I was on vacation until today (when a tow truck brought my mom and I home, which was equal parts scary - the car breaking down - and awesome - getting to ride an a truck), but now I have a nice schedule set up - post a chapter every Sunday.


Dimitri didn't get to see Rosemarie until Calculus on Wednesday, the day classes started.

So far, his day had gone well. In his guardian classes, it had mostly been an introduction to the course and review from prior years, with a little sparring at the end of the practical lessons. He'd met some nice people, and some other not-so-nice people. He'd had lunch with Ivan, Lissa, and her friends.

Some acquaintances of hers had stopped by for small talk, catching the group up on the latest gossip. There wasn't anything terribly exciting, but more than a few people were interested in the simple fact that Rosemarie Hathaway was going to their school. Of course, they were also interested in every other transfer student, including Dimitri and Ivan.

Dimitri managed to keep a low profile, something he'd learned to do in large groups. It never fooled his mother, who was equally attentive to all her children, but sometimes his siblings had managed to forget him, at least temporarily. He'd perfected the technique in school. Talk, but not too much or to little, and don't say anything particularly interesting. Pay attention to the conversation, but don't appear to latch on to every word. Conversely, don't look bored or mimic falling asleep. As the hype about the new kids went down, he could quiet, eventually merging into the background as "Ivan's friend" or even go unnoticed. By November, he could be invisible – or as invisible as a good-looking, 6'7" teenage boy could be.

His afternoon classes had also been mostly introduction and some review. He liked his AP Biology teacher – she was nice, smart, and very student-savvy. They ended up on an off-topic discussion about why Moroi men's bone structure stayed slim, their shoulders not often broadening during puberty, switching to how breasts were "meant to look like your ass," and when class ended, the woman was laughing and the idiocy one by had when he let it slip that he thought it was gross that "girls peed out of the same hole babies came out of." She held him back after class to talk to him, and when he came into Dimitri's Psychology class ten minutes late, the boy was white even for a Moroi.

Now, walking into seventh-period Calculus, Dimitri hesitated. A knot of people were surrounding the teacher's desk, indicating a seating chart, but Lissa and Ivan waved him over to their table to talk.

"How did your morning classes go?" Dimitri asked the Moroi.

Lissa shrugged, but Ivan said, "Our Politics teacher was too busy getting high to come to class, so we started a betting pool about how long it will be until he's fired. I put in $50 for two weeks. How were your classes?"

"Fine. I like the Biology teacher."

"I know! He's hot, isn't he?" Ivan said, excited.

The bell rang before Dimitri could tell Ivan they had different teachers, cutting their conversation short. He joined several students who were still looking for their names on the seating chart, finding his name easily and noting that Rosemarie sat in front of him. Not that it mattered, Dimitri told himself. He was only a potential candidate. She probably didn't even know about Mazur's visit to Kirova, just thought that someone would probably be getting her guardians fixed at the end of the school year, after the trials.

Dimitri had always liked sitting in the back of classrooms. There were always jerks in the corners, of course, but the guardians that stood in the back usually kept them quiet. Dimitri liked being able to examine his classmates, and nobody complained about not being able to see the board because of the tall person sitting in front of them.

He didn't discern much about Rosemarie during class, other than she worked quietly and preferred to be called Rose. She seemed funny and social, making up horrible math jokes ("I need to get a loan, but I need someone to cosine!") with another student while the class was doing their work. When Rose got up to turn in her work early, Dimitri noticed that she was curvy for a Moroi, and that she also knew how to dress herself well without showing off wealth or label-dropping. Add in wit (or nerdiness, depending on whom you asked and how much they liked math puns) and Disney princess features – a heart-shaped face, dark brown hair that reached her waist, and large, dark eyes – and Dimitri had to admit that she was very hot.

The review sheets they were doing seemed to touch every weak point Ivan had, judging by the cursing Dimitri heard coming from his friend's table. Lissa tried to explain some of the concepts to him, but she was having trouble with a few herself after a summer where the most math she'd had to do was simple addition. Lissa was also looking around at her classmates, trying to figure out who was gliding by on their own. At the end of class when the bell rang, she walked up to Rose's desk.

