4.
"Camilla Greene. Mrs. Camilla Greene. Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel Greene." Camilla whispered the names under her breath as she doodled them in her Mandarin notebook. "Camilla Bancourt-Greene. Or Camilla Greene-Bancourt?" She considered it for a moment. Or maybe he'd change his name. Gabriel Bancourt-Greene...
The ruler snapped down on her desk, missing her hand by a half inch. Camilla jerked up.
-Miss Bancourt!- shrieked a familiar voice. It was a continuing astonishment to most parents that such a grandmotherly-seeming lady as Ms. Zhao could so effectively control a class of thirty high schoolers, but few of her students ever questioned it. Not after the first several lectures.
"Huh?" Camilla said brilliantly.
Ms. Zhao glared at her, then spoke in rapid-fire Chinese. -What is the poet trying to communicate through the symbolism of the lotus blossoms?-
"The lotus blossoms?" she asked, trying to hide the scribblings in her notebook from her teacher's sharp gaze. "He meant––"
-In Mandarin!-
"IMHO, it doesn't really matter at all. I had better things to do last night than read a long-winded poem about lotus blossoms that's just as useless a tool for judging merit today as it was in the Ming Dynasty––a fact you'd realize if you weren't such a tradition-obsessed old bat" was what Camilla didn't say. Because then she'd be kicked out of class and her father would be disappointed and she'd never get into Harvard or (more immediately) that summer internship at the UN...
"Um," she suggested instead, -he was trying to say...-
Just then there was a loud snapping noise, and something shot across the room and knocked a magnet off the whiteboard. It fell with a clatter.
Ms. Zhao turned like a dog seeking a scent. Her gaze, and that of most of the class, settled on a young man sitting nonchalantly in a desk two rows away from Camilla.
-Mr. Greene?- she asked dangerously.
-Yes, Ms. Zhao?-
The teacher glared at him, but she could not, technically, prove he'd just shot a magnet off the board with a rubber band. -Would you like to answer the question?-
-The lotus tree traditionally represents the rebirth of Spring,- he replied easily, -and young love. But Zhu Jantao describes them as 'sickly, like late morning fog', suggesting they are the crushed hope of his love of the unknown lady––the one who denied him in the third verse.-
Ms. Zhao narrowed her eyes and walked stiffly back to the front of the class, resuming her lecture. Camilla turned to a new page of her notebook and tried to actually take notes, but she kept sneaking glances at Gabe. He wasn't taking notes, of course. He never did. That was the thing about Gabriel Greene––the reason a kid from Brooklyn could end up with even a partial scholarship to the prestigious George Hamilton Academy. He just walked into AP Language classes at the start of the year, completely ignorant of the grammar and vocabulary, and by the winter Final, he could hold fluent conversations with the professor. Camilla knew for a fact that he was also taking AP Latin this year, and last year (as a mere freshman!) he'd been in AP French. She'd even heard that his application essay had been half in Spanish and half in Italian.
And he was cute. Between the floppily curly brown hair ("like a hobbit," Camilla's nerdy friend Amy liked to say, and it didn't help that he was shortish), bright green eyes (like Harry Potter––Amy again) and wiry, slightly too-skinny build, Gabe gave the overall impression of a puppy. A mischievous puppy, because, for all the "good behavior or no scholarship" hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, he had a well-built underground reputation for pranking.
Furthermore, he was a grade younger than Camilla, and she was still crushing hugely on him. It was really just ridiculous.
Gabe grabbed his backpack and left quickly when the bell rang. Camilla had to stuff her supplies into her own bag way more messily than usual and hurry to catch up.
"Hey," she said totally-not-breathlessly. "Thanks for that, saving me on the lotus blossoms. I totally did not read that poem."
He smiled, Hollywood-perfect but for a slight uptick to one side that lent it the air of a smirk. "No problem. It's actually a pretty easy read."
"I'll get to it before the test," she promised. They dodged around a group of chatting girls. One of them waved to Camilla, but she ignored her. She was on a roll right now. "Got any tips?" A note of envy may have crept into her voice along with the intended admiration.
"I don't know, flash-cards?" Gabe shrugged. "I always just sort of get it. I mean, I had to analyze the poem and stuff, but that's English class. The words, I always just...it's like I knew the language before, and sort of forgot it."
"Cool," said Camilla. "Like that neurological pathway stuff Mr. Boiser was talking about in Bio last week. Residual memory. Maybe you were exposed as a child."
Gabe shrugged again. "I guess." He shifted the weight of his backpack and looked around slightly awkwardly. They were paused in front of a half-open doorway, next to the stairs. "This is my next class. Is yours... I think the crowd's thinning on the stairs."
"Right," Camilla said hurriedly. "I mean, no, it's back up the hallway. But yeah, there are fewer people on the stairs."
He was looking at her like she was nuts. This wasn't going well. She'd never actually asked a boy out before. They'd always asked her.
"Listen, I'm having a sort of party next week, at my house––on the Upper East Side?––and I thought in return for saving my life with Zhao, you could come. I mean, I was going to invite you anyway, because...never mind. But you should definitely come now. Next Friday, at six."
"I have cross-country after school on Fridays, sorta late, but sure."
"Oh, you do cross-country?" She'd stopped by practice one day, to watch. They were doing laps and he'd been in the lead, moving like any second he was going to grow wings and fly even faster. "That's cool. It's okay if you're late."
"Sounds good." He smiled again, lighting up the immediate area. "I'll see you."
The bell rang. "See you!" Camilla called behind her, half-sprinting back up the hall. She doubt he heard, but that was okay. The date was set.
The bell stopped ringing fifteen seconds before she slid into her seat for Pre-Calculus, but Ms. Yates was much more forgiving than Ms. Zhao, and merely raised a warning eyebrow before starting the class.
Three minutes into the first problem, Camilla felt a sharp poke in her back.
"Well?" whispered Amy. "What happened? Bria said you walked by her and the girls with the puppy-hobbit."
Camilla half-turned in her seat, keeping one careful eye on the board. "I did," she said triumphantly. "I've decided to have a small party at my house next Friday. Six o'clock. Spread the word."
Amy raised an eyebrow, disconcertingly like Ms. Yates. "What's the occasion?"
"Spring fling or something. You can make it up." She smiled. "Maybe that lotus trees are in bloom."