Second to No One (5 page)

“That was a really crappy thing of him to do.” I looked to the left of my desk to see Kate Bowman, a girl I’d said two words to in the past four years, hunched over my elbow. “I hear that the junior and senior guys are always taking advantage of sophomore girls.” She flipped a piece of hair out of her eye. “He was probably cheating on you anyway. Do you know if he was?”

“He wasn’t cheating on her,” a voice behind me cut in. It was a girl who had transferred to Franklin from Highlands. I only knew her first name was Brynn. “He just wasn’t ready for a steady relationship. Carly Eisenhower heard the whole thing.”

I turned around to face her, reeling to finally find out where all the rumors had started. “Carly?” I asked. “What did she hear?”

“That you guys made out before he left for the summer, and now that he’s back, he doesn’t want to go out anymore.” Brynn looked over at Kate. “He probably met someone in California. Guys are always hooking up with girls in California.”

I turned back to the front and felt my teeth grinding together. Someone was listening in on our conversation. Carly Eisenhower was listening in on our conversation, and now the entire world knew me as the girl that Jess Tyler dumped.

The rumors only got worse as the day went on. By the time lunch was over, Jess had a supermodel girlfriend in Los Angeles, and I was just a horrible kisser with a bad case of halitosis. The saddest part was that even I was starting to believe them. When fourth period came around, I had to fish for my class schedule in the bottom of my bag. Since I had ditched it the day before, I had no idea where it was or even who my teacher was. I found where I was supposed to be at the very back, left corner of the C hall, and I tried to walk into class and sit down in a seat at the back as though I had been there the day before like everyone else.

“You’re in my seat,” a tall, lengthy girl with way-too-short brown hair sneered. I looked up at her clenching an unfamiliar-looking book that I gathered the teacher had passed out the day before. I got up from the desk without saying a word and sluggishly looked around the room for another empty seat. But they were all taken. Every last one.
Don’t tell me I’m in
the wrong class—not
again
.

The bell rang, and a tiny, old man who looked a good ten years passed his retirement date stood up in front of the classroom. “May I help you?” he said, peering at me over his glasses. The rest of the class watched me with deathly silence.

“I think I’m in this class,” I said hesitantly. The last thing I wanted to do was cause a big scene like the last time this happened.

“You
think
you’re in this class?” he repeated in a fake half-British accent. “Were you here yesterday?”

“No,” I admitted. “I…I got held up.” I stepped closer to his desk, hoping we could keep this between him and me. But the gruff teacher had a different plan.

“Held up?” he said loud enough for the janitor to hear. “As in someone pointed a gun at you and threatened your life?”

A smattering of students snickered, but the old man smothered their laughs with one gesture of his hand.

“No.” I switched my footing. “I just—”

“Do you know that this is an
honors
English class?”

I looked at the floor. “Yes.”

“And do you know that honors English classes are primarily for honor students?”

“Yes, but…”

“And what part of skipping class on the first day of school is honorable to you?”

“I didn’t skip on purpose, I just…”

“You seem to be having a very difficult time telling me where you were yesterday.”

“I wasn’t feeling well. I…”

“She got dumped.” Thirty chairs scratched the surface of the floor as everyone turned to see who had said it. I didn’t need to turn and look, however. I knew exactly who it was. It was Jake Jonathon, my eternal nemesis. How was it possible that he was in this class? The universe hated me. “She got dumped,” he repeated when he had everyone’s attention. “By Jess Tyler.”

I melted into my backpack and looked in the direction of the teacher. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Which one?” The teacher folded his arms and cocked his head as though this exchange was actually quite entertaining to him. “You won’t skip class ever again or you won’t get dumped ever again? Because I can assure you you’ll get dumped again, that’s just part of life. But I can also assure you that you’ll never skip this class again because you’re not in it anymore.” He tipped his head toward the door. “Please leave.”

I stood motionless, watching as the room spun around me. It wasn’t just a class. This was honors English. If I didn’t have that class, I would be behind for the rest of high school. And the rest of my life.

