also gotten here on-time. “Lucky you! I saved a special seat in case my best pal was in this class! Right here, buddy boy!” He taps the chair of the desk in front of him with his big, obnoxious foot. “Come on! Let’s be a pair of English pals this year, you and me! Don’t be scared!”
Anxious eyes and faces turn my way, awaiting my reaction.
Everyone knows we’ve been basically mortal enemies since middle school. That’s how this wicked little town works: everyone in all of Spruce knows every damned thing about everyone.
I don’t give Hoyt the satisfaction. I ignore him outright and make way for the only other available seat—which is at once taken by a faster girl with curly hair and braces, who dives right into conversation with a nearby friend of hers.
A frown darkens my face. Can anything go right today?
The bell rings. Ms. Bean, who seems to have materialized out of thin air, clicks her tongue impatiently at the chalkboard, and I am resigned to tramping my way to the back, where I grudgingly sit at the desk in front of Hoyt. No, he doesn’t remove his feet from the back of my chair, and I give the self-important punk no indication that I’m bothered in the least by it. All of English period is spent with Hoyt innocently inching his big feet closer and closer to the side of my head, at one point daring to prop one of them on my shoulder. When he gets bored of that, he starts giving the back of my chair intermittent kicks, distracting enough for me to miss several things the teacher says. Once or twice, I even hear Hoyt snickering privately to himself, entertained by his childishness.
Ms. Bean never tells him to put his feet down. And she likely won’t; I doubt the poor lady can see anything past the second row.
It’s when Ms. Bean has her back turned to the class that I hear the girl across the aisle from me whisper to her friend: “Did you see him? The new guy?”
“I did, right outside the cafeteria before first period. He’s so hot!”
“And scary! I heard he’s from a big city, I forget which one, and he killed one of his classmates, so now he—”
“No, you’re makin’ that up! He didn’t kill nobody. He’d be in jail!”
“But that’s what I heard! And also he rode a motorcycle to school, but I didn’t get to see it myself. It was probably a Harley. Did you see it?”
“Nope. I saw that sleeveless leather jacket he was wearing, though.”
“With the spiked studs on the shoulders? You bet I saw it, too.”
“Ooh, someone’s got a crush on him.”
“I do not! You’re the one who called him hot. He looks … dangerous.”
“Exactly. You got yourself a taste for the bad boys. You’re in looove.”
Another annoying kick from Hoyt pulls my attention from the girls’ equally annoying banter. As Ms. Bean drones on in front of the chalkboard, I shut my eyes and beg for the clock’s hands to move faster. I also take a mental note to get to this class earlier tomorrow so as to snatch a seat away from Hoyt—if I can get Becky to release me from the main office on-time.
The bell rings, and I couldn’t be out of my seat faster. “Hey, why you runnin’ off, Toby-Tobes?” calls out Hoyt mockingly. “Did my feet give you a boner?” To the tune of a few laughs across the class, I shove through the door and into the hallway, clutching my backpack as I march off. I’m pretty sure my whole back and shoulders smell like Hoyt’s foot funk, adding salt to the wound of enduring his constant antagonizing the whole class period.
And I highly doubt, luck considered, it’ll be the last time I see him today.
Third period, chemistry, is located in a thicket of temporary trailers—the network of which has existed for seven years, which begs the question of whether it’s appropriate to continue calling them “temporary”. After navigating a series of wooden walkways, the slats through which the morning sunlight shines in white-hot stripes, I push through the heavy door of temporary trailer 4-A. I appear to be one of the last to arrive, so I claim one of only two available seats at an empty table in the back. In lieu of desks, this classroom has short white tables with stools, each of which sits two students, who will likely become lab partners, if this works