He paused. Susan stared at him with impatience, and then smacked him on the back of the head with her pocketbook.
“Cripes, loser, say ‘yes!’ ”
“Ow! Okay, yes.” His easy smile returned, wider than ever, as he rearranged the chocolate strands of hair at the back of his head. “Cool. Um, here’s your math book back. So, um, I guess we’ll talk more about the dance later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Susan glowered at them both. “Okay. Hit the road.”
Still sporting a goofy smile, Skip practically pranced down the hallway and out of sight.
“Boys are so sad,” Susan commented.
“What the heck was he talking about, better offers?”
Her friend turned and began walking down the hall. “Oh, just quit it.”
She scurried after. “Quit what?”
“This false modesty…it doesn’t become you.”
“Susan.”
“Okay, you didn’t know. Whatever you say…I mean, you can’t be this dim.”
Jennifer restrained herself from picking Susan up by the ankles and banging her pal’s head on the floor a few times. “What. Are. You. Talking. About.”
Susan stopped in the middle of the hallway, causing Jennifer to run right into her. “You’re only the most talked-about girl at school nowadays. It’s irritating beyond belief—you dye your hair platinum blonde and the boys just fall all over themselves.”
“I didn’t dye it! You know I can’t control my hair.” This was true—Jennifer’s hair, which used to be a darker blonde, had developed more and more streaks of silver throughout ninth grade, as her weredragon nature emerged. Over the summer, the last of her old hairs had turned, and the sun had toned what was left into platinum.
“Yeah, whatever, you’re a freak and your life is miserable. Cry me a river. You’re all anybody can talk about. Your shiny hair, your perfect legs, the way you’re already a starting wing on the varsity soccer team…”
“You made the team, too! And you’ll be a starter next year for sure!”
“Hmmph. Anyway, it’s day one of tenth grade and you’re already everyone’s favorite person. Good thing no one knows you’re really a lizard in disguise.” Susan softened her comment with a ruby grin, but Jennifer still panicked.
“Susan, you can’t tell anyone what I told you last spring, you swore you wouldn’t, please…”
“Easy there, camper. Susan Elmsmith doesn’t do gossip. I’m not that desperate for popularity.”
Jennifer sighed with relief. At Winoka High, only Susan, Skip, and (unfortunately) Eddie knew about her weredragon heritage. Everyone in her family agreed that was dangerous enough. “Honest, Susan, I’m not trying to attract attention. If the dye would stick, I’d color my hair pale green to match these lockers and disappear. I thought freshman year was bad, but in some ways this year is terrifying!”
The class bell rang. They hurried, falling naturally into step with each other.
“I know what you mean. Have you seen Bob Jarkmand yet? I hear he’s bigger and uglier than ever. Get the net!”
Jennifer giggled at her friend’s remark. Bob Jarkmand, a fellow sophomore, had been the class bully in ninth grade last year until a certain girl had laid him out in front of the guidance counselor’s office with a single punch. Now he was reportedly large enough to be a starting offensive lineman for the Winoka varsity football team.
“In three summer months he converted what was left of his brain into more muscle,” Jennifer commented. “I saw him at the mall a couple of times over the summer. All he does is stare at me now.” She shivered. Bob was much bigger. Jennifer didn’t know many students taller than her, not even juniors or seniors. But this fellow was a tower—a big, unsightly tower (and one missing a few bricks at that). She wondered to herself why she had bothered to pick a fight with Winoka High’s hugest denizen.
You did it for Skip
, she reminded herself warmly.
Because he was sticking up for you
.
“What’s that?” Susan sounded amused.
“What’s what?”
“That goofy smile on your face.”
“Eh, nothing.”
“Sure, right…”
Well, Jennifer thought as they slipped through the classroom door together, if Bob decides to pick another fight this year, I might at least get some exercise in before he floors me.
“Ladies. Nice of you to join us.”
They both flinched. The classroom was incredibly quiet, and they were the only two people standing. Embarrassment clove their feet to the floor.
Whhhrrrt.
A slight man dressed in a sharp black shirt and neatly pressed pants rolled up to them in an electronic wheelchair. The polish on his designer shoes was exquisite. His blond hair was swept to one side and stuck there as if ordered. Beneath it, his handsome, tanned smile did not extend to his piercing black eyes.
