Only Everything (7 page)

Then her eyes shifted past me. When I turned around, I stopped breathing. Not-Justin-Bieber was standing there, holding my books out to me in a neat stack. Except up close he looked nothing like Justin Bieber. His cheeks were more square and his eyes very, very blue. He was hotter than Justin Bieber. By a lot.

“That looked painful,” he said with a smile. His voice made my heart feel fuzzy and warm, like hot chocolate on a cold day.

“We’re okay,” I replied, glancing over my shoulder at the frosh, mostly to force myself to tear my eyes off him. “Right . . . ?”

“Zadie,” she replied, lifting a hand. She had on about twenty Hello Kitty bracelets, some beaded, some silver, some string. “I’m Zadie.”

“Nice to meet you, Zadie,” Not-Bieber said. “I’m Charlie.”

They both looked at me. “Oh, Katrina. That’s my me. I mean name. I’m Katrina.”

Charlie’s smile widened. “I think these are yours.”

“Oh. Right.” I realized with a start that my black poetry notebook was still on the floor and had fallen open, exposing my latest attempts at haiku to the world. I grabbed it and took my books from him, feeling like an idiot for making him stand there holding them for so long. And also for not being able to speak. My
face was hot as I clutched the books, and my poetry, to my chest. “Thanks.”

“Um. Okay. Bye,” Zadie said, turning around.

“Bye! And sorry! Again!” I called after her.

She waved and smiled and was gone, leaving Charlie and me standing there alone.

“So,” he said.

I opened my mouth to say something to him, when I was suddenly dragged off by the arm.

“Raine!” I protested.

“You’re welcome!” she sang, looking down at her phone.

She practically flung me into Ms. Day’s room. I glanced over my shoulder at Charlie, who had pushed his hands into his pockets and was loping away, and realized maybe I
should
thank her. If I’d kept talking to him, I probably would have said something else as brilliant as “That’s my me.” Ugh.

“Katrina! Hello!” Ms. Day greeted me as I shuffled through the door.

Every kid in the room stopped talking and turned to look at me. It was like I had the words “Teacher’s Pet” stamped across my forehead. I bowed my head as Raine slipped by and took a seat toward the back of the room.

“Hey, Ms. Day.”

My heels clicked loudly as I rushed after Raine and plopped into the seat next to hers, my cheeks pulsating. Raine’s thumbs flew over the screen on her phone.

“Lana says hey,” she told me. “She says Mr. P got hot this summer.”

I snorted a laugh. Mr. P was an ancient, shriveled history teacher. He wore polka-dotted bow ties with plaid shirts and stopped every
five feet in the hallway to lean against the wall and catch his breath.

Suddenly my own phone vibrated. My heart leaped when I saw that it was a text from Ty. But why was he texting when he’d left me in the courtyard exactly one class period ago? Maybe he’d remembered that I had English seventh period and wanted to wish me luck! I clicked the text.

CANT GET THERE TILL 4. SRY.

Damn.

His place was too far to walk to from school. I could walk home, but I didn’t want to go home. My mom was always crankier than usual after the overnight shift, and I hadn’t even seen her in two days. I also realized suddenly that I hadn’t dusted or vacuumed the house, and if I went home, that meant I’d have to go grocery shopping first. With no ride from Ty.

Sometimes I hated my life.

I slumped in my chair until my whole butt hung off the edge. The guy next to me, a senior whose name I didn’t know, hunched so fully he looked like a turtle, his leather jacket covering everything but the tips of his frosted blond hair as he rested his cheek on the desk.

“Welcome back, everyone!” Ms. Day said brightly, standing at the front of the room in her bright-green dress and brown flats, her black, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a bun. “I hope you all had a fun, productive summer.”

A couple of people sighed. Someone outright laughed.

“How many of you did the summer reading assignment?” she asked, lifting her chin as she surveyed the room.

Raine looked at me and smirked. “Katrina did it, Ms. Day!” she announced.

Ms. Day’s eyebrows shot up.

“Raine,” I said through my teeth, clutching my bag in my lap.

“What?” she said, lifting the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. “Like you weren’t going to hand it in?”

Chrissa Jones and Elana Rosen laughed.

“Which book did you choose, Katrina?” Ms. Day asked, walking toward my row.

