Wicked Sense

To

Daisy

I don’t buy into the high-school-is-hell theory. To me, it’s more like this joyless limbo most of the time, utterly boring, with the occasional humiliation and the rare thrill.

The new girl is a fine example of the latter.

“Drake’s got a crush,” Sean taunts.

Not yet, but I’m…
intrigued
. She’s different.
Alluring
. Sitting at an outside cafeteria table twenty yards from ours, absorbed in a small hardcover black book, she remains oblivious to the darkening skies above us and to the
Greenwood
High crowd watching her. 

“You’re staring too, moron,
” Boulder says, shoving Sean playfully. Kind of. “But I don’t blame you guys. She’s hot.”

Sean chuckles.
“An R-rated body
.”

My eyes stay on her. “What are you talking about? She’s petite,” I say before my brain can stop me.
Oh, man, they
’ve
suckered me into
one of
these testosterone-fuel
ed
talks again
.
With a heroic effort, I take my eyes off her and look at
them
. “Are we talking about the same girl?”

“Yeah, the new chick. The brunette chick.” Boulder, the paradigm of subtlety, points to her. “Don’t sweat it, D-Man
.
Sean is just messing with you. She’s pretty
,
but she’s no Priscilla. And, for the record, I don’t think you should call
anyone
petite.” This from the guy who just used a
fowl
-related word to describe a human being. Twice.

My head turns to her again, as if a
pulled by a magnetic force
.

She peeks over at us. It doesn’t fool me; I’ve been burned before by mistaking a furtive look for something else. Just an involuntary, split-
second, rest-my-eyes-in-a-random-direction kind of
glance. I know it means nothing
.

“Did you see that? She looked right at me!” Sean
says
, chuckling once again. It must be nice living inside his head.

His reward is another of Boulder’s trademark shoves. “Yeah, right,” Boulder says
. “With this male specimen here?
” He
taps his own chest
.

I shake my head.
These talks
always end in—

“I’m going over there,” Boulder says. For a built seventeen-year-old linebacker with a square jaw and an above-average vocabulary, Boulder has an alarmingly high strikeout rate with the ladies. I don’t know why; he seems confident. Over-confident. Maybe that’s it. Boulder is over-everything.

“No,” I say, stealing some of his
surplus
confidence. “My turn.”

My brain is definitely taking the day off. I’m
never
that bold. Sean snickers, predictably.

Boulder, astonished at my daring, remains speechless for a few unnerving seconds. But soon he grins. He slaps me hard on the back, in what he thinks is a friendly manner
,
and probably damages my kidneys in the process. “Go for it! Get yourself some hotness!”

Emboldened by their approval, I get up and start my ill-advised journey to inevitable disaster. For a moment, I think the ominous gray clouds sign
al
a bad day. But in Seattle, it just means it’s another day.

I cross the muddy grass and the gravel path.
In my mind, the schoolyard vanishes. There’s only her, and I process every detail. The book still hypnotizes her. She wears glasses, a delicate red frame with
a
faint rainbow effect on the lenses. I drink her in: dark brown hair in a tight ponytail, thin nose,
and
pale, flawless skin. Something about
her screams otherworldly—maybe the impossible symmetry of her face. It’s so weird. She’s not stunning, but her face is so maddeningly
…
attractive. She’s definitely not Sean’s type (bombshell)
,
although
she’s Boulder’s type (female).

I arrive unnoticed and say a weak “Hi.” Yup, I’m that
smooth
.

Apparently, the book is still very interesting. Great, I’m losing to dead trees.

At last, she rais
es her eyes, still hidden by those
weird lenses, and says, “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re nice and all that, but I need to finish this.” Her manicured finger taps the book.

Love her voice—s
lightly hoarse,
but feminine. And the accent: s
he must be British, maybe an exchange student. Her accent comes and goes as if she’s an unprepared American actress playing a British character.

The snub doesn’t shake me. I expected it, and I thought about the perfect reply on my way over. “I understand. But I’m trying to help you. If you don’t talk to me, Boulder over there will try his luck with a
much
lamer and potentially offensive pickup line.” I look over my shoulder. Boulder, typically, misreads my thumb pointing at him and does the pigeon-chest thing.

She looks at me, then at him,
and
then
back
at me. I’m feeling
like
part of a tennis match when she closes the book and says, “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

Of course I haven’t planned this far. I’m caught flat-footed and fumble my lines about her accent. The familiar panic starts to take over, but the least likely person saves me.

Exchange
g
irl
notices Jane arriving, as does everybody else. I mean, everybody
always
looks when Jane arrives; she
’s impossible to avoid. Jane is
a
biker chick, and she’s biker-chic. She’s all about leather
jackets, customized helmets, strangling pants, and sexy Italian bikes with brand names that sound like dirty words.

Sean tried to ask Jane out once, and she punched him in the face.
Punched
him.
A
firm “no”—or even a good slap—
should be enough for most people.
But she
knocked him down and almost broke his nose.
Jane fractured her hand, but she didn’t even flinch. Sean
never reported
her
. K
nowing him, I’d guess he said something
inappropriate. And he probably went down laughing.

For once, it’s Jane’s turn to stare at someone else. She pierces Exchange Girl with demonic eyes. Everybody notices. Jane
marches
toward us, blood-
red helmet in elbow, parting the sea of students with her commanding presence. It’s as if we can
feel
her hatred for the new girl. The weather report said to expect a thunderstorm today. Maybe this is it.

The buzz in the schoolyard rises
. T
he excitement of a new student’s arrival
is
compounded by the possibility of an even more sensational event: a cat
fight.

The boy
rises. I shouldn’t have glanced over
.
I should have kept my head down! But his aura is so unusual. I don’t even know how to read it.