Chapter 2

The next morning Mark and Roger walked to school early so they could avoid Cindy. "Wow." Roger said when they got to their lockers. "I've never been at school this early before."

"Why am I not surprised?" Mark retorted and tugged open his locker. Inside were all the thick books for the many classes he was taking that semester.

"Well Mark I'm not you." Roger explained. "You with all the AP this and Honors that. Just give me good old regular classes any day."

Mark didn't respond to that. Just then Maureen and another girl walked up. She had long red hair and blue eyes and neither of the boys had ever seen her before.

"Hey guys." Maureen screeched as she hugged them. "How was the slumber party last night?"

"Roger almost got molested." Mark replied simply.

"Cindy?" Maureen asked and he nodded. "God she's a slut." The redheaded girl cleared her throat. "Oh right, almost forgot." Maureen grinned. "Boys, I'd like to introduce you to Antonia Clark. She just moved here from Manhattan and she lives next door to me now. Ant these are my boys. The genius with the glasses is Mark Cohen and the hottie with the curls is Roger Davis."

"Hi." Antonia said softly.

"Nice to meet you." Mark replied and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

"Yeah." Roger echoed. He leaned against his locker. "Dude you're from Manhattan? That's so cool. That's where I want to move to when I graduate. Is it awesome there?"

"It's okay." she answered. "I like it here better."

"So what's your first class Ant?" Maureen wanted to know.

Antonia consulted her schedule. "AP Literature and Composition." she said.

"Well you're in luck. Our resident nerd Marky has that for first period too. He'll show you how it's done. Me and Roger on the other hand have the privilege of heading to gym." Maureen told her. "But we all have the same lunch, so we'll meet back up then."

Antonia nodded and smiled at Mark who had just closed his locker. "Let's go." he said. "Mrs. Anderson will totally embarrass you if you come in too late." The two of them walked off and Maureen and Roger headed for the gym.

It was horrible having gym first period. The unlucky students with that fate walked around smelling like sweat for the rest of the day. So Roger and Maureen had made a deal with the coach. They stayed after school every other Wednesday and cleaned the supply rooms and organized the office and Coach Turner gave them B's for the semester.

Now they headed towards the bleachers as Coach Turner led warm ups. Maureen pulled out her walkman and started lip-syncing to some song and Roger leaned back and daydreamed. After a minute he started to feel uncomfortable and opened his eyes. Three girls who were playing volleyball were staring at him.

Roger rolled his eyes and tapped Maureen on the shoulder. She took off her headphones. "What?" she demanded. Roger nodded his head at the girls who dissolved in giggles. Maureen rolled her eyes. "Oh for heaven's sake." she said in frustration.

"Five bucks says I can distract one of them enough to make her get hit with the ball." Roger betted.

"You're on." Maureen replied. "You are so not that hot."

"Watch and learn my naive friend. Watch and learn." Roger said back. "Hey cuties!" he called to the girls.

They turned all the way around and waved at him. "Hi Roger!" they chorused.

"I like your hair." he told one of them. "Those curls make you look really sexy." the girl he was talking to giggled and the other two glared at her, wishing they had curls too.

"Thanks Roger." she replied. "They said it was dumb to get my hair done like this when I have gym first thing, but I said-" she was cut off by the volleyball hitting her in the side of the head.

Roger fell over with laughter. "Sorry." he called to the girl. "But I only talk to people with enough sense to watch what's going on." Then he turned back to Maureen and held out his hand.

"Oh please." she said. "Like I'm actually going to give you five dollars. That would just be a drop in the bucket for you, Mr. I-live-in-the-biggest-house-in-town. Besides I was still right. You aren't that hot, that particular girl was just dumb as hell."

"I think someone's jealous." Roger teased.

Maureen folded her arms. "And why would I be jealous?" she asked dangerously.

"Maybe because that is also the same girl who beat you out for the lead in the school musical Grease last year." Roger reasoned.

"That's only because she was sleeping with the drama teacher." Maureen retorted.

"Mo, the drama teacher is a woman." Roger said back. "Face it, she got the part because she's blond. Just like the main character in Grease was. But you got the next best thing."

"Yeah Roger. It was great playing the chick who sleeps around and doesn't even know if she's pregnant or not." Maureen said with a sigh. "Like that didn't open a whole can of worms."

Roger shut up then. Last year after Maureen had played Rizzo in the musical everyone had found out that she had cheated on her football player boyfriend with a guy from their rival school. For the whole last semester everyone called her a hoe and Roger even got suspended for beating up the football player who had started it.

Suddenly the bell rang and Maureen got up quickly. Roger followed her and put his arm over her shoulders. "Don't worry." he whispered in her ear. "You're worth a million of her. And your Rizzo kicked the shit out of her Sandy." Then he gave her a hug, flicked the bird at everyone who snickered about it, and rushed off to his next class.

Maureen smiled and went the opposite way to hers.

Roger and Mark had chorus together second block, but Mark always dropped by the film lab for a minute before coming to class. So Roger got to the chorus room first. He was surprised to see Antonia sitting in the seat that was next to his reading a thick book.

"I didn't know you were a singer Antonia." he commented and went to sit next to her.

Antonia looked up startled. "Yeah I love to sing." she responded when she saw it was Roger. "And you can call me Toni or Ant. I can't stand my whole first name. My mother has these dreams of grandeur and she loves pretentious names."

"Tell me about it." Roger agreed. "My mom's the same way. I got off easy, but my brother's name is Randolph Arthur Davis." He shuddered and Mark came in the room.

"How was Lit?" Roger asked him.

"It was great!" Mark exclaimed as he took a seat beside Roger. "Not only is Toni not behind in the class because she's read like all the books on the class list, but she was participating in discussion and corrected Mrs. Anderson. All on her first day too."

"I'm happy for you Marky. You finally have someone to speak geek with." Roger joked.

Mark flipped him the bird as the choral teacher walked in and started class.