Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (5 page)

The results of the test didn't seem to make
much of a difference in the activities we ended up doing, but it
was a Hawthorne formality. Just a check mark on a form.

Situps were first. I could make it up to
thirty before I had any issue. My neck started to burn and I
dropped back down. Lainey and Madison were blowing through what
seemed like hundreds of them. When the time came for pushups, most
of the girls opted to do them against the wall, giggling about
their boobs.

Then we lined up and had to run several yards,
from one masking tape line to another and back as the Coach timed
it with her stopwatch. The serious look on her face was that of
someone training contenders for the Olympics. I waited in line,
vaguely aware that Lainey stood right behind me. She kept nudging
me forward, a centimeter at a time.

"Why is everyone so slow today?" she huffed. I
imagine she was rolling her eyes at the back of my head. "This is
going to take forever."

Lainey was one of the stars of the female
basketball team, just another reason that made her a darling in the
eyes of McPherson and the rest of the school faculty, Coach
included. Lainey was the only one Coach ever smiled at, no matter
how polite anyone else was. Coach always regarded me as a
troublemaker, probably because Jenna caused mischief in her class.
Once she even stuck a post-it note with "woof" Sharpied on it to
the back of Coach's jersey.    

"Hurry up," Lainey squawked the second the kid
in front of me was finished. Irritation bubbled up inside me. "Some
of us have lives."

Since I could not for the life of me come up
with a snappy comeback, I got into position. Crouching down, I
sprinted to the end of the line and back in just under forty
seconds.

"Not bad," Coach said, nodding at her
stopwatch as if it had been in control of my movements. 
 

"Not good either," Madison said under her
breath, and Lainey giggled. Lainey's pointy shoulder made contact
with my collarbone as I retreated to the bleachers. I rubbed the
sore spot. This was not going to be fun.

Chapter 4

The day dragged on, and I continued
sleepwalking. I hated to admit it, even to myself, but I felt lost.
It hadn't been so bad at home, where I could put myself on
autopilot and coast through the weeks, but seeing other people
carrying on with their lives made me feel hollow. I was missing
out, but I had no right, as the one left behind, to have anything
more.

I needed a quiet place to think, instead of
being surrounded by the laughter and chatter of other people going
about their carefree lives, planning parties or after school
activities, or the bullying of Hell's finest. 

Jenna and I always spent lunch together,
gossiping about teachers and other kids, about the pathetic spooky
lunch themes that ran year-round, like terrifying tacos and monster
meatloaf, better suited to an elementary school than a bunch of
teenagers.

Instead of even trying to find a table, I
traded my crumpled dollars for a bag of chips and a bottle of pop
(I needed the caffeine to stay awake), and headed out into the
front hall. Technically we weren't supposed to eat out there, but I
hoped no one would notice.

Certain I would be alone, I was in for a
surprise as I stepped in the hall. Through the glass partition I
saw a boy standing in the vestibule. A black hooded sweatshirt was
pulled up over his head, and he seemed to be staring out of the
window, slumping over. Frumpy that I wasn't alone as I had wanted,
I sat down in one of the cubbies lining the sides of the room. My
bag of chips opened with a pop, but I had absolutely no
appetite.

Your love is all I think
about
read graffiti on the cubby seat.
Predictably, someone had tried to scratch out "love" with a pen and
drew a little arrow to "sex".

I opened my history book on my lap and flipped
through it, black and white photos of women in long, impractical
gowns, and crudely painted battle scenes on the pages. I wondered
whether Jenna's fan page had been updated. I made a note to check
it later on. Not that there would be any new information. Over the
summer, I developed a junkie compulsion to refresh the page every
ten seconds, and had to ban myself from the computer.
  

The front door opened with a blast of air and
vestibule boy stepped in. My first thought was that I hoped he
would walk on down the hall and leave me be. My second thought was
that he was extremely cute. I made myself busy with my very
fascinating textbook.

"Why did I come here?" he groaned out loud. He
had a deep voice compared to many of our male classmates, who were
caught in the throes of puberty. I looked up, reacting as though he
had spoken to me, although it had obviously been
rhetorical.

"I should have stayed at home," he continued
to himself.

He tinkered with his phone, oblivious to the
fact that I was even there. I felt a little embarrassed for both of
us. Him for possibly being mentally unbalanced, and me for thinking
it had anything to do with me.  

Stowing the phone away, he looked up, and our
eyes met. The smile that appeared on his handsome face was so huge
and bright it was almost goofy. His dark eyes lit up as though I
were the most interesting person he'd ever seen. I wondered if I
had ink smeared on my face or something, and rubbed my cheek.
  

"Sorry to inflict my inner monologue on you,"
he said, tilting his head in my direction. "I have a bad habit of
having full conversations with myself."

"That's okay," I said softly, not knowing what
else to say. I didn't do well with attractive boys. And I really
had no interest in them now. I figured he'd go on his way, so I
could get back to zoning out. But he didn't leave.

"Ridiculous that I'm this late for my first
day, huh?" he asked, and then shrugged. "I can't think of an
excuse, either."

To my surprise, he came and sat in the cubby
to my left.

"The truth is, I slept in, but I don't think I
can tell them that," he continued. "Do you have any ideas that
could help me in my situation?"

"Nope, fresh out," I said matter-of-factly,
keeping my eyes locked on the words in my textbook, even though it
was impossible to read them with him talking to me.

"Okay, how about this..." He held his hands
out as if framing the scene. "I was trying to save a possum caught
in the middle of the road..."

"Make the animal cuter," I offered. I didn’t
know why I was helping him.

