Chapter Two

After several moments of awkward silence, Gavin cleared his throat noisily and assumed what I presumed was his Student Council President voice. He started to point out specific parts of the school - the library, the commons, the auditorium - and giving his own personal commentary. The library was poorly stocked, but the librarians were extremely nice; the commons had an odd smell to it, one that could rival the stench in the front office; and the auditorium - well, that was actually nice, having been revamped with the unexplainably high profit’s the Drama Department’s spring production had managed to pull in. Apparently, an article had been written about the play in the tri-county newspaper and had drawn attendees in from various parts of the area. None of this was particularly exciting, but I nodded my head and hummed when necessary as if I was impressed with the place. Which I wasn’t: I preferred my high school back in Michigan to this.

I frowned, knowing that I was headed for dangerous territory. Whenever I started thinking about Michigan and all of the places I would never see again, about all of the people I’d been forced to leave behind - Anna, Julie, and Ricky, just to name a few - when I made the move to Missouri following the accident I became depressed. The first three weeks in my new hometown had been brutal, ending with me curled into an awkward ‘S’ shape, my arms draped over my aching abdomen as the tears flowed down my face. I wasn’t one of those people who was capable of letting one or two tears escape before stopping the flow all together; if anything, I was the exact opposite. Once the tears started flowing, it was damn near impossible to stop. Usually, I cried myself to sleep or I got an annoying case of the hiccups, both of which happened many times during those first few weeks.

“What’s your first class again?”

I was so startled by the sound of Gavin’s voice breaking the stretch of silence that’d settled between us that my entire body jerked ungracefully in my wheelchair, a small lick of pain shooting down my leg. I grit my teeth, but managed to keep the sharp hiss of breath between my teeth; I didn’t want Gavin to get the wrong impression. Not that I particularly cared if he thought I was a bitch or not, most people did. It was one of the many reasons why it took a certain type of personality to deal with me, which explained why my “group” of friends consisted of three people. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, least of all an arrogant jerk who may have looked like Adonis reincarnated, but was actually a Harvey Dent underneath.

At least, that’s the impression I’d gathered from the small tidbits of annoyed conversation that we’d exchanged. Not that it could be considered conversation when both parties weren’t exactly exchanging the politest of words.

“College Composition with Mr. Williams,” I answered, tucking my hair behind my ears, my hands shaking ever so slightly. When Gavin’s sarcastic snicker flooded into my ears, I twisted around to look at him, my eyebrows raised in alarm. “Is he a shit teacher?”

“Not at all,” Gavin said, piloting my wheelchair around the corner and pushing me down the last stretch of hall that ended with a long wall of windows and what appeared to be a door. “He’s the coolest teacher in this establishment, if you ask me.”

I didn’t want to believe him, but there was a note of honesty, of conviction, in his voice that betrayed my instincts. “Then why did you chuckle?” I asked warily, not entirely sure that I wanted to hear his response.

“Because I have the same class.”

“Lucky me,” I muttered under my breath as our momentum decreased. The wall of windows was much closer and while Gavin fumbled with the brakes on my wheelchair and opening the door, probably alerting the teacher that I was coming, I stared out the glinting glass through which sunshine poured onto the tiled floor like split orange juice. I had a decent view of the intersection and the traffic lights that controlled it as well as the senior parking lot. For some odd reason, I was intrigued by the parking lot, by the eclectic mixture of cars parked within the stark white lines - the shitty Datsuns from the late 1970s, the sparkling BMWs, and the everythings in between. My eyes roamed over each of the vehicles to their own accord, finding nothing of interest. That is, until I saw them. The two boys - ditchers! my mind screamed - slouching their way across the parking lot.

