THEN

Racetrack Higgins wasn't focusing on statistics that morning. He didn't really care what a median was, and was pretty sure he didn't know what a mode was either. He didn't see himself going to college anyway, so this was all motions just to be able to say he finished high school. Its not like his mom would be able to afford college anyway, and it would be social suicide to admit he was going to Manhattan Junior College.

He went to high school on the Upper West Side, but it was completely by accident. His mother, a part-time drug addict, had gotten a job as a super in some swanky neighborhood, which meant they got to live rent-free. As a consequence, he passed fourteen stores he couldn't even afford to set foot in on the way to his high school. Most of his classmates' parents' were stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors, party planners. They raked in six figures and bought their children Abercrombie and Fitch clothes and Gucci shoes. They lived in apartments where the rent per month was more than most people could swing per year.

Race didn't have to be a genius to know he didn't fit in. He had gravitated to Skittery, the stoner who had become his best buddy, although Race would never touch the stuff in a million years. Even though he saw first hand what drugs did to people, most people assumed he did them anyway because Skittery wouldn't be caught dead without a plastic baggie full of pot in his backpack.

But this morning Race wasn't thinking about any of that. He was staring straight as his classmate, Fiona O'Connor. He didn't care that it couldn't get any more obvious.

Fiona. He fancied her to be sort of like him. She lived in his building with her overbearing ultra-Catholic mother. Her estranged dad's child support paid their rent. She wasn't rich like the rest of the kids, but she still managed to blend in quite well. Her blonde hair and amazing chest to match had caught the attention of the jocks and popular guys, but she always seemed slightly above that. She smiled shyly at them, but Race knew that if she wasn't an easy lay, they weren't even going to bother. But of course that didn't stop the guys from vocalizing their dirty fantasies involving all of the attractive females in the school, Fiona included.

Not that he would know if she was an easy lay or not, but he'd heard she wasn't. He heard from someone who heard from someone that Mush Meyers, the star of the wrestling team, took her to a movie and kissed her and she scooted away when he tried to put his hand up her shirt. Mush Meyers, who had girls throwing themselves at him, couldn't get Fiona O'Connor. And that made Race smile. And it had made Mush the laughing stock of his team for an entire week.

Besides, it was unofficial guy code, like a list on the bathroom wall, to know who was an easy lay or not. He proved it to himself as he surveyed the girls in his math class. Courtney Fry, Jillian Lou, Gina Taylor slept with the jocks. Ashley Weaver, Kelly Lavigne and Hannah Jenkins only gave blowjobs. Lilly Pryor and Jenny Freidman, well, let's just say most of those guys wouldn't want to be caught dead even talking to them.

But the thing that he liked about Fiona was that she didn't seem to be ignoring these guys advances because she thought she was above them. It was as if she genuinely didn't understand how gorgeous she was. She reminded Race of that woman in the Hitchcock movie Rear Window.

Race sat making swirls over his graph paper with his mechanical pencil instead of actually even attempting to scribble out his homework. He usually never did it and prayed Mr. Jones wouldn't call on him to give an answer the next day when they went over it. He just scribbled whatever the students put on the board.

"How miraculous," Mr. Jones had told him one time "That a student who never gets a problem wrong on the homework manages to get a 54 on the midterm."

Race chewed the end of his pencil watching Fiona shift her weight from one hip to the other in her chair, squint her eyes at the board and roll her eyes at her own plebian mistake. She erased the problem on her homework with vigor and scribbled in the correct answer as Lilly Pryor beamed in her delight of solving the graph perfectly.

"I'll never get this stuff," he heard her whisper to Ashley Weaver who nodded sympathetically.

"Its not like we're going to use this shit in the real world." Ashley answered, slamming her stub of an eraser on the desk and making it bounce.

Fiona licked her lips and then bit her bottom one.

Race felt himself get hard watching her mouth and he shifted his weight. He stared at her legs underneath the Abercrombie mini-skirt she had probably persuaded her mom to purchase for her on sale. Or maybe her mom didn't know she even owned it.

Race felt himself suck in his breath.

"I'd like to bend her over her desk, pull up her skirt and f-"

But his pornographic thought was interrupted by Mr. Jones' voice.

"Mr. Higgins! Do you have the answer to number 12?"

Number 12? Race had barely even gotten to number three on his homework paper. He scanned the problem. He could feel the entire class' eyes on him as his face turned crimson.

"-5?" He guessed.

"-5? Can you tell me how you got that?"

Please don't ask me to get up, please, please, please. Not in front of Fiona.

"N-n-no." Race stammered out.

"Uh-huh. Maybe you should pay attention to the board instead of what Miss O'Connor is doing."

Race felt his ears turn red and slumped further down into the seat in an effort to melt away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fiona turn just as red as he imagined he was.