The teacher turned to his desk and gathered up a pile of booklets. “I’m sure someone in the main office can transfer you into a sophomore English class. You shouldn’t feel much pressure to attend a class like that every day.”

I didn’t say a word, even if I wanted to. I don’t think I could have without crying. I left the classroom in shame and slowly made my way to the main office. How was this happening? Was it really so impossible for me to start a school year off without making a complete fool of myself? When I got to the office I opened the heavy door and a woman my mom’s age with short, red hair and thick, black glasses stared at me over the counter.

I handed her my class schedule with humiliation. “I need to change my fourth period.”

She scanned the paper, then looked at her computer. “All the other English classes are full.”

“All of them?” I stared at her in desperation. “Don’t I need to take English to graduate?”

“We’re short on teachers this year.” She squinted at the computer in front of her and pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. “You’re a year ahead in English. You can wait until next year and take a regular English class.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not ideal, but it’s really the only option.” She clicked a few buttons on her mouse. “Let’s take a look at some electives. There’s an opening in the beginning pottery class, girl’s choir, and…” her eyes scanned the list, “and photography.”

“Those are my only options?”

“Those are fun options. I’m surprised the photography class has openings. Ms. Delrose is amazing. Usually you have to be a junior to be admitted, but I’m seeing on your records that you took photography two years ago so you’re allowed to take it. Should I sign you up?”

I thought about my last photography class experience in eighth grade. The only thing I remembered from the entire semester was taking a picture of Trace’s leg and never living it down. “I’m terrible at photography.”

The secretary leaned closer like she knew a secret. “That’s why you take a class.”

I had to admit that taking pictures of birds and trees all day did sound a lot better than writing five-page essays. “Okay,” I said. “Sign me up.”

Ms. Delrose’s class was in the D hall, which was on the opposite end of the school. As I got closer to the art room, the smell of wet paint, oil, and rubber cement filled my lungs. The D hall walls were covered from floor to ceiling with collages, personal sketches, and a huge poster that read, “Art is life.” I felt strange and out of place. I had never considered myself to be the artsy type.

Ms. Delrose’s classroom was tiny and dark. The lights were out, and Ms. Delrose was at the back of the room, manning a slide projector. The ten or so students in the class watched eagerly as she flipped from slide to slide, showing pictures of what looked like ancient arches and tunnels somewhere in Europe.

“This one,” she said when a black-and-white photo of an old railroad popped up, “was taken by a good friend of mine when we were backpacking through eastern Germany a few years ago. Notice the angles, the shading, and the contrast of light that he caught in this single photograph. It’s brilliant.”

The door closed behind me, catching the attention of everyone in the room. “Ah,” Ms. Delrose said with a smile when she turned toward me. A pleasant and slightly masculine smile spread across her face. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

I would have asked her why and how she could have been waiting for me when she had no idea I was coming, but I was much too preoccupied with the person sitting in the far left row, in the seat beside the window, his brow furrowed, his eyes watching me in the darkness.

It was Jess. This was his class. I had just transferred into Jess’s fourth-period photography class.

“Please,” Ms. Delrose said as she took the pink office note out of my hand, “have a seat. There’s one left. We now have a full class.” She pointed to the only empty seat in the room, which thankfully was nowhere near Jess. Ms. Delrose continued on with her slide presentation while I sat down and dropped my bag next to my chair. I glanced over my shoulder toward the back of the room. Through the darkness and the dusty flashes of light from the projector, I saw him sitting, hunched over his desk, looking at the screen at the front of the class. I thought maybe he would look at me too. I thought maybe that even though things were weird and horrible and strange between us, he too would revel in the fact that we finally had that class together, the one that we’d been talking about since kindergarten. The one where we would finally be together for an hour straight and we would talk the teacher into letting us push our desks together and we would write notes back and forth to each other until the bell rang.

But he wasn’t looking at me, and he didn’t appear to be reveling in anything. Not the past, not our plans, and definitely not the present. In fact, the more I looked at him and the more glances I stole of him throughout the period, the more I realized that my presence actually didn’t affect him at all.

