Chapter One

Emma stepped out of the red 2004 Ford Taurus to face her new school. It was nothing like her old. Her former had been quaint, regardless of the fact that four school districts went to it. The brick building she was standing in front of now was large, and had this foreboding vibe coming from it.

“Will you be okay?” Emma’s mother, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, asked her.

“I doubt it, but thanks for the words of encouragement,” Emma responded before slamming the passenger’s side car door shut, “I’ll have to get used to it sooner or later.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” her mother said, “You’ll make plenty of friends.”

“Yeah, sure,” replied Emma.

“Good luck, honey!”

Emma turned to see her mother pull away from the school. She looked sadly after the car before turning to face the school. Emma rolled her eyes at her mother’s comment ‘I’m sure you’ll do fine.’ Why did parents always have to tell their children that when they were starting a new school? Was it guilt from having their child start a new school that told them to say it? One way or another, Emma was staring at the school she would be spending the remainder of her 8th grade year in, as well as all of high school. She sighed and made her way up the path to the heavy metal doors.

She stepped inside the school. Immediately she noticed the door to her right, obviously the main office. She walked inside to find it mostly empty, apart from one secretary at the front desk making notes in a folder.

“Excuse me,” Emma began, “My name is Emma Carson. I’m a new student here. I know I came late, I’m sorry.”

“Emma, Emma. Yes,” the secretary said absent-mindedly as she looked through a different folder on her desk, “You’re in the 8th grade, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Right, well. First period has already started. You can go immediately there. Here is your schedule. Tell your first period teacher, Ms. Haines, to assign you a student guide from her classroom this period to show you around to your other classes. This is your pass for being late. Give her this other pass and tell her it is for the student she chooses to guide you.”

Emma took the schedule and the slips of paper from the secretary and said thank you. She proceeded out of the office and looked at her schedule. After homeroom, the words: Pre-English Honors I, Ms. Jennifer Haines, Room 224 were printed next to Period 1. She looked around the hallway she had come to stand in, and looked for 224. Why hadn’t the secretary told her where her first classroom was to begin with? She had no idea where she was going, but refused to walk back to the office to ask.

For several minutes she wandered through the halls and finally came across the 200 Hallway. She glanced at the numbers on plastic plaques next to the doors and finally found 224. Embarrassing as it might be to have to walk into her classroom late, she knew she had no choice. Reluctantly, she pulled open the wooden door to the classroom and walked into it, refusing to look at the class.

The teacher, Ms. Haines, was a pretty young woman of about twenty-nine. She took the passes from Emma then listened to Emma explain what the secretary had told her about a student guide. Ms. Haines glanced around the classroom to look at her students, her eyes finally falling upon a boy doodling on his notebook in the second-to-last row, all the way in the corner.

“Paul,” Ms. Haines said sharply to grab his attention, “You have just been assigned as the student guide for this young lady.”

Paul rolled his eyes and looked up for the first time since Emma had entered. His eyes bugged out to look at the new girl standing at the front of the classroom. It couldn’t be!

“Paul, raise your hand. Emma will sit behind you in this classroom. And it will be your duty to show her around until she gets her bearings. Don’t blow it.”

Paul raised his hand because he knew he had no choice. As Emma walked down the aisle and sat behind him, he didn’t dare turn around to talk to her, just in case he was wrong.

“Emma,” called Ms. Haines’s voice, “Why don’t you stand and tell us about yourself?”

Emma slowly stood from her seat and leaned one arm on her desk, “Hi,” she said, “I’m Emma Carson. I just moved here from Virginia. Actually, I used to live around here…in Columbus. But my parents moved right after I left preschool, and then I moved to Virginia. My parents decided to move back and that’s how I ended up here.”

Emma quickly sat down and looked at her classmates, some of whom looked interested in her complicated history, others bored with it. Emma gave one boy the evil eye as he grinned at her in an “I think you’re pretty, I want to make out with you” kind of way. Paul refused to turn around and look at Emma, and she noticed this. What was this boy’s problem? Why wasn’t he looking at her? Everyone else was. She didn’t like people staring at her, but since everyone else was, the fact that this boy wasn’t definitely stood out.

“Okay, everyone,” Ms. Haines called, “I trust you’ll all make Emma feel welcome to our school. Don’t forget what I said, Paul.”

With that, Ms. Haines went to the dry-erase board at the front of the room and wrote the day’s lesson on it. Next to it, she wrote the homework for the night. She made sure to tell Emma that she was excused from the homework until she got caught up with her class work. Finally, after a full thirty minutes of having students glance back when the teacher wasn’t looking, the bell rang and Emma went to go find her locker.

It didn’t take very long, as it was right along the hallway from her English room. She went to see if she could actually open it when the boy who had been looking at her in English in that creepy way right up next to her and made his weird grin again.

“Hey. I’m Johnny. You’re new here right?”

