Okay, like that hadn't been creepy as hell.
I found my way to my history class and sat down in the back. I had a pass from Principal Showalter, so that wasn't a problem. Good thing - I liked being on time and hated being marked tardy. It was just a pet peeve of mine. If I'd been marked late because of a meeting with a principal about some stupid blonde who'd hauled off and slapped me, well... we were gonna have some issues to work out.
History wasn't a big deal. I got good grades through hours of studying because I wanted to go to BYU. Well, actually, just I wanted to go to college and BYU was the only place I could easily get a scholarship, because of my grades and my dad.
Went through history and landed in art.
My teacher was a hippie.
Wow.
She wore a knee-length, tie-dyed dress of blue and green over blue jeans. Most of the staff I'd seen up until now wore blouses and skirts or slacks and button-down shirts. Add the dangling earrings on the teacher's ears, silver hoops with blue and green dyed feathers, and you had Ms. O'Brien, the art teacher.
"Okay, everyone, since this is the first day, we've got some new people," our teacher said. She had a slight southern drawl, just a hint under her words. Running one hand through her thick, brown hair, she added, "So just so you all know - you better pick someone you can stand to sit next to for a hundred minutes every day, because you're gonna be stuck with your partner for the rest of the year. You've got five minutes starting now."
Didn't care.
People could walk up to me and sit if they wanted to. I just sat down in the back. Why? Because Lily, apparently queen bee of Pillar High, was perched carefully in the front of the room, her plastic butt propped on her table. But the guy next to her....
For a minute, I thought I'd been starving for eye candy, because my mouth dropped open and I started drooling. Who was that guy? Then I remembered to fish my brain out of the fish tank I'd accidentally deposited it into at the start of class. If that gorgeous blond guy was standing next to Lily, then he was probably Lily's boyfriend. And if he was Lily's boyfriend, I needed to avoid him because I'd socked Lily in the face earlier.
Thinking about it, I realized my knuckles hurt. Glancing down, I saw a spread of pale blue across the knobby bones. Great, bruises.
"That looks painful."
I jumped. Looking up, I stared into a pair of warm, dancing obsidian eyes and felt my mouth pop open again. There was no help for it - I gawped like a fish.
It was the guy!
