Prince Charming

Chapter One

Tuesday, January 22nd

ADVANCED PLACEMENT EUROPEAN history sucked. So did AP Biology, AP German, and AP English. Even World Cultures class sucked.

Everything about senior year at Heritage High School sucked.

I sat in the second row for every lesson, and I hated it. It should have been the best year of my life—everyone told me that, but they'd lied to my face. By the time we came back from winter break, everything about senior year had turned into a boring mess, like we were all just waiting for the day when we'd walk across the stage in the auditorium and get our diplomas.

I didn't know how to change any of it.

Mr. Langston's AP English had to be the suckiest of the suck. Fifth period. Somehow, this sorry excuse for an English teacher managed to warp what should have been my favorite subject into a pathetic placeholder in my schedule that always reminded me just how much I'd gotten over high school. I'd been over it for most of my senior year, and I wanted to turn around and leave every time I walked into that hour. Of course, I never did. Oh, no. I was too much of a pussy to pull something like that.

Besides, school itself had become too damn easy.

The spring of junior year, I'd loaded up my senior schedule with AP courses designed to give me dozens of hours of college credit—as long as I scored fours and fives on the tests in May. The guidance counselors and teachers told me over and over again how great this would make my future and that it would complete my path to the top of Heritage High School's graduating seniors.

I liked being at the top.

No, I loved being at the top.

And that's how I'd wound up in the second row of Mr. Langston's class, right after lunch every day, just in time to smell cafeteria food on his breath while he spouted off highbrow comments about classic literature.

"Can anyone tell me three character archetypes often used in Shakespeare?" he asked as he paced across the classroom the Tuesday after Martin Luther King Day. He wore a long, green sweater with large, wool pills and flakes of hamburger bun from his lunch all over his chest. He showed up in that sweater every Tuesday.

I cringed every time I saw it.

No one answered Mr. Langston right away. We might have been a classroom of students bound for college and full-ride scholarships, but that didn't make us eager to answer probing questions from an unmarried man in his forties with two lower teeth missing and small scabs on his face from too many shaves with a blunt razor. In fact, the stalemate between teacher and students had grown more pronounced as the school year inched onward.

"Anyone? Hmm? Anyone?" He held up the thick AP English textbook the school issued us at the beginning of the year to help us study for the AP test in May. His edition lacked a cover, and the front pages curled around the edges. Some of the pages threatened to flap out onto the front row. "This was in the required reading."

Still, no one raised a hand. Seconds ticked by on the clock. Any enthusiasm we'd once had fled the room back in September, when Langston's revised syllabus laid out a long line of torturous classics instead of American literature. Nothing crushed teenage spirit faster than Homer. Nothing. And no, Shakespeare did not help any, either.

"Come on people, this is not difficult," Langston said, his voice squeaking in a way that screamed annoyed and frustrated. He ran his hand along the bald spot on top of his head. "Character archetypes. Think really hard."

I looked up from the small doodle of a sinking ship I'd drawn on a random page in my notebook and glanced at the rest of the students. My eyes fell on blank faces and bored stares from kids I competed with for the top of class rank. We were the top twenty senior students, and, at that moment, I ranked an irritating second.