but a tiny step back was all I needed to absorb the impact. The other person hit the floor with a loud thud, knocking everything I was holding in my hands across the hall. Before I could even cringe at the lack of blending in, a prickly sensation crept up my neck at the feeling of eyes on my back.
My chest tightened as the velvety a cappella voices, the mass of students, the entire hall disappeared. Fragmented images flashed in my mind: feet pounding on concrete, a hand tight on my arm, a broken piece of wood. Then, as fast as the images had come, they were gone, replaced with the hum of conversations and a person sprawled on the ground in front of me and too many students gathered around us. I swallowed hard. They’re not watching you, they’re just curious. No one here knows you.
I took a deep breath, trying to loosen the knot in my chest. “Walk much?” I mumbled, quiet enough I knew the guy who’d run into me wouldn’t be able to hear. And I was certain it was a guy. The level of solidness I felt before he bounced off wasn’t something a girl could achieve unless she was a professional bodybuilder from Russia.
“I’m so sorry,” a deep voice said. “I shouldn’t have been running. Are you okay?”
I didn’t glance at him or any of the people now whispering about us as I bent down to gather my stuff. “I’m fine,” I replied without any malice. I wasn’t really annoyed at him, I was annoyed at myself. That’s what you get for letting some stupid Billy Joel song distract you. Remembering never helps anything.
“Here.” The guy shifted on the floor and collected the map from where it had landed a few feet away. He smoothed it out, even though it didn’t have a mark on it, reached around the legs of a few nosy onlookers and held it out to me.
I grabbed it and shoved it into my bag. All I wanted was to get to physics and disappear into a seat in the back.
“Sloane Sullivan?”
My heart skipped a beat at hearing my name from some random guy. I flexed my hands, my always-on-alert muscles ready to put my self-defense skills to use. Then his hand came into my field of vision. He was holding my schedule, his thumb resting next to my name, and I almost laughed at how jumpy I was being. Get a grip. It’s not like you haven’t done this first day thing before.
“Cool,” the boy said. “My grandfather’s first name was Sullivan.”
My eyes locked on the scuffed floor as my breath caught in my throat.
“Everyone should have two first names.”
Every inch of my body froze as a completely different image popped into my head: black hair sticking up in all directions, deep blue eyes bright with amusement, mouth quirked into the same goofy grin it always wore when he said those words, words he’d said so many times before.
My pulse took off as the guy crouched in front of me, making it all but impossible to stand without facing him. “Let me help you up. It’s the least I can do for a fellow double-first-namer.”
The whole world slowed to a crawl as I forced myself to look up.
Right into the unmistakable deep blue eyes of Jason Thomas.
I studied the wide eyes staring back at me from only a foot away. It was impossible they belonged to Jason. But the pools of almost green around his pupils that melted into a deep ocean blue set against an even darker blue ring around the edges were exactly like I remembered. Exactly like I’d stared into a million times before.
This is bad. Very, very bad.
It had happened once before. Three and a half years ago, when we were living in Flagstaff. I thought I’d seen Ms. Jenkins, the elderly widow who lived across the street from me in New Jersey, come out of a gift shop one Thursday afternoon. I’d been inside a bookstore next door and was certain Ms. Jenkins hadn’t seen me, but I still took the long way home and told Mark. Three hours later, we were in the car on the way to our next lives.
And I hadn’t known Ms. Jenkins nearly as well as I knew Jason.
A crease appeared in between his eyebrows. He opened his mouth slightly then closed it, all while searching my face.
The contacts! I prayed the brown would be enough to throw him off. But when his gaze dropped to the left side of my neck, I knew I was in trouble. Mark’s voice sounded in my head, as clear as if he was standing right next to me: Lesson number six: take control of the situation.
I shifted my hair to cover the faint pink scar on the side of my neck—the only proof I’d once had a large dark brown mole there—and stood. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I grabbed my schedule with one hand and took hold of Jason’s outstretched hand with the other, helping him up. “I’m Sloane, but you already know that.” I nodded at my schedule.
The crease in between his eyebrows deepened. “Jason,” he replied, still holding my hand.
I wanted to laugh at the deepness of his voice as I took in the rest of him. What happened to the scrawny twelve-year-old I left behind? Sure, his eyes were the same. And his black hair was still disheveled, only now it was tousled in a bed-head kind of way that could only be described as sexy. Which pretty much described the rest of him too. He’d filled out and grown super tall and it made my stomach flip as all the ways I’d changed from my twelve-year-old self ran through my head.
A husky voice interrupted the silence hanging between us. “Well, hel-lo.”
I yanked my hand out of Jason’s. A tall, slender guy with deep red hair was leaning against the lockers right next to me, holding a football. He inclined his head toward me and smiled. “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?”
I glanced from the boy to Jason and back again. “Um...”
A petite girl with olive skin materialized in between the boys. “Ignore him,” she told me, shaking her head at Mr. Love-at-First-Sight. “He tries his lines out on every female he sees.” She had shoulder-length, wavy dark brown hair with long bangs that swept across her forehead, partially covering one of her brown eyes. She turned to Jason and whacked him on the chest. “Babe! You practically mowed this poor girl down. How many times have I told you two playing football in the halls was going to end in bodily injury?”
Babe?
The girl turned back to me. “I’m Livie.” She paused, peeking at the guys on either side of her, then sighed. “And if these two Neanderthals haven’t properly introduced themselves yet, this is Sawyer—” she pointed to the pale redhead “—and this is my boyfriend, Jason.” She wrapped her hands around Jason’s arm.
The movement seemed to snap Jason out of his daze. “Oh, sorry, guys. This is Sloane.” He gestured toward me.
I gave them the look of self-deprecation I’d perfected from constantly being the new girl. “You know, I expected to embarrass myself on my first day but I had no idea it was going to happen so quickly.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Livie insisted. “It’s these two who should be embarrassed.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of blue against a red background. Something twisted in my chest as I remembered the flash I thought I’d seen the night before outside the school. I turned my head, half expecting to see another brick wall.
Sawyer was on one knee in front of the row of red lockers, his blue shirt still fluttering from his sudden movement. I shook my head. Of course there isn’t a brick wall.
Sawyer gazed up at me, batting his eyelashes. “I, dear Sloane, offer my humblest of apologizes for causing you embarrassment by using my considerable strength to throw this football farther than Jason expected, making him run to catch it and crash into you. I promise to find a way to make up for my superhero-like muscles.”