Nyx (ON HOLD)

First Day, Part VI

I slipped into the social studies room just as the second bell rang, already crimson with humiliation from being late. Mercifully, my classmates were full of energy after the long lunch, only gradually allowing themselves to be tamed by the shrieking thirtysomething at the front of the room - and I slid into a free chair at the back of the room, fluidly slinging my backpack beneath the attached desk.

I scanned the room for any familiar faces, but only one girl with blonde ringlets returned my glance. Her perfectly kohled eyes narrowed into a feline glower, and her lacquered fuschia lips wrinkled into a sneer before she tossed her head, pointedly turning away.

Great. My first day at this stupid school and already I'd made an enemy, no doubt thanks to my perpetually cranky grandmother. I shouldn't have been surprised that I couldn't escape Adaline, even in the high school; the thought that my genes originally came from her was disturbing, to say the least.

The teacher's name on my orientation papers was listed a Mr. Martin, but "Mr. Pelton" was scrawled on the whiteboard in the shaky, canted handwriting of a substitute teacher. It certainly explained the chaos - and though it was too risky to chance using my cell phone, I snuck a textbook of early U.S. history off a nearby shelf and slid it onto my desk, as though it had been there all along.

Sydney told me Marblehead had been settled in December of 1620, but as I scanned over the timeline of European emigration, it didn't make sense. The Mayflower had only arrived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in November of that same year; how had people traveled hundreds of miles north in that short a time, without being so much as mentioned in any textbook I'd ever read - including this one? Surely all the so-called pilgrims were accounted for. Reason told me that it was impossible, but then, here the town was. Certainly I couldn't argue with the place's existence.

"All books away, please!" a sharp voice demanded from the front of the class. The harried substitute had me dead in his sights, but at least this was one time I wasn't going to have to introduce myself - and I quickly returned the slender tome to the empty socket between its fellows, eager to keep a low profile.

The sub seemed positively exhausted from his brief bout against the wills of fifteen teenagers, because as soon as he'd loaded the disc into the battered DVD tray, he sank back into the teacher's chair, gesturing to the student nearest the door to hit the lights. The classroom plunged into darkness as the documentary started, and once I was sure the stand-in teacher was as tranquilized by the narrator's droning monotone as my classmates, I slipped the heavy thing out of my pocket and set it on the desk.

The filigreed metal pendant should've been warm from having been in my pocket all day, but the necklace Adaline had given me this morning was curiously cool to the touch. The pale blue crystal seemed almost luminescent in the fluorescent light bleeding in from the corridor, and I stared down at it, wondering why Mom had left it behind in Marblehead if it truly had belonged to her. Did my grandmother expect me to wear it? In stark contrast to every tween movie ever, the whole point of high school was trying to blend in, not stand out. Beautiful though it was, having this thing around my neck would've been as good as wearing an albatross around my neck - and just the thought of someone seeing me with the thing made me hastily shove it back into my pocket.

Between the interrupted sleep I'd gotten last night thanks to the storm and the dull video, I must've dozed off, because I awoke to the school bell's harsh scream what seemed like a few minutes later, punishing me like a harpy. The sub stood aside, not even bothering to moderate the tsunami rush of kids scrambling through the too-narrow doorways, hurtling toward their final classes for the day.

Sydney was waiting just around the corner again, and we smiled as we saw each other. "So are you leaving your own classes early to help me, or is teleportation your superpower?" I asked.