Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter Five: Sticks, Stones, and Other Harmful Objects

I set my purse—carefully constructed from an unused pair of Green Lantern/Batman/Superman boxers—down on the counter of the front office, smiling kindly when the secretary looked up at me. Her eyes slid from my purse to my ensemble to my smile, and I noticed her unconsciously roll herself backwards in her office chair a little. I tried not to laugh since it should be kind of terrible that middle aged school secretaries cringed when they saw me, but I was feeling especially reckless today. I think she saw how amused I looked because she straightened up a little, finding some of her dignity, starting to smile too-kindly back.

In this outfit, it hadn’t taken me long to be pointed in the correct direction of the office, and I had been too high and mighty to feel really self-conscious about all the stares I was getting—as well as the eruptions of laughter I left in my wake as I walked by. Thankfully, some terrified freshman thought I was going to rob her, so she at least didn’t point me in the wrong direction when I asked instead of messing with me and making the new girl with the weird outfit wander the halls, lost. It was the little things in life.

The secretary still looked like she was trying to swallow a horse pill; or just a horse in general. “What can I do for you?” she choked out, slapping on a phony smile made for strangers and unpredictable teenagers with bags made of boxers.

I smiled back at her and leaned into the counter. “My name is Lena Mallory. I’m new here. I was told to stop by to get my schedule.”

She blinked. For a long time. A lazy jungle cat long time.

“Oh, okay,” she said, and turned to her desk, grabbing a stack of papers. “I remember, your brother was just here—he is your brother, I assume?” I nodded, but she wasn’t waiting for it: “Such a sweet boy, he was. I can’t believe the two of you look nothing alike.”

Here’s the thing—I had gotten that whole Felton-is-your-brother? thing a lot by now, and I didn’t feel they were wrong in asking; Felton and I were total and complete opposites in every way. He strived to look perfect and I constantly tried not to forget to brush my hair in the morning. He had long, shaggy, styled golden strands of hair and my hair was mousy brown and couldn’t figure out if it liked being straight, curly, or wavy. He stood on stilts, and I could look garden gnomes in the eye. Lo and behold, my brother and I were two different people, and she was not the first person to point this out.

She was, however, the first person to point this out with raw judgment in her voice.

Since she had known him for twenty seconds and didn’t see his idiocy’s full potential, she was still under the false belief that I was the disappointment of the family.

I felt that judgment and matched her with an animalistic hiss that she mistook for a breathy laugh.

“Oh, yes, he is,” I thrilled mockingly. “He’s a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.”

“Mhm,” she murmured, placing the stack of papers she had been flicking through on the desk and scooted it closer to me with the eraser of a pencil. As if my crazy was contagious. “This is your schedule, a map of the school, and a student Code of Conduct that both you and a parent have to sign and return to the office as soon as possible. Everything should be correct and as you requested, but if there is something wrong, then stop by the office at the end of the day to get guidance to rearrange it. The sooner, the better.”

I nodded while she talked, but she sounded like a nasally Minnie Mouse and I was finding it achingly difficult to pay attention. She smiled at me kindly but I could still spot some hesitation as she regarded me as the instable one in the room. As if.

At least my voice didn’t drive ears to the brink of self-harm.

I picked up the collection of papers when they started to prod my arm from her pushiness and looked it all over. Four core classes, two electives, lunch. Ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, and a map that was impossible to read.