The Last of the Pure

Two

I suck at new schools. I don’t know why it is that I always forget how much I suck at new schools. I’m always immediately categorized as either shy, which I would honestly take over the latter, which is that I’m a complete bitch. It’s not that I’m either of these things, really. The people that know me best—mom, dad, and my Aunt Lonnie—would say I’m the exact opposite.

I just honestly have never felt the need to socialize with anyone my own age. I’m polite, but I mostly just prefer to keep to myself. In a place like Glen Rose, that’s not exactly something that people seemed to understand or, “take kindly to” as my father put it with a very convincing southern accent.

“Please, just pretend that you’re interested in getting to know some people. Maybe, I don’t know, sit with someone else at lunch?”

It was my first day of school and it felt like seventh grade all over again. We were relocating from Brooklyn to Kansas City where my dad had taken a junior high teaching job after the final book from my mother’s series had been published. He’d given me the same speech, the same pat on the back, and the same pleading smile. So, I gave him the same response.

“Naaaaah,” I droned. This caused him to glare at me just a little before turning to my mom.

“Reason with her, Ginny?”

My mom looked up from her newspaper, taking a sip from her coffee before—with excellent impersonation skills, I might add—she gave my same response.

“Naaaaah.”

“Oh, yes. The Thompson women being impossible,” he looked at us pointedly. “Yet another morning without surprises.”

“The day is young,” my mother reminded him.

“Right you are,” he leaned down then, kissing her on the cheek before turning to me. “We’re going to be late if we don’t get a move on, Nor.”

“It’s seven thirty!” I mumbled through my mouth full of Eggo. “The town is two blocks long!”

I wasn’t exaggerating much. We’d been in Glen Rose the entire summer and aside from the “Historic Main Street,” the high school, and the houses and hotels scattered between, there was nothing. Outside of town though, there were tourist attractions for the fossil-loving. Along the Paluxy River, there were dinosaur tracks scattered and eroding, with plenty of paths and parks to point them out.

“Teacher,” my father reminded me, pointing to his self.

I nodded, swinging my bag across my body and gulping down the rest of my coffee before hugging my mom and following him out the door. I could have easily walked the small distance to school, but it was still summer weather and this was Texas, so I didn’t really feel like being the new sweaty girl in class.

Glen Rose High School was exactly what I was expecting; small, old, and segregated. Walking down the hall to Homeroom, I could feel the cliché radiating from each small group. Everyone stared, but I had expected that much.

My Homeroom class was listed only under 219, so when the door I walked up to had my father’s name plate beneath the room number, I was unpleasantly surprised.

He’d spent all summer putting his classroom together. He had a desk to the left of the room, the counters set up with two little black bar stools and there were little mesh baskets, huge metal bowls, and a bottle of dish soap situated with lab assignments at each station. A giant periodic table blanket was tacked behind his desk and there were posters with equations framed above the long white board that was cluttered with the week’s schedule for each class written in his messy scrawl. He’d written ‘The Floating Basket’ under Physics for the day and I immediately recognized the experiment as something we’d done when I was younger.

I made my way behind his desk and sat myself down in his spinning chair, propping my feet up and making myself comfortable.

Everyone began shuffling to their seats, staring at me curiously until I heard a voice clear behind me.

“Go to class, Nora.”

I looked up to see my very annoyed looking father—arms crossed, tapping his foot—and I just laughed.

“This is my class,” I told him.

“Well take your damn seat!”

“You aren’t supposed to speak to students that way,” I said shaking my finger at him.

I got up and found the last empty seat in the room. I sat down, looking at my very handsome table buddy, before turning back to my bag and withdrawing my notebook.

“Alright everybody,” my dad started, closing the door to the hallway. “I’m Mr. Thompson, I teach senior Physics and junior Chemistry. I just moved here this summer with my wife and my very obnoxious daughter, Nora who you’ll find sitting in the back pretending to ignore me, from Kansas City.”

Everyone turned to look at me then and I knew this was my father’s payback for being a brat, so I decided to continue doodling in my notebook.

“That’s your daughter?” a boy said. I knew immediately what followed. “She looks nothing like you!”

It was true, of course. My dad was tall and thin, but not lanky like I was. His hair blonde where mine was almost black and he actually looked like the summer had given him a nice tan. And those were just the obvious, easily visible things.

My mother was the same way. Petite, I towered over her, and her hair was a soft, curly, light brown. They both had brown eyes, freckles, and round faces where I was angular. My eyes were green and oversized, and my skin was pearly white.

“She’s actually adopted,” my father informed them. “Her mother and I were unable to have children of our own and we found Nora. The agency told us there was a no return policy, so we were kind of stuck with her.”

Everyone laughed at that, even me. I’d heard it several times. My adoption was no secret. I was a baby at the time, but it’s pretty easy to pick up on when the differences were so obvious. My parents told me on my eighth birthday, but I think I already knew. I love them more than anything and they me.

I felt lots of eyes on me then and when I turned to look at the boy next to me, I was met with a set of big blue ones. His hair was dark brown, hanging in his face and curling at the ends, and he had a big dopey smile plastered on his face.

“I’m Nathaniel,” he said, extending his hand to me.

I smiled, shaking it and said, “I’m Nora.”

He nodded then, not taking his eyes off of me or letting go of my hand.

“What are you doing after school?”