, how could anyone be behind it? The whispers grew louder as
if in answer to my thoughts; I could almost make out what was being
said, but the sounds seemed to be not quite words.

Pressing my ear flat against the surface of
the door, I listened. The voices stopped immediately, so fast that
I pulled back. After a second, my breath picking up speed, I
pressed my ear against the door again, harder. Listening for
anything at all. Nothing but silence greeted me.

Painting and Drawing was my last class,
located in the electives hallway, across from woodshop. Every
elective, whatever that meant, was jammed in the hall, like
leftovers. I hate Art class, only because I'm terrible at it. My
best artistic skill is gluing sequins on Popsicle sticks, and even
those turn out crooked. But Hugh insisted I take it every year,
because art is good for the soul. Or because he couldn't admit to
himself that he hadn't passed on the painting gene. 
 

In every hall I'd visited, the gaudy purple
lockers stood open, airing out after sitting the summer closed. I
walked past the little metal spaces and found my room. Cupping my
hand, I peered into the window. I couldn't completely tell with the
inside lights off, but it looked bigger than the room Intro to Art
was held in last year.

A loud bang ricocheted off of the walls. I
jumped back a foot, clutching my chest. My mind reeled at the
possibilities. A shooter, a bomb... But the sound had been
distinctly metallic. I turned to look down the hall, fearful
thoughts racing through my head.

All of the lockers were shut. Every single
one.   

I ran down and out of the hallway, heart
hammering. At the same time, my mind reached desperately to
contemplate logical reasons. No forced air. No breeze. Nothing to
cause the doors to shut, especially all at the same time. Nothing
rational.

I turned back over my shoulder and gasped.
Every locker door stood open again, exactly as they had been when I
first came down the hall. But my ears were still ringing from the
sound.  

Forcing my body to turn fully
around, I walked cautiously down the hall, waiting for whatever
trick was being played on me to happen again. But
nothing
happened. I
pushed one door with the tip of my finger and it swung shut gently,
sliding into the frame.  

How did I just imagine
that?
I thought.
Am I losing my mind?

I walked quickly out of the electives hall and
down to the commons. It was very possible. 

With polished, white tile flooring and a domed
cathedral ceiling, the commons looked like something out of a high
class college. Of course, that was probably the exact idea of
whoever designed Hawthorne 2.0. The walls were already covered with
school memorabilia and flyers, announcing football games and
charity drives set in motion. The room was really the central hub
of the school, long windows lining the far wall to let in filtered
light. If a person were looking for someone when classes weren't in
session, odds are they were hanging out in the commons.

I camped at one of the side tables, trying not
to think about what had just happened. Avoidance was my way of
dealing with everything these days. Whatever caused the sound had
to have a logical explanation, even if I couldn't think of one at
the moment. Maybe I only imagined the lockers being shut, because
of disorientation from the sound. I clutched to the explanation to
try to still my thoughts.

Putting in my earphones, I watched other
people trickling in to the room. My music sounded strange in the
school setting, almost off key, the lyrics too serious. I wondered
idly why school couldn't be like in the movies, where everyone,
even the nerds, had perfect hair and interesting plotlines. Maybe
it was that way for some people.  

The bell rang faster than I had anticipated. I
went to homeroom. We were assigned our lockers first out in the
hallway. Hesitant due to my strange experience earlier, I put in my
combination, and peered inside the locker. Other than the smell of
industrial strength disinfectant, there was nothing remarkable
about it. Our teacher called us back into class, and I didn't give
it a second thought.   

Out of place didn't begin to describe how I
felt. I was like a thistle in a garden of roses and lilies. I
shuffled behind everyone else and took a seat in one of the front
desks. I had forgotten how uncomfortable school desks were.
  

A girl I had often talked to before sat next
to me, her hair in a high ponytail. She was wearing a t-shirt with
our school logo on it. I remembered her name was Amy. Or
Ashley.

"Hi!" I said, trying to attempt a smile. It
felt like a grimace. My voice sounded like I had been sucking on a
helium balloon, far too enthusiastic this early in the morning. I
caught the barely perceptible widening of her eyes.
  

"Hi," she muttered, looking at me like I was
going to explode in front of her. She waited for me to say
something else, so of course my mind went blank. Without another
word, she turned in her seat to talk with the girl to her
left.

I had been dreading this kind of reaction, but
it still stung. I hadn't been in contact with anyone since July. I
turned my phone off, deleted my email without reading it. It wasn't
like I blamed them for their feelings; they were probably hurt by
my bold insensitivity. But for a long time, I couldn't stand
talking to anyone. The words felt wrong. But now I was lonely, even
if it was by my own making.   

Our principal, Mr. McPherson, came over the
intercom and greeted us.

"Good morning, students," his voice boomed
over the loudspeaker. "Welcome to a brand new school year. I hope
you're all ready to begin. All it takes is a positive attitude and
you can persevere."

I try to have respect for authority figures.
But McPherson was an exception. He always favored the rich and
athletic kids over the rest of us, to the point of absurdity. And
he exuded insincerity. He wore ugly suits straight out of the
1970s, with leather elbow patches. I wondered if he still had the
large moustache he had grown to distract from the comb-over on his
balding head.

"I also wanted to extend thanks to the
Thornhill Society for the new additions to the gym," he said. "As
well as the beautiful stone fountain out front."

