The Girl Who Sat in the Corner

Chapter 1 - Homeroom

Wesley Eckles sat staring at his American history book. The names and dates in the chapter summary swarmed meaninglessly in front of his eyes. Not good. The test was first period, which would start in about fifteen minutes. But things that happened over two-hundred years ago and yearly three-thousand miles away didn't mean that much to him. The room was loud and it was hard to concentrate. As usual, Ms. Hasness hadn't shown up yet. Rumor had it that she was fawning over a certain band teacher who wasn't saddled with a homeroom class.

Of course, he should have studied last night, but his sense of time was lost in a search for a bug in what should have been a simple subroutine. The search led him to some places that he (nor just about anyone else, for that matter), never thought that a programming language could go. It seemed like only minutes had gone by when he realized the glare on his computer screen was the sunrise coming through his window.

As subtly as he could, he turned his head and stole a glance her way, where she sat in the back corner of the room. She, of course, had no idea that he existed but seeing her somehow made him feel better. To him, she was the most beautiful girl in the school. Not cheerleader beautiful, so most people never saw it, but a special kind that attracted him in ways that he didn't understand. Her dark brown eyes always looked a little sad, but at the same time possessed a gentle kindness. She almost never smiled, and when she did, it was barely perceptible but came from mysterious place deep inside. In fact, some of her attraction was that mystery that surrounded people who were very quiet. Even her name, Kai Tangle, was a puzzle to him.

This morning she was engrossed in a manga. From the cover, he could see it was the English translation of Uchuu Shoojo Tantei, a retro series only popular among true devotees. Her long wavy black hair was pulled back tightly and, as usual, she was wearing a loose, black tee-shirt with the logo of a rock band that not even he had heard of before he went home and Googled them.

"Hey Wesley! Stand up a sec." It was Gail Fillmore, an actual cheerleader though not particularly beautiful. She was popular and, when it suited her purpose, friendly. She stared down at him smiling with her carefully whitened teeth and he got up without even thinking to question her command.

"Now, hold out your arm like you want to shake hands."

He reached out towards her and before he knew it, the ceiling lights flashed quickly through his line of vision. The next thing he remembers is feeling the hard floor under his throbbing head and butt. Laughter was echoing around him and Gail was staring down at him with the same smile. "Judo lessons," she said before sashaying back to her desk.

"Mr. Eckles! If you didn't get enough sleep last night, I'd greatly appreciate it if you would go to the nurse's office rather than napping on my floor!" Just about the only time Ms. Hasness exhibited a sense of humor was when it would be at one of her students' expense.

The room tilted a little as he got up and moved back to his desk. He sat down gently, but not quite gently enough to avoid the sharp twinge from his tailbone. His face burned with embarrassment and his cereal-and-milk breakfast threatened to escape the confines of his stomach, one way or the other.

"You dropped these." Kai's eyes caught his for only a second before she looked away. She stood beside him, holding out the two pens that lived in his shirt pocket. He took them, noting with amazement that his fingers were, for an instant, less than three inches from hers. He was momentarily stunned. Not only where those the first words she had ever said to him, they were the first he heard her say outside of the answers she gave in class. (She never raised her hand, but when called on, she never gave an incorrect response. In the way that most guys were attracted certain anatomic features, Wesley was attracted to intelligence.)

And then she was gone. When he regained some of his internal composure, he looked over and she was back at her desk, staring down at her folded hands. The laughter in the class had begun to subside. Another school day had begun.