The taller one, the boy with gangly limbs, a faded leather jacket that looked like the one Fonzie wore in “Happy Days” only in black, and a shock of messy hair stuck between a brassy shade of red-gold and a medium brown, twisted around and pressed what I assumed was the locking mechanism on his keychain before turning back around. Half a cigarette hung from his lips and his eyes were obscured by a pair of aviators, ones that would’ve looked much better on someone else - someone like Gavin who had the bone structure to pull them off. I quickly banished these thoughts from my mind and continued to gawk unabashedly at the boys. Apparently Fonzie (that was his name for now) had said something funny to the boy walking alongside of him as the shorter boy of the pair threw his head back and laughed. Unlike his smoking counterpart, this boy was stockier; he didn’t have that stretched, overly lean look about him. Aside from his shoulder length hair, the only remarkable thing about him was the poop-green-and-mud-brown plaid shirt he wore.

I hadn’t the slightest clue as to why their sudden appearance had interested me so much, but the smoking boy, the one with the oddly colored hair, was all I could stare at. I vaguely wondered what grade he was in and if he was a senior, would he be in any of my classes. Not once did the thought of his name cross my mind - I was more than satisfied with calling him Fonzie. I was so busy staring that, for the third time in the last half hour, I’d been caught staring off in Gavin’s presence. His smirk was one of annoying triumph, but I shook it off.

“Do you need help?” His exasperation hinted that he’d had to ask this question several times.

“What?” I shook my head to myself, bits of my frizzy brown hair falling into my face, mentally reminding myself to stop, think, and form a coherent sentence. Once my thoughts were - well, not collected so much as not so scattered, I said, “Um, sure.”

If Gavin was surprised by my response, he masked it well. Grasping the handles behind my head, he unlocked the brakes he’d put into place with his foot and wheeled me into the classroom. Almost immediately, my cheeks flamed an embarrassing shade of scarlet: Every eye in the room was trained on me, including those of Mr. Williams. I raised my eyebrows slightly at the sight of Mr. Williams’s Fight Club tee shirt underneath his simple white button, the sleeves of which were pushed up to his elbows and the tails untucked from his jeans.

“What took you so long, Gavin? I was beginning to think that she’d run you over with her wheelchair,” Mr. Williams said in an oddly cheery voice. It wasn’t obnoxious or bubbly or anything akin to that, rather it was pleasant. The word friendly flashed before my mind’s eye and I decided that, yes, friendly was the right word to describe his voice, even if he had made it seem like I was mildly psychopathic.

When I saw Gavin open his mouth in preparation of responding, the sudden urge to beat him to the chase and make myself known to the teacher. “You see, I was tempted - sorely so, I must admit - but then I realized that the tire treads on his face would probably be too incriminating,” I responded as bluntly as possible.

His bright green eyes wrinkled at the corners and the faint lines around his mouth became more apparent when he smiled at my response. A loud laugh fell from his lips, echoing around the room. I was taken aback by his reaction as I didn’t see what was so funny and shrank back in my wheelchair. The back of my neck brushed against Gavin’s knuckles and I jumped away as fast as I could. As if they were unsure how to react, the class waited until the teacher had already begun laughing to join him.

“I’m going to enjoy having you as a part of the class, methinks,” he stated in a matter-of-factly voice. For some reason, a sense of immense pride swept over me. “Oh right,” Mr. Williams said as though he’d just remembered that he’d forgotten to turn off the coffeemaker that morning. He untangled his limbs - he’d been sitting Indian style on the top of one of the vacant desks near the front of the room - and strode over to me, his hand outstretched. “If you haven’t already gathered, I’m Mr. Williams. But you can call me Mr. W or Ed. Anything but Mr. Williams.”

I quirked a brow at this. Not once in my entire school career had a teacher requested that I address them by their first name - or a shortened version of their surname, at any rate. In fact, most of the teachers I knew oftentimes got upset when a student discovered their first name and told the entire class, knowing that they’d never hear the end of it. Personally, I never understood why teachers had such an aversion to their students knowing their first names, but I assumed that it was because some of the less intelligent ones might be tempted to prank call or something.

“Any particular reason behind that?” I asked, a carefully measured note of hesitancy in my voice.

