at her desk, rifling through papers, when I arrive. Her gray hair is falling out of a loose bun, and she’s wearing these glasses on a chain that make her look more like a librarian than a school nurse. She’s so engrossed in her work, she doesn’t even notice me come in.
A boy I’ve never seen before sits in a folding chair in the corner. He looks me up and down, his gaze pausing on the bloody paper towels I’m holding, making me feel suddenly self-conscious. He doesn’t look like the type of guy who goes for chicks with pink hair. In fact, with his perfectly tousled blond hair and green T-shirt stretched tight over his biceps, he looks like the type of guy who dates girls who resemble Victoria’s Secret models. Still, he sits there smiling as if he knows me or something.
“Uh,” I say.
Mrs. Price looks up, her eyebrows jumping when she spots the blood. “Vee! Another accident?”
“No biggie,” I mutter, avoiding eye contact with the guy. “It’s a shallow cut. Just needs to be cleaned.”
Mrs. Price frowns and pushes back her chair. She glides over to me and stoops down to examine my wound. “Did you get this during another episode, Vee?”
“No,” I say, shaking my hair over my face so she won’t notice the bump. If she finds out I’ve been passing out, she’ll have to call my father and he’ll have to call my doctors and they’ll ask about the Provigil and the whole thing will be a big pain in my ass.
Mrs. Price pulls on some latex gloves and tells me to sit down and pull up my pant leg. She wipes my knee with an alcohol pad, dabs on some Neosporin, and then wraps it with a clean bandage. The whole time, I am intensely aware of the hot guy staring at my bare leg.
Mrs. Price strips off her gloves and tosses them into the trash. She stands and looks at the guy. “All your records seem to be in order, Zane. What class do you have now? Vee here can show you the way. Sylvia, this is Zane Huxley. This is his first day.”
The guy steps forward and shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you.” He pulls a crinkled paper from his pocket and squints at it. “I’ve got AP psych with Golden.”
“Oh, good.” Mrs. Price claps her hands. “That’s where you’re going. Right, Vee?”
“Um, yeah.”
As we walk to Mr. Golden’s room, I keep my eyes straight ahead, though I can feel Zane’s eyes on me.
“So, Sylvia. Got any advice for the newb in town? Cool places to hang out? Teachers to avoid?” He reaches out and trails his finger along a poster that says STAR in bubble letters. Safe, Tolerant, Accountable, Respectful—all the things teachers wish students were, but we can’t always be because we’re human beings and not robots.
“Not really. Get salad bar on Chef’s Choice days.”
He laughs. “Well, that’s a given.” He unfolds his schedule. “I’ve got Winger first period. Have you had her?”
I risk a glance at Zane. His face is open and friendly and interested. To him, I’m a perfectly normal girl. Well, a perfectly normal girl with Pepto-colored hair. But still.
“Yeah. Actually, I’ve got her first period, too. Just don’t bother her when she’s playing solitaire, and you should be fine. She gets cranky.”
“Solitaire, eh? What about this guy? Golden? He cool?”
“Yeah, he’s really cool,” I say. “He’s young, which means he hasn’t burned out yet. And he always tells these weird stories, like the time he helped a woman give birth at the Omaha zoo.”
“Ew,” Zane says, but he looks fascinated.
“Yeah. So where are you from?”
A girl in a flippy skirt skips down the hall toward us, her eyes lingering on Zane, but he doesn’t even look her way. His eyes are fixed on me.
“Actually, I used to live here when I was little. But then my dad died and we moved to Chicago to live with my grandma.”
Awkward. It’s always so awkward when someone mentions death, especially when you don’t know them very well. Strangers always say they’re soooooo sorry when they hear my mother is gone, but it’s wrong that death is a loss. It’s something you gain. Death is always there, whispering in your ear. It’s in the spaces between your fingers. In your memories. In everything you think and say and feel and wish. It’s always there.
I know there’s nothing you can say to make death okay. It is what it is.
“That sucks,” I say.
He nods silently.
We’re standing in front of the door to Mr. Golden’s classroom.
“Well, here we are,” I say feebly.
“Try to contain your excitement,” he says, smiling as he pushes open the door.
The room we walk into looks more like a lounge than a classroom. Mr. Golden likes to rescue and reupholster couches and bring them in for us to sit on during class discussions. He’s decorated the walls with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Mixed in with the posters of Freud and diagrams of the human brain are old concert posters for The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. He even has a black light he turns on for special occasions. A large green plant that looks like it could swallow me hulks in the corner.
“Looks like we have a newcomer,” Mr. Golden booms. “Take a seat wherever. I’m not into seating charts.”
Zane folds himself into a beanbag chair. He’s so tall, his knees almost hit his chin. The girls who aren’t sneaking looks at him are openly gaping. A little seed of pleasure bursts within me when he looks my way and grins.
Rollins sits on an orange sofa in the corner, doodling in the margin of his textbook. I plop down next to him and pull out my notebook. Mr. Golden may let us sit wherever we want, but he draws heavily from his lectures when writing his exams. I got a C on the last one, so I figure I’d better actually try to follow what Mr. Golden is saying about classical conditioning.
“Who’s that?” Rollins asks under his breath, nodding in Zane’s direction. Rollins doesn’t bother to take notes. He’s got some kind of photographic memory; he remembers not only what he sees, but also what he reads, hears, and even smells. Ask him what was for lunch last Tuesday, and he’ll remember just how nasty the burned meatloaf smelled in the hallways.
“Uh, Zane Huxley,” I whisper back when Mr. Golden pauses to blow his nose. “He’s new. I met him in the nurse’s office. Sliced my knee open pretty good.”
Rollins’s eyes dart down to my leg. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just kneeled on a beer bottle under the bleachers. No. Big. Deal. Anyway, where were you during lunch?”
Rollins pauses before answering. I can tell he knows there’s more to the story, but I don’t want to rehash the conversation I overheard under the bleachers. It’s just too depressing.
He tugs his lip ring. “I was printing off the latest installment of Fear and Loathing in High School. My finest work, if I do say so myself.” Pride creeps into his voice. Rollins makes his own zine, in which he reviews concerts and writes articles about the suckiness that is high school. It’s completely do-it-yourself, literally cut and pasted from Rollins’s journals and drawings.
“Ooooh, can I have one?”
“They’re in my locker. I’ll give you one later.”
Mr. Golden launches back into his lecture. By the end of the period, I’ve covered a whole page with my loopy handwriting.
When the bell rings, Mr. Golden raises his voice. “Remember to read the section on the different theories of motivation tonight. There might be a quiz Monday, just so you know.”
I’m stuffing my notebook back into my backpack when Mr. Golden turns to address me.
“Sylvia,