“Hey. I’m Emma. You’re the freak who kept looking at me in English, right?”

Emma had successfully been able to open her locker. She slammed it shut after that last comment, and then looked down at her schedule. She had Connected Math 8 next, Room 217. She made to walk down the hallway to search for it but Johnny stopped her by grabbing her arm. Emma didn’t like this.

“Listen, asinine, do me a favor and get your pathetically scrawny hands off of my arm before I am forced to smack you with my free hand in front of all these nice people,” Emma told him as she motioned with her free hand to all the people in the hallway.

“What did you call me?”

“Asinine.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Look it up. Oh, and while you’re add it, look up infuriating, eccentric, and psychotic.”

“Why would I look up all those words?”

“Well, there are three reasons. Number one, they all describe you truthfully. Number two, it’ll expand your shockingly primitive vocabulary. Number three, it will require you to take your hand off of me therefore giving me the opportunity to get away from you.”

Emma pulled her arm away from Johnny. Johnny, however, just wouldn’t take a hint and ran to move in front of her.

“Don’t walk away from me,” he told her, using his eyes in what he believed to be in a thoroughly threatening way.

“What is your deal? Can you leave me alone? This is what some might refer to as obsessing or stalking”

Johnny looked like he was about to respond when someone stepped right in between himself and Emma, putting a good foot of distance in between them. He had stepped in front of Emma facing Johnny, so she couldn’t see who the boy was.

“Look, Johnny. Leave.”

“I was just doing what Haines said, making the new girl feel welcome.”

“Dude, you’re freaking her out. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t blame her for being freaked out.”

“Hey, I wasn’t freaked out!” Emma cried, pulling on the boy in front of her so she could get a good look at his face.

As he whirled around, Emma saw at once who it was: Paul, the boy from her previous class who refused to look at her.

“You,” Emma shrieked. However, a second later she thought better of adding anything else about how Paul refused to look at her.

“What?” Paul asked her, taking in how the new girl looked after such a look time of not seeing her.

“Can I leave now, Paul? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re going to be late.”

“You made yourself late, Johnny. I, however, will not be late as I am assigned to be Emma’s student guide and I have a pass good for all classes.”

Emma and Johnny both rolled their eyes, but for different reasons.

“Okay, fine. But if Layton doesn’t take it, don’t blame me.”

“Of course he’ll take it.”

“Okay then. Bye.”

Johnny turned on his heel and walked down the hallway, passing Emma on his way and glaring at her as he did so. Emma was looking at Paul, though, and took no notice of this.

“Listen,” Paul began, “I’m sorry about Johnny. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s kind of a jackass. I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you anymore.”

“I don’t need you to protect me. I can take care of myself.”

It was Paul’s turn to roll his eyes, and he said, “Fine, I won’t protect you. But look, you can hate me all you want but I’m assigned to be your student guide. You have no idea how serious an infraction it will be if I don’t show you around. So can you just pretend to be grateful?”

“Fine,” Emma sighed, “Can you show me where Room 217 is?”

“Whoa. You don’t have Math now, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Damn, that’s my class. What do you have third period?”

Emma showed him her schedule, and Paul’s eyes darted along the lines of text. He was reading very fast, Emma noticed, and by the time he had finished, about three seconds had passed.

“Well,” Paul began, “This job is going to be easier than I thought.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You have the exact same schedule as me. Same teachers, same class periods, same classrooms… All of it.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. Well, shall we make our way to Math then… Emma, is it?”

“Yes. Emma Carson.”

“Paul Williams,” Paul told her.

“It’s nice to meet you, Paul.”

“Same here. Now, want me to tell you a little bit about the teachers we’ll be sharing?”

“If you must,” Emma told him as she laughed.

“Okay, I’ll speak quickly since we’re almost to Math. Haines, who you now know teaches English, is the nicest; Layton, Math, is obsessive compulsive; Jones, Reading, never gives homework; Andrews, Gym, is like a drill sergeant; Brown, Study Hall, doesn’t talk except for attendance; Roberts, Science, gives a lot of homework and gets pissed if you don’t answer a question right; Gary, Spanish, is really happy-go-lucky; and Sherman, History, talks the entire class period and makes you take notes the whole time. The staff pulls straws everyday to see which teacher does lunch duty.”

“Wow,” Emma said to Paul.

“It’s easy to understand. You’ll get used to it. By the way, just to make things easier for you, since the office obviously didn’t tell you, every class period that you have besides Gym and Lunch will take place in the 200 Hallway, a.k.a. this one.”

“And I was too stupid to realize that,” Emma glanced over at Paul who was smiling as she said it.

“We’re here,” Paul said suddenly as he ceased walking and stopped right in front of a door that had a plastic plaque next to it stating that it was Room 217, “Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be…” Emma replied, and she followed Paul into the classroom.