Hailey frowned. “Ms. Sweaty. Her classroom smells like a horse’s butt.”
“And she grades like we are all supposed to be Harvard students.” Ryan rolled his eyes. “I’ll be lucky to get into community college.” It seemed like he was mostly saying that to himself so I didn’t comment. “At least you have third hour with yours truly. AP English with Mr. D. Easy A.” Why did he think he wouldn’t get into college if he was taking AP courses?
“That’s because he’s new. New teachers are always easy A’s.” Hailey smirked before hurrying off to find her locker.
Ryan handed me my schedule back and rushed off to class. I took a deep breath and looked up at the school building. So many people were moving around as if they knew exactly where they were going. Exactly what the next step was.
I moved slowly, searching, exploring, and hoping to get out with as little harm as possible. The first-hour class crawled by, and my new house buddies hadn’t been wrong. Ms. Gain’s room did smell like a horse’s butt.
“All right, students. Welcome to chemistry. I’m glad to see you all appear to be comfortable in your seats. Too bad. Assigned tables starting now. These will be your partners for the rest of the semester. So once you move, I welcome you to get comfortable again.”
The room was in an uproar with moans and annoyance, but I couldn’t care less. I already didn’t know anyone, therefore it wouldn’t matter who she sat me next to.
“Ashlyn Jennings next to Jake Kenn at table five.” I picked up my books, moved over to my table, and watched as a boy sat in the chair next to me. He gave me a friendly smile, but I noticed when his eyes traveled to my chest.
Their eyes always found my chest.
“Hi. Ashley, right?” Jake extended his hand my way and smiled.
“Ashlyn,” I corrected. Jake was a good-looking guy, kind of built—as far as high school boys could be built I guess. Blond hair, brown eyes.
“Well it’s nice to meet you, Ashlyn.” He put the stress on my name and that got a smile from me.
“You too.”
“So you’re the new girl everyone’s been talking about? The principal’s daughter?”
Everyone’d been talking about me? The thought of that sent a rumble through my stomach and I shrugged. “Assistant principal’s daughter. Everyone’s been talking about me? It’s the first hour of the first day.”
“You’ll learn fast… People talk here. That’s pretty much all they do.” He nodded, his eyes roaming over my body once more. “You look nothing like Mr. Jennings.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I smiled shyly and adjusted my chair a small bit away from him.
He noticed my move and chuckled lightly before he turned to face the teacher. “Trust me, it is.”
The class continued on, and afterwards, Jake asked me if I needed help finding my next class, which I declined with a smile. The next hour went by just like the one before—slowly.
Walking in the hallway, I felt trapped. My eyes darted to the clock on the wall. The loud ticks reminded us students that we must hurry along or we might blink and miss out on our lives. Six more hours. Six more long, dreadful hours before I would be able to escape the imprisonment of the building.
While I was walking, I saw Henry standing down the hallway giving me a halfway grin. I sighed and turned the other way, running directly into a person. My books and schedule went flying and I rolled my eyes.
“Watch where you’re going, melons.”
I looked up just in time to see that I’d managed to run into a guy wearing a letter jacket. A football player, and from how the followers huddled around him, I was sure he was the head of the team. I glanced over and noticed Jake standing amongst them, giving him a wary smile.
He shrugged with an apologetic grin and walked off. Thanks for the help, chemistry partner. A few of the guys remained near me as I started picking up my books from the run-in.
“Those aren’t just melons. Those are watermelons. I love my watermelons big and juicy,” a boy laughed as he walked past me, mocking the size of my chest.
After I picked up the books, I held them even tighter to my chest. I couldn’t even raise my head to look the bullies in the eyes.
One of the downsides to wearing Gabby’s dresses was the way they showcased my body. But for some reason, I had to wear them.
“No need to read when you got a rack like that. I can teach you all kinds of things,” the head bully said. One of the others called him Brad. I felt his eyes roaming across my body and I shifted myself away from him which made me run into another. Didn’t they have better things to do on the first day of school? Like, maybe going to class?