“Um . . .
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
?” I said, tugging the paper out. My makeup bag, a pen, and three quarters flew out with it, tumbling to the floor. More laughter. Ms. Day picked up the makeup bag. Raine got the pen. The guy next to me snagged one of the quarters.

“Finders keepers,” he said, clutching it in his fist. Then he turtled up again.

“Good choice.” Ms. Day traded my makeup bag for the paper, which shook as I handed it over. “I look forward to reading this.”

“Um. Okay.”

Suddenly I was sweating like I was in gym class, doing the dreaded squat thrusts. But then Ms. Day gave me this proud smile, like she was impressed. By me. And something inside me unclenched. I sat up straight and put my things back in my bag.

“Anyone else?” Ms. Day asked.

Two other kids had written papers. Josh Harper’s was handwritten and on
The Catcher in the Rye
, and Casey Catalfo had read
The Secret Life of Bees
. It made me feel much less conspicuous, and I realized one of the windows was open, pouring sweetly scented late-summer air over our desks.

“Thank you, Katrina, Josh, and Casey, for taking your teachers seriously when they told you this was a mandatory assignment,” Ms. Day said, walking back to the front of the room with our papers. “As for the rest of you, congratulations. You now have until
Monday the sixteenth to read one of the books on the list and write a five-page book report.”

A groan went up around the room. Turtle boy snored.

“If you need a copy of the list, see me after class, or you can check the school’s website or visit the Lake Carmody library, as you could have done throughout the summer. As for the three of you who did the assignment, congratulations are due to you as well. You will have no homework from me for the first two weeks of school.”

“Yes!” Josh Harper cheered, pumping his meaty fists.

I bit back a grin.

“Goody-goody,” Raine muttered mockingly. Then she shot me a smile.

“These will be your textbooks for the year,” Ms. Day announced, circulating the room with a pile of books. “They contain the knowledge you’ll need to ace the English portion of your SAT.”

More groans. But as the book slid onto my desk, I felt a sizzle of excitement and anticipation. I cracked the book’s spine and inhaled the plasticky, new-book scent. Ms. Day caught me smiling and winked, which made Raine roll her eyes, but I didn’t even care. I’d handed in the paper and hadn’t died of humiliation. Maybe this year really would be better than last.

CHAPTER SIX

True

The honors English teacher looked like a Hun and had the personality to match. You’d think she’d be happier, considering she was sporting a gold wedding band and had a picture of herself and her handsome husband framed on her desk. People around here obviously took true love for granted. I would have liked to have seen how she would behave if she’d had that big hunk of masculinity ripped away from her for the gods knew how long. Maybe it would soften her a touch.

I blew out a sigh. I really missed Orion.

But we’d been sitting in class for thirty minutes already, and the teacher had done nothing but quiz us on the authors and themes of the titles they’d read last year. So far, I’d learned exactly nothing. Other than the fact that the chairs these humans forced their young people to sit in day after day were excruciatingly hard.

“Does anyone recall who wrote
Of Mice and Men
?” the teacher asked.

A girl in the front row raised her hand like a shot. She had, in fact, raised her hand to answer every question the teacher had posed. Her strawberry-blond hair was pulled back tightly from her
head and tied into a French braid like Harmonia liked to weave into my hair when she was bored, adding a daisy or a sprig of lavender here and there. She had a smattering of freckles across her cute, upturned nose, and very pretty pink lips. And from what I could tell, she was the smartest girl in the room, not to mention the most eager.

“Would anyone other than Miss Halliburn care to answer?” the teacher asked, looking over the class with an imperious raise of her chin. Her shoulders were almost perfectly square, and she had pointy sideburns that did not flatter her round face.

Miss Halliburn was practically falling out of her chair in an attempt to raise her arm even higher. I knew the answer but didn’t care to share it. My head still hurt, and I didn’t exactly feel challenged. Plus, ever since lunch the skin on my face had felt tight and hot and stung whenever I touched it. I closed my eyes and carefully pressed my fingertips to my temple. My skull warmed and the pounding ceased.

I stopped breathing and my eyes flew open. Could it be? Was my power back?

But then, with a slam of pain, the throbbing returned full force, so bad I had to concentrate to keep from mewling like a tortured kitten. Wishful thinking.

“Anyone?” the teacher repeated.

Next to me, Charlie carefully raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Cox?” the teacher said.

“John Steinbeck?” he asked.

Miss Halliburn turned around in her seat. “You’re right!” she said, as if surprised.