Chapter 5

“T
oday is going to be
the best birthday of your life,” Drew said as we approached our lockers. She was loading a couple books and a diet Coke into her locker, but she was staring at me with wide, convincing eyes.

“I find that hard to believe,” I grumbled under my breath. As if the past week of post-breakup bliss wasn’t enough, I now had to find a way to fake-smile my way through my sixteenth birthday. I hadn’t said a word to Jess since the breakup. It was easy to avoid him in our photography class because we were working with different groups for our first project, and my seat was right by the door so I could slip out without having to say a word. But I still caught myself staring at him from across the room whenever Ms. Delrose became preoccupied with a lecture about lighting, contrast, or focal points.

I was moving slow that morning. I hadn’t even opened my locker by the time Drew was finished unloading her backpack and turned around ready to watch the football-player show across the hall. “I just pictured this day being so different. I think I always thought that Jess and I would have our first kiss on my sixteenth birthday. Not be a been-there-done-that couple.”

Drew was antsy. “You need to stop thinking about him, Gemma. You’re whole birthday will be ruined if you keep dwelling on the past.”

I glanced up at my looming locker. “The past? It was six days ago. Jess was supposed to be the one. The boy I’d marry. My happily ever after. I think I deserve at least a week to mourn the loss of our unborn children.”

“I think you’re forgetting one vital piece of information here.” Drew turned to me with intense eyes. “I have two words for you…Trace Weston.”

“What does Trace have to do with it?” I let my heavy head drop against my locker as I lazily turned the lock.

“Trace has everything to do with it. He’s your breakup guy. He’s your fallback. Trace is your rebound.”

“I couldn’t do that to Trace.” I turned my lock one last time and lifted the lever. When I opened the locker door, an avalanche of balloons, crepe paper, and heart-shaped notes fell to the floor in front of me. I smiled for the first time that day—that week actually. “What is this?”

Drew watched with a satisfied grin as the red and orange contents of my locker drifted through the hall. “This is my birthday gift to you. It’s your new beginning, Gemma.” She handed me one of the heart-shaped notes. Written in her handwriting were the words, “Gemma Mitchell plus Trace Weston equals True Love.” I blinked at the words, then darted my head around looking at the hundreds of heart-shaped notes that were floating around the hall. I was mortified. “Do they all say this?”

Drew shrugged. “There are variations, but they get to the same point.”

Passing students caught on to the idea, and one by one were picking up the notes and reading them.

“Trace and Gemma kissing in a tree,” read one girl.

Then another said, “Gemma Weston. It has a nice
ring
to it.”

“Drew. People are reading them. People I don’t even know.”

“That’s the point, Gemma.” She rolled her eyes, annoyed at the fact that she had to explain it to me. “We’re giving you a new start. We’re initiating a whole new set of rumors. By lunchtime today, no one will even remember that you are the girl that Jess Tyler dumped. You’ll now be the girl that is hooking up with Trace Weston.”

“But Trace and I—” I repeated through cringed teeth.

“Are just friends?” She shook her head. “You liked him for years, Gemma. Years! You don’t just get over that. I know you’ve been sort of distracted by Jess, but think back to the time that your head span round every time Trace was in the same room as you. He’s great, Gemma. It shouldn’t be too hard to like him again.”

Of course I knew she was right. I knew Trace was basically perfect, and over the summer, I grew to really love the person that he was inside as well. “But I would feel like I’m using him.”

“Sometimes rebound guys turn into happily-ever-after guys.” She nodded behind me and when I turned I was staring Trace in the eyes. In his hand was a slightly crinkled pink note.

He squinted at it with those cute, smiley eyes of his. “I don’t even remember kissing you in a tree.” He shrugged. “But I’m sure it was amazing.”

“This was Drew’s idea.” I said pointedly.

“I figured.” He stepped so close that a rush of tingles surged through my body. “Happy birthday,” he whispered. Then he continued on down the hall and around the corner to his class. The volume in the hall behind us was magnified as the passing students played with the balloons that were flying around our feet. Hundreds of voices were saying mine and Trace’s names like we were the main characters in a romance novel.