“Just one taste,” one of the guys muttered as he moved close to my ear and rubbed his hands against my shoulders before the rough sound of a teacher’s voice filled all of our ears.
“All right, all right. That’s enough. Get to class.” The voice ran through my ears as my head was still down. I watched as all of the feet of the assholes scurried away. A hand came near me and I flinched.
The need for a shower washed over my skin. Violated. The boys’ words and rubs had violated me and made me feel as if I’d just been touched all over in the most callous way. I wanted to go crawl back to Chicago, where at least I knew who the bullies were. I wanted to go home.
“You dropped this,” the voice said, handing me my schedule. When I looked up, the paper in his hands floated to the ground and he gasped. “Ashlyn.”
Beautiful.
Breathtaking.
Brilliant.
Blue eyes.
At first, a weird sense of comfort washed over me from knowing that he was the one who’d dismissed the assholes. But then the facts sank in. He’d dismissed the assholes.
“What are you doing here, Daniel?” He looked so…grown up. So different than when I’d seen him at Joe’s bar.
His tan pants were attached to a brown belt that matched his shoes. A light-blue button-down shirt covered his toned body, and his hair wasn’t free. It was tamed, combed back, held in place.
“Don’t,” he hissed. His lips frowned. I watched as he glanced down the hallways and the back of his right hand found his neck. “Don’t call me that, Ashlyn,” he whispered.
A locker slammed nearby, and I jumped out of fright. Everything twisted inside of me, and I fought back the tears that were pushing their way to the fronts of my eyelids.
How could this be?
Daniel cleared his throat and picked up my schedule once again. This time, he studied it, his eyes growing more and more worried. “You’re a student.” His hand formed a fist and he repeatedly tapped it against his mouth. “You’re my student.”
My eyes widened in confusion and horror. Mostly horror. The bell rang loudly, the noise rocketing through the hallways.
“And you’re late.”
He placed the schedule in my hands, and I looked up and saw Ryan jogging down the hallway toward us. He smiled. “I’m here, I’m here. Don’t throw a fit, Mr. D. My gym class is all the way across the building and shit.” He paused. “I mean, crap.”
He scooted past Daniel and me as we were both frozen in time and space. Ryan turned around, gave me a wide, toothy grin, and nodded my way. “You coming, Ashlyn?”
My lips tightened together as I looked up to Daniel—Mr. Daniels. I edged my way into the classroom and sighed as I heard the door slam behind me. Ryan smiled to me and tapped the seat directly across from him, and I mouthed, “Thank you,” to him.
When I looked up, I saw a disjointed Daniel trying to pull his thoughts together. He faced the class and I swore he stared each student in the eyes except for me. There was not one moment where we locked eyes. All I needed was a look to let me know that this was okay, that we could figure this weird situation out.
Not one look.
I felt nauseated.
He went on teaching the class, pulling out a dry-eraser marker and writing all across the board about what we would be covering in
the semester. Flash Fiction. The Odyssey. Macbeth. I didn’t care. The air was thick and dirty—filled with misunderstanding. I couldn’t breathe.
“Okay, so for tomorrow, I’m looking for a one-to-two-page paper answering these three questions. Three questions that will pretty much shape our semester. We’ll be referring to these a ton, so think hard about them.”
The classroom groaned. I blinked my eyes to look up to Daniel’s words. He had written three questions on the board that made me even more ill.
1. Who are you today?
2. Where do you see yourself in five years?
3. What do you want to be when you grow up?
My feet wanted to run, and I didn’t know how to stop the feeling of wanting to escape from overtaking me. I shot up from my desk and stood still. Daniel’s voice froze mid-sentence and all eyes turned to me.
Daniel arched an eyebrow and closed his dry-eraser marker. He gave me a baffled stare. “Yes, Ashlyn?”