“Mr. Williams is my father and I’d rather not compare my devilishly handsome self to the wrinkly old bastard,” was Mr. Williams wry reply. Like the laugh track on bad sitcom from the 1950s (not that any existed; almost all television in the olden days was good), the class chortled in seemingly trained unison, stopping precisely at the same time. It was more than a little eerie. My eyes must’ve widened, for he winked at me surreptitiously. “So, you’re this year’s unfortunate newbie senior, eh?” His tone suggested that his question was rhetorical, but I answered anyway.

I swallowed thickly and gave a noncommittal shrug of my shoulder. “It would appear as such.”

“Man, that’s sucks. And it’s even worse that you’re all banged up. How’d it happen?”

When I didn’t reply and averted my eyes to my hands laying lifelessly in my lap, Mr. Williams seemed to get the hint. I didn’t want to talk about the accident that’d killed my mother and landed me in a wheelchair with a shattered leg and a missing pinkie on my right hand.

“Right. Sorry. That was rude. I have an extraordinarily bad habit of asking rude questions.” Mr. Williams pushed a hand over his shortly cropped hair, offering an apologetic smile. The class, which had been quite talkative when Gavin had wheeled me into the room, had gone absolutely silent. It was obvious that they had all been wondering the very same question and it was even more obvious that the administration had failed to tell the teachers not to ask me what had happened; my father had specifically requested that they avoid the subject at all costs. However, I liked Mr. Williams and I didn’t plan on ratting him out to my dad anytime soon. Besides, something told me that Mr. Williams and my father would get along famously should they ever be introduced.

“Why don’t we find you a seat, Francesca?” Mr. Williams suggested, addressing me by my name for the first time. He made a show of hurrying over to his desk and rummaging through the mess of papers scattered across the surface. When he found the opaque green clipboard he’d been searching for, he quickly scanned the list and pointed to the first seat in the third row, the seat that was right next to a pretty blonde, who smiled widely at me when I made eye contact with her. I was a little disarmed by the greeting, especially since I didn’t know the girl, but my dad had warned me that people in Missouri were very friendly, so I did my best to return it. I could tell that she was one of the more curious students in the class as her round, blue eyes followed me like a hawk follows its prey as I made my way toward my brand new seat. When I ran into some difficulty pulling the chair away from the desk and pushing it off to the side, Mr. Williams was quick to save the day. I assumed this was his way of apologizing for making such a blunt statement without actually speaking the words. At any rate, I accepted.

As I settled myself at my desk, making myself as comfortable as possible which is to say not very comfortable at all, the conversation increased in volume, the students chatting amongst themselves. I could feel several intense stares on the back of my head, but resisted the urge to whip around and tell them all to fuck off.

“All right, all right, all right. I know you all have attention spans the size of ants, but please, she’s just the new girl.” Surprisingly, the class listened to what Mr. Williams told them and soon, he found his perch back on top of the desk he’d been sitting on when we came into the classroom, his legs automatically folding under him. “So, does anyone remember what we were talking about?”

Several kids, including myself, chuckled at his remark; he’d just been criticizing their attention spans yet he’d forgotten what the class had been discussing before Gavin and I had come waltzing in.

“Our summer reading journals,” the blue-eyed blonde who’d smiled at me offered.

“What would I do without you, Beth?” Mr. Williams asked rhetorically, smiling once again. He was just full of sunshine and daisies, wasn’t he? If my leg wasn’t throbbing painfully and making me grimace, I probably would’ve been grinning like a maniac, his warmth was so infectious. “And if I’m not mistaken, I believe that. . .Lindsay had the floor, yes?”

“Yep,” piped a light, wind-chime of a voice from somewhere near the back of the classroom.

“First off, sorry for the interruption and secondly, continue from wherever you left off.”

