was sure this dark and sinister look would have the same effect on this girl as Edward’s had on Bella in Twilight. My smoldering, angry eyes and bitter expression told her that I was an animal who could barely control my urge to lunge at her bare neck.

Obviously sucked in by my allure, the girl turned to me and spoke.

“Do you need some Pepto?” she asked me.

In my confusion, my mouth dropped open and I kinda lost my smoldering look.

“What?” I asked.

She pulled a bottle of Pepto-Bismol out of her bag, then told me, “You look like you’re going to vom.”

“What?” I asked.

“Vomit,” she clarified.

After this incident, I decided not to venture out on my own as much. I trusted Jenny to give me the necessary information about everyone.

The brunette? “That’s Ashley Milano. She participates too much. And talks too much. And she abbrevs.”

“She what?”

“She talks in abbreviations,” Jenny told me. “Okay, next up, that’s Jason Burke. He looks like a jock, but he’s actually pretty smart.

“Matt Katz.” Jenny pointed to the kid who’d fallen asleep in U.S. history. “Stoner kid. He’s pretty cool. He knows more about the rap wars than Ms. Karl knows about centrifugal force.”

Matt Katz didn’t look like someone who would know about rap battles. He looked like someone who would camp out at a Dave Matthews concert and share a joint to “Satellite.” Then again, I didn’t look like a rap fan myself. Of course, I wasn’t as intense as Matt, who apparently had a five-point thesis to prove that Tupac was still alive.

“Nate Kirkland,” Jenny continued, pointing to a kid with surfer hair. Her description was brief: “Nosepicker.”

“Really?” I asked. Picking your nose in class seemed a very bold move to me. Even bolder than sleeping in class.

“Well, he picked his nose once in third grade,” Jenny said.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“We’ve all gone to school together forever,” she told me. “We haven’t had a new kid in three years. We all find you… very mysterious.”

Automatically, I smiled in delight. My plan was working! Then I remembered that mysterious guys—and vampires—didn’t smile. So I generated a very manly frown.

“That’s Kayla Bateman.” Jenny continued her introductions, rolling her eyes at this one.

I looked over. Oh, I’d already noticed Kayla Bateman.

“She’s always drawing attention to her boobs,” Jenny said bitterly.

Now, Kayla was talking to some spellbound guys about the necklaces she was wearing. She fished one, then the other, out of her fathomless cleavage.

“My dad gave me the Star of David, and my mom gave me the cross,” Kayla was saying. “But it’s, like, why can’t I have both of them on my chest?”

“Uh-huh.” The two boys she was talking to nodded, mesmerized by her two… necklaces.

Gym was a pleasant surprise. And I’ve never said that in all my years of secondary education. When I arrived, there was a coach sitting at a table and about sixty-five kids lined up in front of him with their backpacks on. As each student came away from the table, they sat on the ground and filled out paperwork. This looked more like the DMV than physical fitness. And actually, I prefer the DMV to gym class.

I joined the long line and asked the girl in front of me, “Is everyone in sixth-period gym? There’s, like, seventy of us in this line.”

That would be a hell of a dodgeball game. I imagined sixty-nine people against me. I’d get creamed.

“There’s only, like, twenty people in each rotation,” the girl said. “Or maybe thirty in flag football. All those guys lined up early so they could get in the flag football rotation.”

“Wait, so you’re saying we can choose which activity we want to do?” I asked her.

When I got to the front of the line, the gym teacher barked at me: “Name?”

“Frame, sir.”

For some reason, these guys always elicit a “sir” from me.

“Frame. Right, Frame.” He handed me a lock closed around a hole-punched index card. “Locker number and combination.”

Then he gave me a creased yellow sheet from a large stack.

“This is the list of rotations. Mark your first and second choice. And sorry to say…”

The coach slashed a big red X across the first choice on the sheet. Gym teachers got red pens, too?

“… flag football is all filled up.”

“Gosh darn it,” I said. That was my lame attempt to act upset. Really, I was pleased. Flag football always resulted in everyone grabbing at everyone else’s crotch.

Yellow sheet in hand, I sought an open spot on the gym floor.