“I…” I what? I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop wanting him to hold me. I what?! “I-I need to use the restroom.”
The bell rang, and I could hear the snickers throughout the classroom at my sudden burst from my chair. Daniel gave me a strained smile and nodded toward the door.
“All right, everyone. That’s it for today.”
My eyes shut and I listened to everyone shuffle around me. Only I would declare that I had to use the restroom in front of the whole class exactly before the class ended. My hand ran across my face as I sighed heavily.
Ryan playfully slapped me on my back and grinned. “Rumor has it that people are calling your boobs watermelons.”
My mouth hung open. “How is that even a rumor?! It just happened before class!”
He held his cell phone showing me a picture of me and my chest. “Technology is a bully’s newest bitch. Maybe you shouldn’t wear such sexy dresses every day that show off your chest and legs.”
I frowned at the picture of me frowning. How embarrassing. “The dresses were Gabby’s.”
Ryan grimaced. He shoved me in my shoulder. “Come on… Don’t let them get to you. Besides, it’s a pretty great rack.” He gave me another kind smile and tossed his backpack on. “You’re not a part of Edgewood high school until someone tags you as something you’re not.”
“What were you tagged as?”
“Womanizer who has too much sex,” he said effortlessly.
“And that’s not you?”
“Well no. Not exactly.” He paused. “There’s no such thing as too much sex.”
He was pretty handsome. He was wearing a plain gray t-shirt that lay across his body paired with dark jeans that hung perfectly at his hips. His black Chucks shoes and cross necklace tied his easy-but-sexy look together. I wasn’t surprised that the girls were attracted to him.
Ryan reached into his pocket and pulled out his cardboard box again. What was the deal with this guy? “We eat at the table in the corner by the tennis trophies. Right across from the lunch ladies.”
“You want me to eat with you?” I had already planned to spend my first lunch in the bathroom crying.
He narrowed his eyes. “No. I just tell people where I eat lunch.” Sarcastic. Cute. “Of course you’re eating with us. Don’t ever bring the cafeteria’s meatloaf to the table—it makes Hailey itch and it will probably give you diarrhea. And”—he reached up toward my ponytail and pulled out the band holding it up—“since your hair is so long that, if you wear it down, it brings less attention to your watermelons. See you at lunch.”
“Okay. See you then.”
“Oh, and Ashlyn?” Ryan smiled bright. “Keep wearing the dresses until you don’t want to anymore, okay?”
With that, he disappeared down the hallway off to his next class. I stared at Daniel, who was sitting at his desk, pretending that he hadn’t been eavesdropping on my conversation with Ryan.
The last student disappeared from the class. I put on my backpack and lifted my books into my arms. Standing in front of his desk, I gave him a pathetic chuckle. “So I guess this means we’re off for tomorrow night?”
Every curve of his facial features seemed to express a fine, harsh intensity. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off at me or our situation. Maybe a little of both.
He conversed with a colorless fluency. “That’s not funny, Ashlyn.”
No. It wasn’t.
“You said you were nineteen,” he spoke so softly I almost didn’t hear him.
“I am! I am!” I said it twice, raising my voice an octave. I didn’t know if it was to remind him or myself of the sincerity of the fact. I hunched my shoulders. “I was sick…” I paused. “My mom held me back a year.” I felt as if I were apologizing for being me. For being born the year I was born. For going to school the year I went to school. No students were wandering into his classroom, so I figured it must have been his free period. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Old enough to know better,” he muttered, rubbing his fingers against the back of his neck.
My throat dried out and I coughed lightly. “But young enough not to care?”
A deep-rooted growl left his lips. “No.” He formed a fist and slammed it against his desk in irritation. “Just old enough to know better.” He paused, his brows frowning. “I’m twenty-two.”
It wasn’t right, but hearing his age didn’t scare me. Not in the least. If the situation and timing were different, we could have given this thing between us a real go. Three years wouldn’t be a deal breaker for many relationships. It wasn’t the age that was stopping us—it was the occupation.