“Oh. Okay.” The girl named Lindsay cleared her throat before starting anew. “Anyway, I was just about to say that William Faulkner -”

I stopped listening as soon as my brain processed those dreaded words: William Faulkner. I enjoyed classic literature as much as the next person, but I hated Faulkner with an indescribable passion. Was he creative? Yes. Was he thrilling? No. Could he make strapping young lads die from boredom? Oh hell yeah.

Taking the author’s name as my cue, I reached into my purse and pulled out the small orange vial, which was halfway filled with elongated pills. I tried to be as quick and quiet as possible as I shook two of the pills out of the bottle and popped them into my mouth, swallowing without water. The pills wanted to cling to the side of my throat, but I feigned a bad coughing fit into my fist and all but forced them down.

Ah, thank God for Vicodin.

- - -

By the end of class, I realized that my hatred for William Faulkner was not misplaced. Apparently, over half of the class agreed that the book had been entirely too boring for their liking and some, namely Gavin Maxwell, had expressed their distaste by mocking the man. While I found it enjoyable, it was clear to see that Mr. Williams - who’d playfully reprimanded me twice for addressing him by such - didn’t find it nearly as amusing as I did. To further his disappointment with his College Composition class, he gave us our first assignment of the year: find one quote from any of Faulkner’s books, though the assigned piece “As I Lay Dying” was preferred, and explain what made his writing so horrible. A loud groan had rippled through the classroom until Mr. Williams said that it excluded the people who hadn’t criticized Faulkner, at which point more than half of the class tried to rectify their remarks. With an eye roll and not so discreet cough into my fist, I left the classroom ten minutes early, Gavin pushing me down the halls to my next class.

Calculus was as boring as one can expect it to be and even though it was only the first day, I was already lost. After a five minute introduction, Mrs. Schleicher began scribbling notes on the dry eraser board with her blue marker, her script almost illegible. Halfway through the notes, I gave up, deciding that it was better if I waited until the end of her lecture to ask my questions: most math teachers preferred it that way. So, when she capped her marker and made to return to her desk, I raised my hand. With a grunt and a glare, she shuffled over toward me as though it was the most difficult thing in the world for her to do. Biting my tongue, I asked her a few questions about the gist of what I was supposed to be doing. You’d have thought I asked her the precise equation for dividing molecular particles or something, the look she gave me was so bewildered. Instead of helping me verbally, she thrust her teacher’s book under my nose and told me to read from it and if I had any questions, I was to ask my classmates.

Fat lot of help they were. They were just as clueless as I was, only with one significant difference: They weren’t on Vicodin. Well, at least I didn’t think any of them were.

When Gavin showed up to collect me, you would’ve thought that Christmas had come earlier. Mrs. Schleicher let out a surprised squeak and sprang away from her desk faster than Wonder Woman’s invisible car flew. Her arms went around Gavin’s broad shoulders and, if I wasn’t mistaken, her hands wandered a bit farther south than they should’ve. He stiffened visibly in her arms and I couldn’t retain my smirk. I waited until Mrs. Schleicher was done fawning over him and telling him how much she missed having in him class. My stomach rumbled quietly, leading me to briefly wonder when lunch would be.

“Um, Gavin?” I began uncertainly as he pushed me down a long stretch of hallway, his sneakers squeaking against the tiles every so often. “You wouldn’t happen to know when lunch is, do you?”

Surprisingly, he laughed. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

“Well,” Gavin began. “I’ll need to see your schedule first. Lunch periods always depend on what class you have, seeing as how the students are divided according to which class they’re in.”

I was expecting as much. It had been the same way in my old high school and nearly every other high school that I’d ever heard someone talk about. I just hoped that I had someone I knew in my lunch, even though the only people I “knew” were Gavin and Beth, the pretty blonde from College Comp. However, the likelihood of either of them sitting by me was slim to none. Reaching into my bag, I pulled out my cell phone, make up bag, and a planner, tossing them aside in my search for my schedule. Once I found the crumpled piece of paper, I held it above my hand for Gavin to take.