His voice was smooth and quick, with a hint of somewhere in eastern Europe. “When Principal Mouton offered me the position of mathematics teacher over the summer, I wasn’t aware that I would have to review curriculum like How to Read Schedules and Tell Time. My naïve hope was that we could skip such harrowing topics and dive right into, oh, say, Euclidean geometry. If you’re willing?”
“Sorry,” they both mumbled, scampering to their seats through a sea of smirks and titters.
“As I was saying,” Mr. Slider addressed the entire class, “My name is Edmund Slider. I will be your geometry teacher this year. Geometry has multiple practical applications. It also has some uses that may seem a bit abstract, but help us answer some big questions. Take, for example, the size of the known universe. Most of you have heard of the Big Bang Theory…”
His chair spun to face the chalkboard, which had been lowered before the school year started so the new instructor could reach it. As he talked, he drew circles within circles, and rays that stretched from the innermost circle outward. Everything was labeled with stuff like z+1B years and such. Jennifer thought herself fairly good at mathematics, but that had been in algebra last year. Her parents had encouraged her to keep pushing herself in advanced classes, but geometry was so different from what she was used to…
Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned. One of her classmates—a junior girl she didn’t know—was holding out a folded piece of paper, with a mixture of boredom and disdain.
“Someone back there handed this up. I guess for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Eh.” Apparently, this girl wasn’t in the Jennifer Scales Fan Club that Susan was insisting existed.
Jennifer unfolded the note and read it:
Will you go to the Halloween dance with me
? I don’t want to tell you who I am in case you say no.
She looked behind her, but there were five rows back there, full of unfamiliar, unfriendly-looking boys. None of them even glanced at her; they were either listening to Mr. Slider or (in Bob Jarkmand’s case) staring listlessly out the window.
A bit off to the left, however, was a new sight—a boy she’d never seen at the school. Angelic, was her first thought. He had wavy, shoulder-length blond hair, a smooth face with sparkling blue eyes, and soft peach skin. He looked up and caught her staring, so she quickly spun around and felt herself blush.
Glancing to her right, she saw Susan, two desks over, rolling her eyes in a correct guess of the note’s intent.
Sighing in exasperation, Jennifer folded the note back up and shoved it in her pocket. Susan’s right. Boys are so sad.
“This is so sad!” Jennifer pleaded to her father that evening at home. “We just get back from the funeral of this friend of yours I barely know, and now you want me to go to some dumb dinner party tonight?”
“Your mother got called into surgery.” Jonathan smiled gamely. “And I’m supposed to bring a date.”
“I’ll be so bored!”
“I don’t think so! The hospital here in Winoka wants to build a new rehabilitation center for people with blindness or vision disorders. I’m the architect. Customers will use this center to learn how to live with no sight, and some of them will be at the fund-raiser tonight—including kids.”
“So this lame event is at the hospital where Mom works?”
“No, the fund-raiser’s up in Minneapolis! Where the money is. I swear it won’t be like the funeral at all.”
“But I don’t know how to act around blind people—and even if there are kids, they’ll still be strangers! What will we talk about?”
He scrunched his nose. “I dunno. You should find some common ground in agreeing you all have lame fathers.”
“That’s a start. What will I wear?”
“You can wear the same dress you wore to the funeral.”
“Daaad…”
“Please, sweetheart. You’ll make your father happy. Isn’t that what every teenage daughter really wants?”
She glared at him without a word.
He patted his own chest. “Deep down inside?”
Still no response.
“Thanks, peach. You’ve got ten minutes to get ready.”
“Aaargh!” She spun around and stomped up the stairs.
CHAPTER 3
Aunt Tavia
In fact, the fund-raiser was not at all bad. First, it was an excuse to go to Minneapolis, which was lively and elegant at night. Second, the event began with an enormous dinner. As she worked through her roasted pheasant and wild rice with steamed vegetables, Jennifer began to understand why her father thought she might not hate it.
Third…
“Skip’s here!” She practically upended the table when she saw him sitting across the room. Jonathan did not protest, so she maneuvered through all of the cloth-covered tables until she rested an arm on her friend’s shoulder.
