“Who do you have first period?” Julia asked, taking my schedule from me. “Same as you Harry: Mrs. Scott; Good luck with that,” she warned. “The woman’s Bipolar or skitzo. One day she’s disgustingly cheery, the next she’s snapping your head off for answering a question wrong.” Julia pursed her lips looking down into the paper. “Well, at least you can get the worst out of the way early. Looks like the rest of your teachers are pretty cool.”

“Let me see that,” Harry said, snatching my schedule from Julia. “No way, Jewels. She’s got Coach Green.”

“What?” Julia grimaced and snatched my schedule back from him, peering into the text more raptly.

She looked up at me then and shook her head. I thought maybe I’d just been sentenced the Death Penalty.

“Coach Green is a retired Drill Sargent,” she said. “Too bad you didn’t get Coach Little.”

Oh great. A potential failed course. It wasn’t that I was incapable of the more physical classes, just that I never do anything well under pressure.

“So,” said Harry, “gonna try out for cheerleading or anything?”

“Ummm, no,” I said matter-of-factly. “I don’t have the personality to pull that off.”

“Well, there’s other stuff,” said Julia. “Like...well you could try Band, or Bungee Jumping.”

I made a face. “Are you serious?”

Harry just laughed. I couldn’t believe I almost fell for it.

“I wish!” said Julia. “That would be the ultimate class for sure.”

We made our way to an open classroom and stopped outside the door.

“This is us,” said Harry. “I wonder what it’ll be today: hyped up on Poppins happy pills, or her head spinning three-sixty.”

Their mockery of mental illness bugged me a little. My mom had been on medication for depression for three years. But I knew Julia and Harry probably didn’t really mean anything by it. Mrs. Scott was probably a real piece of work. I was worried though, especially about having her as my first teacher of the day.

“I guess Harry can take it from here,” said Julia. “Catch you again next period.”

Julia left quickly and slipped into a class at the far end of the hall.

I turned to Harry. “Looks like we’re late,” I said with a slight edge in my voice. I noticed we were the only students left in the hallway and the classroom was full. I was afraid this notorious teacher was going to embarrass me in front of everyone. Make me stand up in front of the class an introduce myself. Tell everyone where I moved from and if I’m enjoying Maine so far.

“It’s your first day,” said Harry. “And my excuse is that I’m helping you, so we should be good.”

It’s one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world: entering a new classroom late and every pair of eyes on you. Harry walked me to the far corner of the class where his desk was.

“Miss Dawson,” said Mrs. Scott, “welcome to my class.”

She was smiling like the Cheshire cat. Did this mean my prayers had been answered and she was ‘hyped up on Poppins happy pills’? I held my breath.

“Since it looks like Harry’s showing you around,” Mrs. Scott went on, “I’ll let you sit next to him.”

But there wasn’t an empty seat next to his desk. I waited a long, unnerving second.

“Jen,” Mrs. Scott said pointing to an empty spot further down the row, “you may move back to your old desk.”

The girl happily gathered her books and tote and then walked past me to the empty seat.

I sat down and situated my things; the chair scraped annoyingly across the tile floor. Mrs. Scott placed a book in front of me. “We’re studying section seven, so if you’ll open it to page thirty-three we can get started.”

I was thankful that it took no time for the teacher to take the spotlight off me. She went right into ‘endoplasmic reticulum’. She seemed normal, a bit too cheerful, but still normal. I thought I’d have to see how she acted tomorrow before I made any unofficial psychiatric conclusions.

After second period Spanish with Julia, I was on my own until I met up with Harry again in fourth-period Geometry. I got all the same looks from all the same sorts of people throughout the day, but for the most part, the school was either friendly or paid no attention to me at all. Just the way I liked it.

At lunch, I hung out with Julia, Harry and their closest friends, Tori and Sebastian, who quite honestly had a little more than my attention upon first glance. Only problem was he and Tori were a couple. That, I thought, was probably a good thing. Relationships just weren’t my thing; casual, serious or anything in-between. Mom once told me I ‘wasn’t normal’ and that I ‘should be fighting with Alex over boys by now’. Guess it just took me longer to catch up. Really, I think it had a lot to do with my mom’s relationship rap sheet. Growing up around that hardly made anything about it seem desirable.

During lunch, all five of us sat outside on a stone picnic table underneath a shade tree. I was glad to have found my group of friends so quickly, rather than wandering around the school for days until someone had pity on me and decided to take me in. And I did like them all very much. Harry was naturally likable and probably didn’t have an enemy in the entire school. Tori and Sebastian were too into each other, she sitting between his legs with his arms wrapped around her from behind, to say much at all. Now Julia, she and I had more in common I knew during our office introduction. We dressed a lot alike; the baggy but chic look and I noticed she wasn’t too fond of make-up, either. Except for mascara, which I admit, is absolutely vital in any girls’ arsenal, no matter how small.