"Hi," she said, smiling. Rose smiled back, automatically. "I noticed that you got done with your work early, and was wondering if maybe you could help me and my friend after school or something?" Back at his desk, Ivan waved energetically.

Rose grimaced apologetically. "I left a good eighth of that blank," she warned, zipping up her bag. "Just 'cause I passed PreCal doesn't mean I'm a genius or that I remember everything."

"Well, go get it anyway," Lissa suggested. "Maybe we can all slog through it together." Rose nodded, and the girls set up a meeting time and place. Then Rose shouldered her bag and left, stopping by the turn-in basket and sorted through that until she found her packet. Then she was gone.

"That had nothing to do with... you know," Lissa murmured when they were leaving. "She seemed like the only person who finished without glaring at either the teacher or the paper."

"Why are we whispering?" Ivan asked, butting into the conversation with a conspiratorial hiss.

"I'll tell you after school," Dimitri said, pushing open the door to his and Lissa's English class.


"So, why were you whispering?" Ivan asked when he and Dimitri arrived at the library soon after eighth period. They grabbed a couch on the far side, away from the front desk and librarians. Dimitri had left Lissa chatting with some friends outside their English classroom, and they hadn't seen Rose since she'd made plans with Lissa. Dimitri knew she had a free period, and when Mazur had been rearranging her schedule, it'd seemed like she couldn't have one in the middle of the day because then she lost track of time and ended up being late or skipping entirely.

Dimitri swallowed, nervous. "Yesterday, I got called to Kirova's office," he said. "Some guy was there, scouting out potential guardians for her. I had nothing to do with it, Ivan, but it wasn't really something I could just say 'no thanks' to." The last sentence was a defense. "He said I was just a possible candidate."

Ivan still grew quiet. "Oh."

"It probably won't work out," Dimitri said, partially to Ivan, but partially for himself. Guarding Rose was a long shot, and he didn't even know her. Was she pretty? Yes. Important? Not to him. "I don't have any real-world experience – I haven't even seen a Strigoi in real life. There's probably someone out there who's killed one over summer break or something."

"Okay," Ivan said, rolling his eyes. "I get it." He launched into a rant about his roommate, but his heart didn't seem to be into it.

As Ivan spoke, Dimitri's eyes slid past him, to the door. Rose was standing by the metal detectors, an almost wary expression on her face. Her hair, he noticed, which had been brushed neatly in Calculus, was messy. He tried not to wonder why. Maybe she'd taken a nap. Maybe she'd had sex. Either way, it wasn't his business.

As he was pondering, Lissa appeared behind Rose, tapping the girl on the shoulder. Rose turned, they exchanged words, and then they walked over to where Ivan and Dimitri were seated. Rose pulled a half-inch binder out of her backpack and opened it on her lap.

"My notes would be so good if I could read this shit," she said, flipping through the loose-leaf pages. There were notes, but also class work exercises and returned homework. Most everything had a name/date/period/assignment title on them, but a few just had problem after problem with no rhyme or reason. Lissa took one of those papers out and looked over it, unspoken question in her gaze.

"For a few weeks last year, my Flash and Photoshop computer broke down," Rose explained, looking self-conscious and a little ashamed. "So I started doing problems out of the book."

"Flash and Photoshop?" Ivan asked.

"I have a laptop, and it only has those two programs on it," Rose said. "I mess around with them in my free time – you know, making banners or icons or junk like that. Wallpapers are a bitch, though, because there are no images big enough for computers with huge resolution."

Lissa's ears perked up. "Do you put anything online?" she asked. "I just started watching Firefly, and I think I need something to show for it, but whenever I search for anything, I get the same fifty icons coming up over and over again. It's so annoying."

Rose scrawled the link on a scrap of paper and passed it over to Lissa. "I also have some flash games on there that I did a while ago. They're complete crap," she warned.

Lissa nodded, tucking the piece of paper into her pocket. Then she took out her notebook and pulled out the Calculus packet. "So, did anyone get number five?"

Glad to be moving back to math, Dimitri searched through his packet. They shared answers for a while, trying to explain to Ivan how they'd gotten them, but nobody had much luck with that. Then some other Calculus students wandered over, and eventually the group grew, expanding across all three couches. Those who didn't fit stretched out on the floor.