"Okay. I was trying to save a rabbit from
being squashed. And once I saved him, I had to find his home. So I
went trampling through the woods, and forgot about the time." He
dropped his hands. "Do you think the ladies in the office will buy
it?"

The tone of his appealing voice was low, like
we were conspiratorial partners. His lips were full and moved
interestingly as he talked. I scolded myself for noticing that.
 

"Actually, I think it's terrible," I admitted.
"Your pants are spotless, which they wouldn't be if you had been
running around the woods. Just tell the office people your parents
had car trouble like a normal person."

"I'm not really a normal person," he divulged,
and the silly smile was back. It made him look even more
attractive, his eyes crinkling. It was the kind of smile that any
other person would immediately return, but he got on my nerves with
his perpetual good mood. It was mostly annoying because I couldn't
reciprocate.

"Pretend to be. That's what I'm doing," I
said.

"Interesting," he said, leaning closer, his
brown eyes inquiring. "Mind telling me why?"

"Not really," I said. "Since I don't know
you." I told myself I just wanted him to go away. Part of me
didn't, however. I tried to ignore that part.

He stood up and started walking towards the
central office, then turned around and said, "I'm Henry Rhodes. I'm
the village idiot where I come from. There — now you know
me."

I was silent for a second, studying him. He
was possibly the strangest boy I'd ever met.  

"I'm Ariel," I replied.  

He nodded his head in my direction again with
a smirk, and continued on his way to go spout some lame excuse to
get out of a half day's worth of tardies. He practically had a
strut to his step as I watched him disappear.
  

The name clicked two seconds after he walked
away. Henry was the boy Lainey had claimed.

I walked into Honors American History later
that day, and was surprised to see Henry sitting in the back row.
Several jock guys sat in the desks surrounding him, football
players and swimming team stars. It was almost as though we sat on
two different sides of a chess board, with a bunch of pawns in
between us.

Thinking he would finally ignore me, and not
knowing exactly how I felt about that, I walked in. When he spotted
me, however, he smiled again. I turned away from him, my face
heating up. There was no way that our little interaction was going
to go anywhere. I wouldn't consider getting in the way of Lainey
and lipgloss, let alone Lainey and a boy.

"Hi, Ariel," Mr. Warwick, the teacher,
said brightly. He'd been Hugh's friend for years, and had been over
to our house for dinner countless times. He made a mean corn relish
at our barbeques. "So you finally made it to my side of the
hallway?"

"Looks that way," I said.

"Seating chart is on the blackboard. I
believe you're right in the front."

I took a peek, and saw that he was
correct. I pulled out my thick History textbook and opened it up
again. My heart thudded a little as I noticed it was the same page
I'd been eyeballing when Henry spoke to me earlier.
 

"Welcome to Honors American History,"
Mr. Warwick said once the bell rang. He stood up from his roost on
the desk and shut the door. "We're going to learn things about the
civil war you never thought possible. We may even get past it by
the end of the year!" 

I had heard lots of positive things
about his goofy teaching style and laid back attitude. From
everything I knew about Mr. Warwick, it rang true. Most students
called him Wick. It felt too weird to me, so I always just called
him the Mr. Warwick. Probably odd considering my use of my parents'
first names. But everybody has quirks.  

"For instance, the battle of Bunker
Hill? Not fought at Bunker Hill. It was actually fought on Breed's
Hill. Now when you go home and your parents ask you what you
learned, tell them that. I'm sure they'll be impressed, and you
don't have to pay attention for the rest of the day."

He winked while the class snickered. I
had a feeling this would be one of my favorite subjects now. There
was hominess about the room everywhere else in school lacked.
Warwick felt like a family member, but not one of the ever-watchful
ones I had at home.  

Henry ended up being in my English
class, too, though I tried not to register it. Because both classes
were Honors classes, a lot of the same students were in both.
English remained my most anticipated subject, since it had always
been my favorite. Two bookcases crammed full of every book I had
ever owned filled the corner on my room at home.

But I was soon
disappointed.

The silver-haired teacher, Ms.
Fellows, parked herself next to the antique overhead projector in
the front of the room. A student shut off the lights. The blinds
were already pulled down, and shadow descended over our desks. Ms.
Fellows looked incredibly bored, like she was ready to go to sleep.
She droned on about grammar, scribbling her speech down with dry
erase markers and smearing it with the side of her hand.

I couldn't stay present in the dark.
My mind drifted, and my thoughts came to rest where they often did,
on the last night I saw Jenna. I'd turned over every word I
remembered in my head a thousand times like an old coin, but I
still felt like I was missing something. The exact phrase or moment
that Jenna decided to leave for good, if that was truly the case,
always escaped me. It didn't help that for starters she was furious
that night, a ball of sizzling anger.   

"What do you mean, you're going out?"
I'd asked, sitting on my checkered bedspread.

The day had been warm, holding steady
in the low eighties. But after the sun went to sleep, the
temperature quickly started to drop. Still wearing shorts, her
tanned legs were bare. Not clothes that she typically wore out
after dark.   

"The words have one meaning, Ariel.
Not difficult to understand," she said impatiently, spitting out
her words like they had thorns.  

"It's after ten," I protested, my
voice sounding pitifully like a whine. I never would have worried
about looking immature in front of her before. But now it was all I
could think about.

She wouldn't look at me. She stared at
her own eyes in her reflection; putting her curly hair up in a
ponytail and taking it back down. She had on her dress-to-impress
makeup, a double layer of mascara and champagne-colored eyeshadow.
I wondered if she was meeting up with a boy.  

"What is happening to you?" I asked
finally. I couldn't stop myself. "I feel like I don't even know you
anymore."