He did. I watched intently as his eyes roamed the page and only then did I notice that they were a peculiar blend of blue and green with random flecks of gold dispersed throughout. I’d seen hazel eyes before, but his were beautiful, much like the rest of him was. The only problem was that his personality wasn’t exactly pristine, at least not that part I’d seen. Then again, I was notorious for bringing out the very worst in people opposed to the best. After a few more seconds of searching, he handed my schedule back to me, the paper still warm from his hand.

“You’ve got first lunch, which means that we should probably get you there before the bell rings.” He picked up the pace a little bit and said, quite suddenly, “We have last block together.”

My eyebrows pulled together in thought. “What do I have last block?”

“French independent study.”

“Oh joy.”

Once again, he laughed, which took me by surprise. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic about it, Francesca. It’s not like we have to listen to the teacher like all of the other poor schmucks in there.”

At this, I smiled. “Good point. Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

Gavin snorted. “You don’t know Mr. Hubert.”

I didn’t like the slightly ominous tone in his voice, so I chose to stop talking and instead focused on what I would get for lunch. A part of me regretted not packing my lunch as I didn’t know what the food would taste like, but if it was anything like the food at my old high school, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too bad. French fries or potato chips were probably my best bet, though they weren’t exactly healthy choices, I didn’t care. If it’s good, I eat it. End of story.

The cafeteria, which they called the commons for some strange reason, was as generic as high school cafeterias - sorry, commons - came. There were rows upon rows of long, folding tables and uncomfortable benches. I bit back a grimace at the complete lack of individual chairs, knowing that it was going to be a little more than awkward when it came time to sit down and eat. The walls were a bland, off white color that looked worse for wear, but overall, it wasn’t all that bad. A little crowded, but not small enough to induce a panic attack.

“I can take it from here,” I told Gavin.

He stopped to look down at me and when he spoke, his tone was skeptical. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I assured him. “I’ll probably end up getting something from the vending machine, anyway. I’m not sure how good the food is here.”

“In general it’s not too bad, but it’s not exactly gourmet. As for the food on the first day of school? Well, just be glad that you brought along change; the lunch ladies are a bit rusty after having the entire summer off.” With a brief wave and an even briefer smile, he breezed through the doors and was gone.

It didn’t hit me until a few minutes later when the siren-like bell chimed overhead that I realized I hadn’t asked Gavin where the vending machines were. The commons might not have been all that large, but I didn’t want to go on a treasure hunt looking for the damn things. With a frustrated sigh, I pushed a hand through my hair, toying with the idea of taking another Vicodin to cure my nerves. The voice in the back of my head, the voice that sounded eerily like my father, warned me against it; I’d already taken three of the little pills - two in English and another in Calculus. The tension was gone from my muscles, the ache in my leg all but diminished, and my brain was a little foggy, but in a pleasant way. After a few seconds of deliberation, I decided to head toward the right and see where my wheels took me.

- - -

It was nearly fifteen full minutes later until someone stopped and asked me why I was wheeling back and forth. I considered making up some fib or pretending like I was retarded, but I was quick to shoo both thoughts away from my mind. For one, fibbing wouldn’t fill my growling stomach and secondly, pretending to be retarded would surely earn me a one way ticket to downstairs. So I told her the truth and being the nice freshman that she was, she pointed me in the right direction, not-so-subtly saying her name three times during the very short conversation we’d had. Her name was Natalie Parsons and if I needed any more help, I shouldn’t be afraid to ask.

Fighting back an eye roll as she turned her back to me and returned to her table, I rolled myself in the right direction. I wasn’t surprised to see a collection of students in the small alcove right off of the commons - an alcove that I hadn’t even thought to look in even though I’d passed it nearly three times. I took my spot at the back of the line, not at all surprised when the people ahead of me deciding to turn around and stare at me, even though gawk would be a more fitting word. You would’ve thought that they had never seen a person in a wheelchair before. It wasn’t like I was handicapped or anything; the neon orange cast on my leg let on as much. But maybe I was overestimating their intelligence. Or maybe I was acting too superior for my own good. I didn’t know these people yet I was judging them. Not that they weren’t probably judging me, but that didn’t mean that I had to think -

Oh, who was I kidding? I was judging the fuck out of these people and I honestly didn’t care. It’s not like they would ever worm their way into my head and read my thoughts. For fuck’s sake, it’s not like they were a Legimens. And even if they were, I’d just use Occulmency against them.