I hadn't even noticed the fountain. Typical of
the kind of things their money went to, sports-related trappings
and aesthetics. I tuned out the rest of his ramblings.
  

I went to Geometry first period, the class I
was least looking forward to. My math teacher, Mr. Vanderlip, was a
twitchy little man with a paisley tie. He quickly revealed that he
favored those good at the subject. On his classroom billboard,
photos of his calculus classes and math competition teams over the
years were perfectly aligned in straight rows, complete with
labelmaker tags.

Math was number one on my list of things I
dreaded. Probably because I am not the most logical person. I
barely squeaked through Algebra last year, so the step up in
difficulty worried me. My mother was a math genius, but she never
had the time to teach me anymore. When I was younger, we used to
sit at the dining room table after elementary school, carefully
filling in worksheets. Rumor had it that Mr. Vanderlip could be
really hard, and he didn't like to offer extra help. I assumed I
would be royally screwed if I didn't pay the utmost attention.
  

He jumped right into the textbook with no
introduction, covering the board with chalk. Then he berated the
first student who raised his hand and had the answer slightly
wrong.

"This is remedial stuff! I can't believe that
you don't know the difference between a supplementary angle and a
complementary one," he squawked, then visibly clucking his
tongue.

As he turned his back, his striped shirt
wrinkling, I watched everyone else debating whether they should
ever raise their hands again. It could be a very quiet class if
this kept up.      

I could follow the basics, mostly lines and
angles. Relief was slowly spreading through me; maybe it wouldn't
be such a nightmare. That feeling only lasted until he assigned
three lessons for the night's homework, when any hope I had
deflated like a broken balloon.  

"We need to blow through the easy stuff," he
responded to our collective groan.

At Hawthorne, physical education was a
required subject for two years. Not surprising for a school so
concerned with athletics. I wasn't bad at sports, I just wasn't
interested. I could generally hold my own when forced to engage in
them, but I would much rather have been reading. Claire had tried
enrolling me in volleyball and cheerleading classes, but to no
avail.

I went to the girl's locker room to change. It
reeked of raspberry body spray. A few girls were primping in front
of the full length wall mirror on one side, one of them using a
flat iron on her hair. The practicality of styling hair before we
all got sweaty made no sense to me. I often wondered if I had been
born too much of a tomboy, even though I thought I had the basics
of primping down.   

I found the locker with my name taped on it,
misspelled as usual. I was not a font. As I changed, I overheard
two girls gossiping on the bench by me. Great, and in the worst
possible class they could be in.

Lainey Ford and Madison Taylor — the exact two
people I didn't want to see ever again in my lifetime. The most
popular girls in school. Actually, Lainey was the most popular, and
Madison orbited her like a loyal planet around a sun, fully aware
that anyone could replace her.

Between them, they had enough fake blonde hair
to make a wig store. Lainey's family was obscenely rich, and could
probably buy out every business in town. Her father already owned
several of them, including the tanning salon, which was why
Lainey's skin glowed like an orange creamsicle. I knew both of
their parents were card-carrying members of Thornhill.
 

"I know Henry likes me already," Lainey
bragged, fixing the concealer underneath her eyes as Madison held
up a compact mirror. Gossiping about some boy, as usual.

"How do you know that?" Madison asked. The
silence that followed indicated Madison's ignorance. Lainey
apparently wanted her to stew in it.

"Because we're perfect for each other," Lainey
said simply.

I looked over at her as she sat up a little
straighter and tilted up the chin of her heart-shaped
face.

"Have you ever seen such a hot guy?" she asked
rhetorically. "There's no way I'm letting anyone else in this
school touch him. The first girl that gets near him, I'll go
ballistic."

He must be something, I thought, throwing my
street clothes in the locker and spinning the combination lock.
Lainey had been in love with Ambrose Slaughter, the aptly named
school bully, for years. I figured I'd hate this Henry, if she was
so keen on him. Another idiot more concerned with the label on his
jeans than the brain in his head. Another addition the school
didn't need. 

I walked out of the locker room and into the
brightly lit gym. The only changes I noticed were new basketball
hoops, but I'm sure our wealthy benefactors had dumped a bunch of
money into something. Oh well, it was theirs to spend. It didn't
help me to keep internally complaining about it, no matter how
unfair it seemed to me.  

Coach Fletcher had also been my gym teacher
last year. A more utterly humorless woman did not exist. Gym class
was a battlefield, and we were the soldiers in training.

"Sit down below the bleachers," she instructed
us. We complied, sitting cross-legged and waiting for instruction.
When everyone was seated, she regaled us with the essentialness of
gym to a well-rounded academic career.  

"This isn't a goof off class," she barked. "I
know some of you may think, "Ha ha, it's phys ed, we can play
around." Well, cut that idea right out. Physical education is
incredibly important to your well being. It's essential you learn
how to be part of a team, not to mention gain coordination and
stamina."

I squinted up at the round fluorescent lights.
They seemed to be a million miles away, and I felt microscopic. I
was still half-asleep, and I rubbed my tired eyes.

"First up today is the fitness test," Coach
said. "For any of you who weren't here last year, at the start of
every year, each one of you performs a series of physical tests so
I can determine what skill level you fall into."