“So why did you move to Maine, anyway?” Julia said and then put a can of Mountain Dew to her lips, gulping down the last of it.

“My mom sent me to live with my uncle,” I lied, “because she took a job traveling.” It was all I could come up with on such short notice.

“Hey look,” Julia said then, gawking toward the street as a muddy Jeep with big tires pulled onto campus. “I wonder what her excuse is for today.”

I was relieved the focus shifted so quickly. Any conversation about Alex made me uncomfortable and I got the feeling that telling them I had a sister was just a few questions away.

The Jeep pulled up to the front of the school and a girl got out on the passenger’s side. The first thing I noticed was her short spiky white-blond hair. She tossed a black bag over her shoulder and carried a stack of books in the fold of her other arm.

There were three guys in the Jeep, too, all looking in our general direction. The girl glanced over at us once before heading inside.

“She’s only been at this school a week longer than you,” Julia began, “and she’s been late every day so far.”

Tori stopped fingering Sebastian’s bootlace long enough to say, “She’s weird. I have her in fifth period—hardly says a word. Freak.”

“Well, maybe she just sleeps late,” I said. “My mom is like that; can’t get her out of bed before noon if you kick her.”

“She looks older than a junior,” Julia added.

Tori used Sebastian’s hand as a notepad, drawing random curlicues with tiny hearts on the ends. “Well I don’t like her,” she added without taking her eyes off her work. “She creeps me out.”

I glanced back at the Jeep as it slowly pulled away from campus. I wasn’t the only new girl at school. This was a good thing.

“Hey, Adria,” said Harry, “Do you skate?”

The question caught me off-guard. “Ummm, what like regular skating, or skateboarding?” I hoped this wasn’t some kind of dating inquiry.

“Do I look like someone you’d find at a rink?” He laughed. “There’s a skate park not far from here. If you want, you can go with us after school.”

I looked first at everyone else, waiting for them to confirm or deny that they were going.

“You don’t have to skate,” said Julia, jumping in to save me. She likely saw the expression on my face that I didn’t realize was so loud. “Harry’s the only one that skates; Sebastian doesn’t even do it.”

“Yeah, he sucks at it,” laughed Harry.

Sebastian reached over and playfully punched Harry on the shoulder. Immediately, the act reminded me of Alex the night in the park. Already that memorable night was proving to be just that. Unfortunately, the night air and smell of honeysuckle and pine was eclipsed by the more terrifying event afterwards.

I shook it off quickly and turned my attention back on my friends.

I realized Harry was the only one among us that looked like a skater. In fact, I realized something different about all of us. We each looked as though we belonged to a totally different group of people, except Julia and I. Tori was a girly-girl with a dash of rebellion in glittery eye shadow and a cutesy pink baby doll shirt. Sebastian was more difficult to categorize; one of the individualists. His black Doc Marten boots could almost place him in with the rocker guys, but only almost. And it was Julia’s brazen, playful personality that made her different rather than her wardrobe choices. I could never be as brave as her. Maybe ‘brave’ wasn’t the right word. Somehow I got the sense that ‘careless’ was more like it.

I started thinking about the girl from the Jeep with white-blond hair. I felt bad for her, maybe because she was new and I knew how that felt. But also, I was intrigued by her and I couldn’t figure out why. It was a strange but insignificant curiosity. I let go of it until I met up with her in the hallway after school was over.

Her locker was on the same wall as mine.

She glanced at me once and nodded. Her features struck me instantly. She had an ethereal look about her. The white hair and perfectly applied array of gray eye shadow brought out her rounded angelic face. It was as if a painting had come to life in front of me.

I felt so inadequate, so plain.

For a moment, it seemed like she was going to say something, introduce herself, spark up conversation, but instead closed her locker and walked down the long hallway in the opposite direction. She went toward the bright sunlight shining in through the double glass doors at the exit. I could hear a small fashionable chain hitting softly against the back of her jeans as she walked.

Uncle Carl and Beverlee were both sitting in the den when I got home. The house smelled of pork chops and Macaroni & Cheese.

“So,” Uncle Carl began, “do I need to ask?” He was not too great at the parenting thing, but he was trying.

“What he means to say is,” Beverlee said, “was your first day a good one?”

“Yeah, it was nice.”

“So then you made friends easily?” Uncle Carl added.

“Uhhh, yeah. I didn’t have to eat lunch alone on the first day, so that’s good.”

He just nodded and buried his nose back inside his Scientific American magazine where it felt more comfortable.

“I’m going to...well; I mean if it’s alright, I’d like to go to the skate park with them later.” I wasn’t used to having to ask permission to go anywhere. My mom let Alex and I go wherever we wanted and not because she was an unconcerned parent, she just had no reason to distrust us. We never got into any trouble except maybe that one time we hopped the fence late at night into the water park.