“It happens occasionally,” Charlie replied.

Everyone laughed. Charlie’s ears turned pink and Miss
Halliburn smiled. Then she turned around in her seat, awaiting the next question with an excited air about her. I looked at Charlie. He was smiling to himself. I glanced at Miss Halliburn. Leaning up against the legs of her chair was a long black box with a handle. A flute case. Charlie’s drumsticks lay across the pile of books under his desk.

They were both musicians. Check.

At lunch, Charlie had told me he loved to read, which this Miss Halliburn person clearly did as well. Check.

But he had also told me that his favorite subject was math. I slid down in my seat for a better look at Miss Halliburn’s books. A fat trigonometry text anchored the pile. Check.

Charlie had also told me that he came from a football family, whatever that meant, but that he didn’t play himself. I couldn’t imagine that Miss Halliburn was a football fan or a player, with her tiny wrists and ankles and the copious amounts of pink she was wearing. Check.

I smiled to myself, staring down at my fingertips, which I could have sworn were still tingling. Could it be? Did I have my first match?

As soon as the bell rang I zipped right over to Miss Halliburn’s desk. A gold plate around her neck told me in dainty script that her first name was Stacey. Charlie Cox and Stacey Halliburn. It had a ring.

“Hi, Stacey,” I said brightly, gritting my teeth against my headache.

She stood up and looked around, like she was worried I was about to pounce. “Uh . . . hi?” she said like a question.

“My name’s True,” I told her with the friendliest smile I had in me. “And I have a proposition for you.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Charlie

The band room was worth waiting for. I’d never seen anything like it. Six risers for the musicians, a state-of-the-art recording system, a sheet music collection like no other. But it was the drums that really got me. They couldn’t have been more than five years old, and they gleamed like they had been polished that morning. Three schools ago the snare drums had been drawn on with permanent marker, and when I’d asked if they had kettles, they’d laughed. In my face.

I was in heaven. And when Mr. Roon, the band director, handed me the mallet for the bass drum, then the sheet music to the Harry Potter score, I almost cried. I didn’t even care that the other guys in the drum corps were shooting me annoyed looks throughout class. The orchestra was awesome. And I kept the beat perfectly the whole time, if I do say so myself.

Maybe living here wouldn’t suck so bad. It seemed like only five minutes had passed when the bell rang.

“Thank you, everyone!” Mr. Roon called out as chairs scraped and music sheets fluttered. “Remember, if you haven’t signed up for marching band yet, and you’re interested, see me in my office!”

I couldn’t stop grinning. Then I bent to grab my backpack off
the floor, and someone bumped into me from behind. My forehead hit the cinder-block wall and then my knees hit the floor.

“What the hell?” I said.

The beefy guy in the
Phineas and Ferb
T-shirt who had been on the snare barely glanced at me. “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

Yeah, right.

I shoved myself up but didn’t have time to think up a comeback. Mr. Roon was suddenly right in front of me. He had shaggy reddish-brown hair that stuck out at a million angles like a scarecrow, tiny glasses, and a wispy goatee.

“Charlie, if you don’t mind, would you play something for me on the drum set?” He raised his arm out elegantly toward the smokin’ black kit in the far corner. “I like to know what I’m working with.”

“Sure,” I said eagerly.

I’d been eyeing that drum set ever since the first bell of the period. It was beautiful—nothing like the crappy old kit in my garage. Not that I didn’t love my drums. My mother had saved up and then scoured the garage sales for me last spring when we were still in Austin. Aside from practicing on them whenever I could, I had pounded on them after every argument I’d ever had with my father. Very helpful in that way. My drum kit was my favorite thing in the world. But it was still crappy and old.

I shoved my music into my backpack and shouldered it. As I crossed the bustling room, I noticed Phineas and Ferb and two of his friends had slowed to a crawl. I drew my sticks out of my pocket, adjusted the stool, and started to play the jazz solo I’d been working on for the past few weeks. A few musicians who had been chatting and straggling stopped to watch. Self-consciousness seeped in and I closed my eyes, blocking them out. This was the one part about playing that I didn’t love—the audience. I’d never loved
being the center of attention. With two superheroic older brothers, it had never been my natural state of being. But as long as I closed my eyes and felt the music, it didn’t matter. And now, I was in the zone. When I was done, I reached out to steady the cymbal and sighed. That felt good.