Igloo High

CHAPTER TWO - A New Catch on the Horizon

Turning the combination dial on her locker in a hurry, Ella went right past the correct numbers and had to do it all over again. The second time worked, but the crooked metal door of her locker was jammed, as always, and required an even harder pull on the handle than usual. Ella could swear this set of lockers had come straight from the medieval era, hand-crafted by a blind blacksmith hellbent on cursing all humanity that would come after his time. He probably had a drinking problem too.

The bell rang. Balancing her huge-ass physics book, a bunch of loose-leaf pages and her pencil case, all tucked underneath her left arm, Ella struggled to close the locker's temperamental door. She suspected Sandy was getting impatient. Zack was in their physics class, and the sooner Sandy got to class, the longer she'd be able to gaze at him.

Sure enough, Sandy tugged on Ella's sleeve to get her going just as the lock clicked shut.

"I know, Zack..." muttered Ella.

"Shhhhh, not so loud!"

Ella knew all about Zack. And how Sandy would never dare to act on her crush, even with Ella's offer to help her hook up with him. Sandy was shy and, despite years spent under Ella's savvy social tutelage, just too nervous to jump off the boyfriend cliff. This was hard for Ella to understand, even with her friend's explanation that she couldn't bear rejection at this time. Or at any time, for that matter.

Instead, Sandy preferred to wait for Zack to make the first move. If he were interested at all, he would make the first move. Otherwise, she'd be fine to wait until college, next year, where rejection would be less noticeable in a sea of strangers. She could also reinvent herself then, at least a little. That was her plan.

For extroverted, go-getter Ella, things were all the opposite. She could have dated half, if not more, of the school's male student population if she wanted. But she was picky and getting pickier as she got older. She dated a lot of jocks, as it seemed like the natural thing to do. Not for the sports part—she couldn't care less about that—but because she liked tall, well-built and handsome. Some of them turned out to be total jerks, but a few of them had been pretty nice. Or interesting. But it was usually either-or.

And Ella felt she was now ready for the next level: gorgeous, of course, but also nice and interesting. She didn't want to have to settle this time around. Ideally, she'd find the guy sometime over the school year and before the prom—she had almost a full school year to do so. And at worse... Well, she'd deal with that in time, should it ever come to that.

On the first day of this new school year, seeing all the old faces and her exes, she thought she might have to cast her net wider and fish outside the school's premises to find Mister Right. But then, miraculously, an excellent prospect appeared on her radar: a new student from Calgary named Ryan.

Ryan seemed a little quieter than your typical self-confident jock—perhaps because he was a swimmer. You didn't need to be ultra-sociable or big on team spirit to swim, Ella figured. You could do your own thing. He seemed at once friendly and at ease to be all by himself. He didn't seem desperate to find a posse. No doubt a freethinker. There was an aura of mystery around him, too. It was Ella's first time dealing with an aura of mystery, and there was something thrilling about it.

Ella was also not the only one attracted to the mysterious newcomer. In fact, there was a rumor Valerie Michaels, Ella's long-time main competitor on the dating front, had already tried to approach him, without success. This was at once scary and exciting as Valerie had never been turned down by a guy before. This meant that Ella would have to make all the right moves to have a shot with Ryan, to succeed where Valerie had failed, and she felt energized by the challenge.