About an hour after classes had ended, a Moroi girl with black hair came up to them. She was pretty, despite the claw-like scars on her face and her clothes, which turned her into a walking advertisement. Dimitri didn't notice her at first, though – he noticed the wary expressions that appeared on several students' faces. One kid actually picked his things up and moved away from the group, sitting down at a small both several yards away and watching the group from there.

Lissa greeted the girl with her usual cheeriness. "Hey, Tasha," she said. "What's up?"

Dimitri suddenly understood his peers' wariness. Natasha Ozera had been one of the royals Lissa had warned him about yesterday. Ever since her parents had willingly turned into Strigoi, her whole family had been shunned. While her twin brother had just become antisocial and gave everyone the impression that he was a bit of a psychopath, she had began to fight with people – first with pinches and hair pulling, but as she grew older, the violence escalated. The fact that she'd specialized in fire magic really didn't help. She'd been in and out of therapy and rehab since middle school.

In a way, Dimitri understood why she did it. She hated her position as a disgraced royal, and wanted someone to fight, wanted to turn the mental anguish into physical action. Since there wasn't one person at fault, though, she lashed out at whoever she could. Not for the first time, Dimitri thanked God that only his father had abused Olena. Beating the man up had actually solved a lot of Dimitri's behavioral problems at school, but most of the teachers believed that the change had to do with the threat of getting kicked out and/or sent prison if he ever hurt someone like that again.

"Nothing," Tasha said, her eyes scanning over Dimitri and Ivan, and then flicking to Rose almost like an afterthought. "I'm just checking out the new kids." As her eyes returned to him, Dimitri noticed that her pupils were oddly dilated and wondered if she was high on something. She nudged his foot with hers. "You're going to be a guardian, right?" she asked.

"There's kind of a line," Ivan said. Tasha turned to him, her face contorting with anger, and he shrunk back against the cushions. "There just is," he said quickly. "It's not my fault."

"Even if I've never heard one, I think there might be a moral to the 'don't shoot the messenger' story," Rose noted with a gentle voice, drawing her knees up to her chest. When Tasha turned to her, she averted her gaze.

"You're a bitch," Tasha spat. Behind her, Dimitri noticed an elderly librarian getting up from her desk with a worried expression on her face. "That's all I've ever heard about you. You're a bitch."

"I know," Rose said quietly, still keeping her eyes averted. The expression on her face, her body language – everything screamed out "vulnerable."

That seemed to stop Tasha for a moment. She stood there, swaying for a moment. Clearly, she'd been expecting a fight.

The librarian came up behind her and spoke, asking, "Is everything okay here?"

Tasha wheeled around, a little unsteady on her feet. "We're fine. Fucking fine," she said bitterly, sarcasm drawing out the words. "Now let me through," Tasha said, as if she couldn't walk over the few pieces of scattered paper on her left to get to the door. The librarian did so, moving back to her desk, yet keeping an eye on Tasha the whole time. When Tasha made it past the metal detectors, reaching for the door, she picked up the phone.

"'Bitch' is one of those curse words, isn't it?" Ivan asked.

"Back in the nineties, yeah," Rose said, relaxing. Her face once more showed faint disinterest, and she put her feet back on the floor. "Now 'fuck' is the bad word, but it's kind of losing its edge now, what with all of the sixth graders wanting to be cool. I guess it all depends on where you live, though."

Lissa touched Rose's arm. "Are you okay?" she asked, unable to make sense in Rose's sudden change of demeanor. "What was that back there? I've never heard any stories about you..."

"Me neither," Rose said, "But then again, I usually don't pay attention to much gossip. I just heard somewhere that if you play along to whatever the crazies are saying, then they eventually leave you alone. What do you think that chick was on, anyway?"

"Maybe a prescription drug?" someone stretched out on the floor suggested. "She didn't look like she was drunk, and weed doesn't usually piss you off. Plus, you can kind of smell those things, you know?"

Dimitri leaned back, letting the conversation flow freely around him. So, Rose could act. That might explain the easy, unconcerned attitude she seemed to have if she wasn't talking to anyone.