It took another three or four minutes for the line to move up, and when I was face to face with the machine, my stomach dropped. I, Francesca Elaine Costello, had no idea which delicious snack food to select. Almost immediately, I eliminated everything with peanut butter and white cheddar cheese flavoring; I hated both with a fiery passion. I didn’t want anything sweet, either, so the gummy snack packs and the many packets of cookies were out, which left me with two options: Gardetto’s or Cheetos.

I contemplated for three and a half minutes before I made my decision. Leaning forward in my chair, I reached out to enter the code “D-3”. My fingers had already punched the ‘D’ button and were nearing the ‘3’ when someone said in quite possibly the most horrified voice I‘d ever heard, “No, man! Don’t do it!”

I did the first thing anyone did when taken by surprise: I jumped out of my skin and squealed. My eyes searched for the speaker, and it didn’t take long to find him seeing as how he was at the machine right next to me, a bottle of Mountain Dew grasped tightly in his white knuckled hands. Uncertain as to why my selection of Gardetto’s would horrify him so much, I shook my head in a vain attempt to shake off the awkward feeling that had settled over the alcove and reached forward again.

Just as I was about to punch in the ‘3’, the boy cried out. “No! Do you understand what you’re doing?”

I blinked, utterly confused, and settled back against my chair, turning to look at the boy. He’d stepped out of the darkness now and into the light, so his face was illuminated, but it wasn’t his face that made me recognize him. It was his poop-green-and-mud-brown plaid shirt, which reeked of pot smoke. Taking in his tangled, shoulder length brown hair and the red tinge to his eyes, I didn’t have trouble believing it, especially since he’d shown up to school late.

“Um,” I said after I’d finished evaluating his appearance. “No?”

“You were going to pick Gardetto’s over Cheetos.”

“Yeah, so?”

He gasped dramatically, his bloodshot eyes widening. “Do you realize that goes against - well, the laws of - um, the universe!?”

“Excuse me? The laws of the universe? They’re just Cheetos.”

“No. They’re not,” he said, his tone surprisingly grave and serious despite the dreamy look on his face. “When it comes to Cheetos and something else, you always choose Cheetos. Always.”

I snorted. “Right. I’ll keep that in mind for the next time.” For the third time in five minutes, I lurched forward and moved to press the button labeled with a big, fat ‘3’ before stopping. Was I really considering the weight of his words? I’d always favored Cheetos over Gardetto’s, preferring the cheese-tastic taste to the weirdly textured Chex Mix bites, but initially I’d decided upon Gardettos as they’d sounded better. But had this boy’s words influenced my opinion? I balked at the thought before clearing the ‘D’ and typing in the selection code for Cheetos. The little metal spirals spun and an orange bag of Cheetos fell down to the bottom.

“Excellent choice! I knew you’d make it. No one‘s stupid enough to go against the laws of the universe.” He sounded so relieved and when I turned to look at him after retrieving my snack, I saw that he was smiling widely. And then, quite suddenly, he thrust his hand into my vision and said, “I’m Brian, but everyone calls me Fletcher. Or Fletch, if you want.”

I laughed despite myself and took his hand, shaking it once. “Francesca.”

“Wicked,” he said, grinning loopily. “So, do you have a place to sit?”

Slightly embarrassed I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

“Cool. You should come sit with me. I’ll even wheel you to the table.”

For some unknown reason, I said yes.

- - - - - -

Soundtrack: "Thursday on a Blue Note" by White Town; "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

A/N: A big thanks to everyone that reviewed! You know who you are, and I extended my deepest gratitude to you all.