Then she saw who he was sitting with, and slowly removed it. Skip looked and sounded nervous.
“Jennifer, I don’t believe you’ve met my aunt Tavia?”
Even before he gave the name, it would have been easy enough for Jennifer to guess who this woman was. After Otto Saltin died—no one beyond the Scales knew exactly how—his sister had moved to Winoka to take care of Skip. Tavia Saltin, like her nephew and her late brother, had dark chocolate hair and hazel eyes. Her long, maroon-painted fingertips curled around Skip’s neck where Jennifer’s hand had been, and her face betrayed recognition at this girl’s name.
“Jennifer Scales?”
“Yes.” Jennifer had no idea whether to shake hands, make a grab for the birthday daggers she had strapped under her dress, or run.
“My goodness!” Tavia stood up, and without warning, warmly embraced her startled prey. “I’ve been dying to meet the girl who saved my sweet nephew! Oh, bless you, sweetheart! Thank you so much!”
Jennifer tried to return the hug, but this woman was quite spindly. It was like trying to grab a bundle of sticks. She settled on a shoulder pat. “You’re welcome. What are you two doing here?” She tried not to sound too suspicious.
“Oh, I’m an eye specialist. Some of my patients are here tonight. I saw your father’s name as the architect—but I didn’t realize we’d see you here tonight! This is delicious!”
Jennifer looked at Skip, who appeared ready to swallow his own tongue. “Skip’s told you we’re friends, then?”
“But of course!” Withdrawing from the hug, Tavia bared her teeth in an oversized smile. “He talks about you all the time. I keep telling him we must have you over for dinner some evening, but he never follows up!” Now her voice sunk to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think he’s afraid you’ll say no if he asks you out.”
“Yeah. Huh. I’d, er, love to come over sometime. So, um, my being friends with your nephew doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?” Tavia made the very idea sound like the most preposterous notion anyone had ever offered. “I’ll tell you what. Later this week, I’ll give you a call. We’ll try to set a dinner date for next week, or the week after?”
There was no chance to respond, because Jonathan walked up. Next to him were two people—an elderly man and a teenaged boy. Not just any boy—the new angel face from her geometry class!
For the second time today, Jennifer found herself staring at him. He stared right back.
“Everything all right here?” Jonathan asked tentatively.
“Of course!” Tavia clapped her hands. “You’re Jonathan Scales, right? I’m Tavia Saltin, Skip’s aunt…”
“Nice to meet you. This is Martin Stowe.” He bowed to the elderly man, who looked at least seventy. Martin’s shoulders were hunched and his frail hands held a white cane. “He and his grandson are new in town. He has severe glaucoma and will likely use our new center’s services. His grandson, Gerry, goes to Winoka High. Maybe you’ve met him, ace?”
Jennifer couldn’t quite speak. Those crystal blue eyes! That fluffy blond hair! So beautiful!
She felt Skip’s elbow dig into her side. “Well, Mr. Scales, you know, Jennifer and I have actually been spending a lot of time together. You know, talking about the Halloween dance and all. I’m not sure she’d notice…”
“I’ve seen him,” she blurted out. Skip’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Geometry class, right? I’m Jennifer.”
There were handshakes all around. Martin Stowe held his hand out and turned his blind eyes slightly as different hands shook it. Jennifer was fairly certain she was going to faint, what with beautiful Gerry and irritated Skip and spindly Aunt Tavia and blind Martin and everything else coming together all at once.
In a bit of small talk for which Jennifer, Skip, and Gerry just sort of looked at their shoes, each other, and each other’s shoes, Martin revealed that they had just moved to Winoka two weeks ago, a few months after Gerry’s parents died in a horrible accident abroad. Austria, or Switzerland, or maybe Hungary—Jennifer forgot the place quickly. What was the difference? And was that too mean a thought to even think? After all, Gerry was an orphan, and—
“Well, I hear them serving desserts now,” Martin said, breaking her concentration. He was right: The servers were setting down new china. “Better get back to our seats.”
The Stowes said their good-byes, and so did the Scales. Tavia hugged Jennifer again before she would let either of them leave. As they walked back, her father whispered.
“His aunt Tavia, eh? Does she know who we are?”