The tears were on the surface, but I refused to release them. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Don’t you think we should talk…about this?”
His eyes softened a bit and his head gestured toward the door. “If you want me to talk to those guys bothering you, I can.”
Tilting my head toward him, I huffed, annoyed with his offer. If I couldn’t cry in front of him, I would get mad in front of him. “You’ll talk to them?” My head filled with a cloud of anger. “Ohhh! You’ll talk to them. Please, Mr. Daniels. Please talk to them. That’s exactly what I need to make my life one hundred percent better.” I slammed my books on his desk and stared into his eyes. “Because my sister is dead. My mother doesn’t want me. My father is my assistant principal with his own family. I’m already an outcast in school. The guys are already mocking my body. And the cherry on top? My AP English teacher made out with me a few days ago and can’t even look my way now. So yes! Talk to them. That will make everything perfect.”
I saw his face strain and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Ashlyn…” he whispered, care in his tone. Then he looked up with worry. “Wait, Henry is your dad?”
My heart broke at his biggest concern of the moment. “Out of everything I said…that’s what you chose to take in?”
He frowned. “You should get to your next class.”
I didn’t move right away, even though the silence was intolerably irksome. Shifting my weight around, I nervously ran my fingers through my locks of hair. I stared at him for a moment longer before I turned to walk away.
He wasn’t the handsome man who’d awakened my spirits a few nights ago with his romantic vocals. He wasn’t the man who’d made me laugh and allowed me to cry into him. He wasn’t the man who’d reminded me that I was still alive when his lips had triumphantly found mine.
No, he wasn’t Daniel anymore.
He was Mr. Daniels.
And I was his naïve student who he’d frostily dismissed.
And I’ll ask you a question,
You can tell me the truth.
Are you thinking of me when I’m fighting for you?
~ Romeo’s Quest
Two more hours passed of hiding out in the bathroom crying, stressing myself out with the idea that Daniel was my teacher.
I also cried due to the bullies attacking me, because what could be more fun than being mean to the
assistant principal’s daughter?
I cried because I was lonely and sad and I missed my mom so much even though she probably didn’t miss me.
I cried because Gabby was dead.
And then I cried because that’s all I seemed to know how to do anymore.
I cried so hard I was surprised I still had tears to cry. After blowing my nose for the twentieth time, I wiped my eyes and headed to the cafeteria.
There was a silver lining in the day—I wasn’t forced to eat lunch by myself. Hailey was sitting at the back table near the tennis trophies. She smiled my way and waved me over.
“Hey, Ashlyn. I see you found our table.” She slapped the spot across from her and told me to drop my tray down. With one swift movement, Hailey reached for my plate, picked up my chicken patty, and threw it to the ground. “Not real meat.”
My eyes darted to my now dirty chicken patty and I frowned. I was okay with not-real meat when I was this hungry. My stomach rumbled and I reached for one of the fries on my plate, shoving it into my mouth.
“So how’s your first day going?”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.” I really wanted to tell her that I felt like crawling into a ball because high school could be tough at times, I had bullies already, and my teacher was my current crush… But I didn’t want to scare her off.
“I know, it sucks, right? This whole town kind of sucks, but you get used to it.”
“That’s scary. Getting used to sucking.”
“Well, it’s not the sucking that’s scary. It’s the swallowing that’s the real bitch,” Ryan grinned as he walked up to our conversation. “What’s going on, hookers?” He pulled up a chair to our table and took some of my fries.
I turned to see Daniel sitting at the table in the middle of the lunchroom. Of course he would be on lunch duty. I rolled my eyes as my shoulders slumped, and I shoved more fries into my mouth.
“Whoa, slow down, Chicago. Or else you’ll pick up the Wisconsin fifteen,” Ryan said, sliding my tray away from me. He then proceeded to eat more of my fries.